[PS3] Beyond: Two Souls (2013)

How:
Read about it on Adventuregamers.
Pros:
- Stunning graphics and settings (snow, underwater, guerrilla, etc.)
- Engrossing and captivating storyline
- Diversified gameplay throughout the story, mixing different genres
Cons:
- Limited interaction, mostly just a matter of following instructions
- Some annoying timed reaction moments with confusing mechanics
- No puzzles
- 90% sad / depressing mood

[PC] Harvester (1996)

How:
Got in on GOG during a winter sale.
Pros:
- Multiple ways to do things, and optional paths
- Captivating story, cool endings
- Nice in-game videos
- Some nice puzzles
Cons:
- While you can type questions in dialogue, each NPC only understand specific keywords (e.g. you can not ask your brother about "dad"). Then it is useless, just keep all the keywords in the list.
- Lots of game glitches
- Uninspired, repetitive music
- Tedious action sequences that just consist in button smashing
- Some annoying pixel hunting

Might as well be taken from a Lynch movie

[PS3] Diablo III + Reaper of Souls (2012)

How:
Got as a present with the PS3 by my brother.
Note:
I finished the game with the witch doctor (male) with 4 dogs, 1 gargantuan, and lots of spawning fetish minions.
Pros:
- Immediate, fun gameplay
- Very cool playing characters with character-specific lore and equipment. Lots of cool monsters.
- Great graphics and environments with changing whether conditions. A lot of attention to detail.
- Environments are destructible and include traps
- Lots of cool spells and equipment
- Amazing cinematics
- Cool story and lots of lore
- Great voice acting, sound effects, music
- Some cool side quests
- Large world with lots of dungeon types including open spaces
- It has its sense of humor
Cons:
- Way too easy and forgiving. Most demons (including bosses) are affected by buffs such as confusion, slow, panic. Getting a strong character is just a matter of patience.
- Few side quests
- After a while, it is just more of the same. I had little interest to keep playing in adventure mode after finishing the main story.
- Would have been very cool to have small illustrations accompanying the demons lore

[PC] Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter (1986)

How:
Never played the game before, got during the Activision Quests sale at GOG.com.
Puzzles:
I only had to look up one puzzle, namely how to get the shard of glass from the crashed pod. I did have the idea of taking glass from there, but couldn't find any. It turns out that it only works if you examine the pod from behind (not from the side).
Pros:
- The command-line based interface is a favorite of mine
- Red herrings and moderately challenging puzzles make the game very satisfying to beat
- Amusing ways to die and optional puzzles (e.g. buying the wrong spaceship)
- The unfolding story remains fascinating, as simple as it is
- Likable main character
- Nice, tense escape moments
Cons:
- Some random, unpredictable deaths
- Parser is not so smart

Getting the maximum possible amount of buckazoids at the slot matchine.

My final score. Will I ever finish a Sierra game with the maximum score?
Basically I didn't talk to and kiss the Sarien guard this time around.

[Amiga] Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)

How:
Played the PC (CD) version but never finished it, finally got to play it again with ScummVM amazing support for Amiga files.
Endings:
Out of the three possible paths, I finished the game in the "collaboration" mode (with Sophia), both bad and good ending.
Pros:
- Multiple ways to solve puzzles and multiple game modes increase the game's longevity noticeably
- Excellent graphics, animations, and fitting music
- Marvelous, immersive sense of adventure
- Just the right amount of comedy one would expect from an Indy movie
- Likable, well outlined characters with custom animations
- Nice, well-balanced puzzles
Cons:
- No sound effects in the Amiga version

In an attempt to make Sophia run away from the cage, I managed to trap a crab inside with her.

My final score after finishing it the first time on Team mode.

[PC] Deus Ex (2000)

