[Amiga] Curse of Enchantia (1992)

How:
Heard about it since Amiga times.

Pros:
- Nice graphics and smooth animations
- Silly humor

Cons:
- No dialogues
- Very illogical puzzles
- Cumbersome gameplay with unclear actions, mostly trial and error
- Too many red herrings
- No item descriptions, sometimes it's difficult to understand the graphics

Trapped in a coffin. Actually, asking for help doesn't help.

[Mac] Enchanted Scepters (1986)

How:
Found while browsing a book on adventure games.

Note:
Credited to be the first point-and-click adventure game. Actually, it seems like "La Souris Golotte" came first.

Pros:
- Nice challenge with some almost unfairly difficult puzzles

Cons:
- Too much randomness
- Fights require no skill
- Some very crude graphics
- Weird mixture of typing and mouse commands

This might also be the first appearance of a talking head in an adventure game.

I finished the game with experience 3950 and wealth 1356, no idea what that means.

[PC] Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within (1995)

How:
Heard of it since Amiga times, got on GOG during a Halloween sale.
Pros:
- Relaxing gameplay, nice mysterious atmosphere
- Good acting with authentic German speakers
- Some nice puzzles
Cons:
- Many puzzles are just a matter of going back and forth talking to people
- Overly slow cutscenes
- Extremely tedious arcade sequences
- No subtitles
- Some aggravating pixel hunting
- Handwritten letters have keyboard-specific typos, completely ruins immersion

Ending scene, with my tiny 679/679 score in the top-right.

[PC] Gobliins 2 - The Prince Buffoon (1992)

How:
Heard of it since Amiga times, got on GOG with a Gobliiins pack.
Pros:
- No more energy bar
- Nice challenging puzzles, with some interplay between the two characters
- Nice graphics and silly humor
Cons:
- Some annoying, illogical puzzles
- Some very annoying control issues

[PC] Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (1986 remake) (1981)

How:
Got it on GOG during a winter sale.
Pros:
- Nice and odd mixture of first-person dungeon crawler, classical fantasy rpg, and space fighting sim
- Easy to get in and strangely addictive
- Big world
- Nice little side quests
Cons:
- Not always clear what must be done in order to proceed with the story
- The world has no memory, you can kill the king and go back and he'll be there again
- No music
- Being a magician is practically useless, and you must purchase a spell for each use
- Monsters (like the skeletons) tend to be goofy
- Experience levels are useless

My final character. I got two red gems simply by repeating a quest twice.
Also, I had 88 INT at some point, but went down to 36 for no reason.

"Wandering eyes" is basically a beholder.

[PC] The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles (2012)

How:
Got with a Gem Promo sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Awesome background graphics
- Excellent music and voice-overs
- Nice puzzles overall
- Simple, yet engaging story
- Amusing dialogues and writing
Cons:
- Some graphical glitches
- At times you are left without knowing why you are solving a particular puzzle
- Very few locations to visit

The critter disguised as purple tentacle from Maniac Mansion.

At one point in the game you get to use the blue and orange portals from Portal!

[PC] King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992)

How:
Often heard of it as one of the best adventure games ever, got on Gog.com with the King's Quest 4+5+6 pack.
Points:
I managed to finish the game with 228/231 points without using a walkthrough (I actually needed a walkthrough just to open the ink bottle...). The only puzzle I missed was feigning death in front of the black cloaked man, since I got the correct lamp by trial & error. Still got the best ending possible.
Pros:
- Some memorable and diversified music
- Generally good voiceovers
- You get to ride a black winged horse to the realm of the dead!
- Direct references to previous episodes of the series
- Rather lengthy, with a great amount of optional content
- The second half of the game is amazing (realm of the dead + castle)
- Very nice and logical puzzles
- Great graphics and cool cutscenes
- The possibility to die or get dead ends makes gameplay more exciting
Cons:
- Some super-fast animation glitches
- Some audio glitches (sometimes the music volume covers the narrator's voice)
- Using an item or using an item on the main character give different results only with some items (e.g. the ink bottle must be used directly on Alexander to open it)
- The Isle of Wonder seems more like the deus-ex-machina of missing inventory items
- Once again a final love ballad
- Some tedious backtracking required
- Trial & error required to solve certain puzzles
- Dead ends (usually quite clear though)