How:
Played the demo when it came out after finishing Half-Life. Didn't like the game, expecting it to be a shooter, came back to it out of curiosity with a Steam sale.
Ending:
I played through all three endings.
Pros:
- Very cool graphics, just the kind I like
- Amazing music
- Very fine dystopic sci-fi story with surprising turns of events and cool characters
- Excellent voice-overs and acting for the most part
- Exploration is rewarded
- Game difficulty and length depend on the way it is played (stealth vs shooter)
- Taken in small doses, the game offers a unique, fun and rewarding experience
- Plenty of optional content and highly non-linear
- The game offers several possible ways to reach objectives and do things. For example, I couldn't enter an area due to a game-crashing bug, but I took an alternative (more difficult) path and still made it.
Cons:
- Several graphic (collisions) and sound (music / sound efx balance) glitches
- The game is extremely dark 90% of the time
- Ending cut-scenes are underwhelming
- Some conversations are not logged
- If you attack or otherwise damage a character and do not kill him, everyone instantly knows where you are
- Not many cut-scenes
- The game is excessively long, more like a game and its sequel
- Some showstopping bugs (I couldn't enter Canal Road in HK without losing all inventory and crashing the game - had to take the difficult path)
- Enemies do not give the alarm if they see a door opening, a dead fellow, or other suspicious events
- The game misjudges your behavior with no good reason. Some NPCs (Carter, Navarre) described me as a naturally born assassin even though I didn't kill anyone, but Navarre did as a consequence of me being spotted by the enemy.

One of the three endings. Here I merge with Helios AI.

My final skill set.

My final set of augmentations. I mostly used the subdermal radar transparency, silent running, and the spy drone. Auto-healing also helped in the final chapters.

[PC] Portal 2 (2011)

How:
Got it together with the first episode in a Portal bundle sale on Steam.
Pros:
- Excellent gameplay and very well balanced puzzles
- Cool untold story that slowly unfolds, additional details can be grasped by doing more things (e.g. save a turret from incineration)
- Awesome graphics full of nice touches
- Excellent writing, dialogues and voiceovers
- Amazing environments and overall mood
- Great music
- Much more lengthy than the first episode
- All gimmicks (portals, light bridges, propulsion gel, etc.) come with a cool, "musical" sound effect
- The story continues with an awesome, lengthy co-op

Cons:
- I didn't like the colored gels too much, too many puzzles with them
- Some glitches

A hidden portrait of Cave Johnson and Caroline.

[PC] Gemini Rue (2011)

How:
Got with the Bundle-in-a-Box Adventure bundle.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and music, reminiscent of Beneath a Steel Sky and Blade Runner
- Rather lengthy (took me about one day from start to end)
- Very nice puzzles, including terminal-based investigation
- Memorable setting and writing
- Addictive gameplay, amazing story and turn of events
- Very likable characters
- A lot of cool scripted cutscenes
Cons:
- A few interface glitches
- The action sequences can be frustrating (very akin to the first Tex Murphy games)

Comparisons:

Tex Murphy: Mean Streets (1989)

Gemini Rue (2011)

[PC] Portal (2007)

How:
Knew about it since HL2, got on Steam with a daily sale.
Pros:
- Immersive and addictive gameplay
- Amazing atmosphere
- Surprising turn of events near the end
- Excellent voice work and amusing script
- Cool puzzle mechanics
Cons:
- Graphics are a bit monotonous
- Music is a bit lacking

[Amiga] Dungeon Master (Psygnosis release) (1992)

How:
Had the game on Amiga as a kid but never figured out how to play it. Finally decided to give it a go after reading CRPGAddict's posts on the game.
Pros:
- Favors exploration and discovery
- Immersive and suspenseful
- Nice balance between strategic and real-time elements
- Concocting potions is a cool idea
- Excellent pacing near the end
- Combat can be challenging and rewarding
- Cool magic system, memorizing and using spells makes the difference between a good wizard player and a bad one
- Some cool spells (e.g. see through walls, invisibility)
Cons:
- Throwable weapons (arrows, shurikens) must be picked back up one by one after usage, and the space allotted for them in the inventory is limited to 5
- No music, few sound effects
- Very repetitive graphics
- Slow movements due to overloaded inventories are a real pain
- Items, weapons and armor do not have any description, except for their name and weight
- No NPCs whatsoever. Would have been nice to meet somebody at some point
- The game gets very repetitive after a while, the elements added in each dungeon are not enough to motivate progress
- Probably one or two dungeon levels too many

My winning party:

Bad ending:

Good ending:

[DS] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (2007)

How:
Found at a reasonable price while browsing games at Gamestop. Never heard the game before, but decided to go for it since it has Final Fantasy in the title.
Pros:
- Nice setting with good scene variety
- Likable characters
- A simple, yet well paced story
- Excellent graphics and fitting music
- Playing characters can wear/carry many different clothes/weapons with the graphics changing
Cons:
- The accessory/weapon/armor creation system is somewhat overwhelming
- Starts too easy, very linear
- Not enough motivation to switch characters and use special moves or buy special stats-enhancing items
- Diagonal movement is very uncomfortable with the console d-pad
- Easy to get lost, the ingame map has marginal utility and the game perspective does not allow to see the current level clearly
- The game can be saved only in special areas (at crystals), which are not even frequent. This sacrifices mobile gaming and quick games a lot.
- Items easily fall on the characters head and are annoying to retrieve
- Having obligatory multiple characters makes gameplay confusing and cluttered