[Amiga] Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

How:
Played on the Amiga as a kid, never finished it because the game crashed in the catacombs. Eventually found it again in my Gamebase Amiga collection.
Endgame:
Actually I didn't manage to complete the game since I couldn't identify the correct grail to pick at the end (tried all of them --should have read a certain message in the catacombs in order to be able to finish the game). Obviously didn't feel like going through the maze sequences again to properly finish the game.
Pros:
- The game introduces the Talk verb and dialogue trees for the first time
- Very good graphics (only 16 colors!)
- Smooth animations
- Very good puzzles
- Cool, adventurous settings
Cons:
- Character interaction feels a bit rushed (especially between Indy and Elsa Schneider)
- The game follows the movie a bit too closely
- Terribly annoying maze sequences, especially in the zeppelin
- Very frustrating and repetitive dialogue puzzles, the only way to solve them is via trial-and-error
- Mediocre music
- Fights are annoying, useless and basically unwinnable
- The game starts very well, but completely changes for the worst after the catacombs
- I've never used the Load game feature so much in any other game before
- Dead-ends

[PC] Dragonsphere (1994)

How:
Promoted on Gog.com as a freeware game, got it without knowing anything about it. Played it after reading hg101 review.
Additional comment:
Not quite as short as most reviews mention (I think I needed around 10-11 hours from start to finish). The slow movements might have contributed.
Pros:
- Very good graphics and excellent in-game animations
- Very good (sometimes creepy) music
- The game has a very immersing, serious atmosphere differentiating it from most other adventures in similar fantasy settings
- Great dialogues and overall very likable characters
- A very deep and intriguing story with cool ideas thrown everywhere and a dramatic turn of events
- There are some rather challenging (but fair) puzzles
- Some puzzles can be solved in multiple ways
- Death is automatically undone, with no need to reload
- Lots of interactive elements, with long text descriptions
Cons:
- Movements are rather slow and unskippable (e.g. when climbing the mountain)
- Mediocre voice acting, thankfully it can be turned off
- Perhaps too many red herrings (both useless inventory items and misleading puzzle solutions, e.g. the poems)
- The story can be "broken" in a couple of ways (e.g. by going to the Spirit Plane without knowing about the Soul Egg)
- The interface can be confusing as some objects have item-specific default actions, e.g. a hidden button on the wall has "Activate" as default action, and "directions" can also be examined (this is especially important towards the end of the game when a door must be examined to reveal the symbol of a crown)

[PC] King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder (1990)

How:
Bought the King's Quest 4+5+6 collection from GOG after playing King's Quest II.
Additional comment:
Not nearly as unbeatable as it is usually depicted.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and animations
- Very nice music all throughout
- A cool adventure with lots of travel and a compelling story
- Nice, challenging puzzles
- Some puzzles are solvable in more than one way
- Connections with previous games of the series (e.g. Manannan cat) is rewarding for fans
- Fun and slick gameplay
- Nice graphical choice for the windowed interiors
Cons:
- Packed full of dead ends
- Cedric the owl has no use except at the very end
- Voice acting is generally mediocre
- The final part is very frustrating
- Must resort to save scumming in order to finish the game
- A couple of illogical puzzles (e.g. the moldy cheese to activate the machine)
- Some graphical and sound glitches
- The game annoyingly interrupts with a warning message every time a cutscene is going to start
- The desert maze is uncalled for

[Amiga] Arazok's Tomb (1987)

How:
Found while randomly browsing my Gamebase Amiga collection.
Pros:
- Very good graphics
- Moderately challenging puzzles with lots of red herrings and limited inventory
- Cool fantasy/sci-fi hybrid setting
Cons:
- Rather short
- Many showstopping bugs (crashes, glitches)
- Many typos
- No dialogue
- The few speaking characters can be heard only via the optional synthesized speech, otherwise what they say is not reported on screen
- Confusing descriptions
- Weak parser
- Some annoying time-based puzzles (eating, drinking, fighting)
- Very weak and abrupt ending

[PC] Dark Parables: Curse of Briar Rose (2010)