[FC] 月風魔伝 (1987)

How:
Found it mentioned a couple of times on hg101 forums, then read the review on the same site and immediately went out to play (and beat it in two days).
Pros:
- Fast-paced and addicting gameplay
- Cool setting
- Some levels can be rather challenging
- Nice variety of weapons and items
- Colorful and evocative levels and monsters
- The varied gameplay (side-scrolling action, dungeon crawling, boss fights, map exploration) strikes a good balance
Cons:
- Requires a good amount of backtracking
- Easy to exploit in order to max out the character stats
- Boss fights are too easy
- A bit short

[PC] Diablo (1996)

How:
From the old days of double-blind game swapping with friends. Couldn't understand the gameplay at first, but a second re-evaluation got me nailed down to the chair for days.
Pros:
- Immersive world
- Cool isometric graphics
- Excellent music
- Very good replayability value due to the random generation of dungeons and side-quests. Playing with three different characters also provides rather different experiences
- Immediate and fun gameplay
Cons:
- It's too easy to max out characters and beat the game
- Gets repetitive after a while
- Role-playing elements are rather limited

[FC] ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 妖怪大魔境 (1986)

How:
Explicitly looked for Kitaro-based games for the FC, out of an interest for the manga series.
Pros:
- Some nice gameplay elements (e.g. the lit-the-candle levels)
- It's always nice to see the usual monsters from Japanese folklore in a game, including those coming from Kitaro's world (e.g. ねずみ男)
Cons:
- There is no proper ending as the game levels repeat after 8 world maps
- Very repetitive gameplay
- Some levels can get frustratingly difficult
- No introduction, no story, no plot, no ending
- Couldn't understand how to use the "special weapons" (the three monster icons appearing in the bottom part of the interface) during boss fights

[PC] Planescape: Torment (1999)

How:
Was browsing through the gog.com catalogue, got intrigued by the isometric screenshots and by the very positive reviews.
Pros:
- A beautiful RPG which an immersive story lending itself to a very personal experience
- Wonderful music and voiceovers
- Excellent writing and dialogues
- A whole lot of side quests, adding a lot of depth and gameplay to the already big world
- Very good replayability value
- Tons of items and magic spells
- Highly non-linear and strongly dependent on the player's actions
Cons:
- Assorted bugs and glitches, some crashes
- Frequent path-finding bugs, with PCs getting stuck and unable to get items or talk to characters
- Every time a PC dies he must retrieve his inventory items which lie scattered on the ground
- Inventory is quite limited, many key items must be brought along for a long time and there is no possibility to deposit them somewhere temporarily (or at least no clear indication on how to do it)

[FC] Ys (1987)

How:
Came to know about it through the extensive HG101 article. Gave it a try and found the gameplay lightheartedly fun.
Pros:
- Fun and light action RPG
- Painless level grinding
- Very nice graphics for the most part
- Amazing music by Yuzo Koshiro
- Can save the game at any time
Cons:
- Boss fights are either frustratingly difficult or excessively easy
- Total lack of magic and such
- Almost no economy at all, gold quickly reaches the maximum allowed and has no use
- Some areas can be utterly confusing (the caves, the mirror maze)
- Very small world, with just two towns, three dungeons, and just a few items

[FC] ラディア戦記 ・黎明篇 (1991)

How:
Somebody was suggesting this in some forum, together with STED and Fire Emblem (possibly hg101's); got to it during a NES/FC RPG foray soon after finishing Lagrange Point.

Pros:
- Encounters are not frustratingly frequent as in other RPGs of the time
- Nice, memorable music
- Cool cut-scenes
- Nice graphics
- There's always something happening
- A nice lightweight action-RPG over all
Cons:
- Boss fights are way too easy and unrewarding
- Some nice ideas in the story end up being used in the naivest way
- Items and medicines are mostly useless, can do very well without caring at all
- Magic spells are unclear and underwhelming
- Dungeons are too short
- The plot is a bit confusing