How:
Tried the demo of the second episode on BigFishGames website, liked it and bought the whole series.
Pros:
- Beautiful graphics, fitting music
- Some amount of non-linearity
Cons:
- Adventuring elements are limited to very repetitive inventory puzzles, the rest is pure HOG
- Shallow storytelling
- Lots of backtracking
- The diary gives away some puzzles
- The puzzles per se are trivial, one specific puzzle appears at least three times (place colored balls on colored tile)
- Only a few events, no character interaction (starts with the princess appearing, to never see her again) 

[PC] King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (SCI version) (1988)

How:
Bought the 4+5+6 bundle on GoG during sales after finishing King's Quest II.
Pros:
- Very nice graphics and fluid animations
- Nice, short music punctuates the main events
- Very logical puzzles, some of which are rather challenging
- Some lightweight creepy moments and night scenes
- The game changes to zoomed-in visuals in interiors
- Very likable main character
- You get to play as a frog!
Cons:
- It's sometimes hard to see where is the main character due to screen clutter (e.g. when appearing behind a tree), and it's easy to get stuck
- No sound effects
- Some extremely annoying arcade sequences (e.g. the usual narrow paths and climbing the whale's tongue)
- Some dead ends
- Unpredictable random events make puzzles more difficult than they should be (e.g. cupid taking a bath in the pool, the cave monster appearing at times)
- The parser is sometimes very strict (e.g. play sheet music), sometimes very forgiving
- Unnecessary items have just the standard description

[PC] Arden's Vale (2011)

Pros:
- Beautiful sprites, backgrounds, animations
- Beautiful music
- Very good puzzles, additionally the game can be completed in two different ways (play them both!)
- Fun as only Monkey Island managed to be
- Every single interaction gives something!
Cons:
- Medium length is not enough!
- A foreground/background bug when opening the door to the castle

[NES] Shadowgate (1989)

Pros:
- Immersive scenario, faithful to its theme
- A decent variety of music
- Not so easy
Cons:
- The light torch thing is so much annoying and useless, it makes the game play like a pain
- Too much trial & error
- The "Leave" and "Close" actions are of no use
- Slow movements and actions due to the control via cursor
- Some illogical puzzles (e.g. cannot kill the wolf with a sword, must use the arrow)

[PC] Dracula: Origin (2008)

Pro:
- Buon bilanciamento tra enigmi e puzzle
- Musica adatta e ben fatta
- Bel doppiaggio
- Un take classico di una storia classica, ma comunque gradevole
- Ambientazioni piuttosto riuscite anche grazie alla grafica molto curata
- Decenti sequenze video
- Abbastanza oscuro
Contro:
- Qualche glitch
- Qualche enigma un po' stupido (es. la sequenza di tubi per svuotare la botte di vino)
- Non si capiscono bene gli hotspot e dove è possibile spostare il personaggio
- Le animazioni dei personaggi sono quasi del tutto mancanti
- Un po' troppo facile e diretta

[PC] The Black Mirror (2003)

Pro:
- Storia avvincente, inoltre si visitano luoghi sempre ampi ed interessanti
- Enigmi ben congeniati e mai banali
- Scene forti (es. testa decapitata che rotola per terra)
- Grafica ottima, paesaggi e ambientazioni molto suggestive
- Doppiaggio ottimo
- Ottima longevità
Contro:
- Il modello del protagonista è paradossalmente quello venuto peggio
- Gli eccessi d'ira del protagonista e la possibilità di rispondere bene o male non portano a nulla e sembrano piuttosto un'idea buttata lì
- La sottotrama del passato del protagonista (e della morte della sua ragazza) è inconcludente

[Amiga] Lure of the Temptress (1992)

Pro:
- Bella grafica
- Storia semplice ma divertente (sul fantasy classico), sia per i dialoghi che per le situazioni
- Enigmi ben bilanciati
Contro:
- L'interfaccia di gioco promette di più di ciò che mantiene (il sistema di pseudo-scripting delle azioni è utile in occasioni rare e può intimorire)
- E' possibile rimanere bloccati senza rendersene conto
- Il gioco è piuttosto breve e non si fa in tempo a simpatizzare coi personaggi
- Gran parte del gioco è ambientato in villaggio, il che dopo un pò stufa