[PS4] Catherine: Full Body (2019)

How:
Wanted more after finishing the first Catherine, got it on PSN during sales.
Endings:
- I got the Rin true ending.
- I got to Rapunzel stage 22.
Pros:
- Sympathetic and likable characters
- Cool setting and overall style
- A very good challenge with clever puzzles
- Tons of level variations with high replay value, including the new blocks and Remix mode
Cons:
- A bit too silly in the finale

[PC] Amerzone (1999)

How:
Heard of it after playing Syberia, got on GOG during an Anuman Games sale.
Pros:
- Relaxing gameplay
- Nice environments and adventurous atmosphere
Cons:
- Motion sickness caused by the camera movement
- Very easy puzzles and little exploration

Somebody thought this is nice face modelling.

[PS4] Root Letter (2016)

How:
Found on some youtube game review channel.
Notes:
I got 2 out of 5 endings.
Pros:
- Very nice graphics and compelling story
- The Phoenix Wright-like questioning part is fun
- Relaxing gameplay
Cons:
- Hardly any actual gameplay at all, freedom of movement and action is reduced to zero
- Max-mode is just trial and error
- As is often the case with visual novels, the protagonist is not a very likable person

You get to see 7 actual dishes from the city of Matsue.

[PC] Goblins Quest 3 (1993)

How:
Heard about it since Amiga times, got on GOG with a Gobliiins pack.
Pros:
- Some quite challenging puzzles
- Fun and silly fantasy setting
- Quirky graphics, sounds and overall atmosphere
- Nice connection with the previous game
Cons:
- Some weird puzzles promote trial & error attitude
- The story is not easy to follow
- Game-breaking bugs at the chessboard level where you get items in the inventory before actually finding them

An amusing moment in which you play from inside a crystal ball.

Transformed into a werewolf!

[PC] Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993)

How:
Got on GOG during a Halloween sale.
Pros:
- Good puzzles, not too easy
- Very nice graphics and animations
- Cool, captivating story
- Very good voice-overs
Cons:
- Music is not very fitting most of the times
- Some frustrating pixel hunting

My final score. I forgot reading the newspaper once.

[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] King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994)

How:

Got it from GOG during an Activision Quests sale.

Pros:

- Great animations and backgrounds
- Some nice puzzles
- Some nice settings (e.g. Ooga Booga)

Cons:

- Excruciatingly slow gameplay and animations
- No subtitles, with lots of badly recorded / over-the-lines voice acting
- Uninspired music

The goblin enjoying the romantic moment is amusing.

[PS3] Catherine (2011)

How:
Heard about it on Adventuregamers, found it on sale at Gamespot.
Endings:
I got the Katherine (Good) ending.
Pros:
- Cool and creepy atmosphere, nice characters, very stylish presentation
- A mixture of gameplay elements (including dating sim)
- The block sliding mechanics allow for unexpected strategies and techniques
- Lots of cutscenes
- Nicely written story and dialogues
- The jukebox in the bar features unlockable songs from the SMT franchise
- Quite some replay value (get gold statues, 2-players mode, Babel, finish the Rapunzel levels)
Cons:
- Very difficult to play when on the hidden side of the blocks. Controls are kind of reversed, and cannot see a thing; would have been nice to have a see-through button.
- Sometimes the music is louder than the voice-over
- The undo button sometimes places you in the wrong position
- In the later levels there are random, unfair events

[PS2] Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga (2004)

How:
Just exploring the megaten series.
Pros:
- Cool idea of having fixed monsters as playing characters, removes much of the mess from having to invite and fuse enemy monsters
- Cool karma-branching evolution and downloading system
- Lots of different demons with unique animations
- Fights are never trivial and very dynamic, have to apply the right strategy depending on the strengths and weaknesses of the party and the enemy
- Lots of magic attacks, status ailments, items
- Nice story and cool, diversified environments
Cons:
- Very linear gameplay
- Horrible song
- Ugly English translation (especially Cielo, who speaks Jamaican slang)
- Some very tedious enemy-heavy maze parts especially towards the end
- Bad metal rock music
- Still quite grinding-heavy

The coolest demon in the game: ライジュウ, a wolf made of electricity.

Coolest boss: Vasuki.

The game ends with a blatant Matrix reference. I found it a bit annoying.

[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!

[PC98] Venus - ヴィーナス (1994)

How:
Read about the game from the True Love review on Hardcoregaming101.
Ending:
I finished the game with 3 out of 4 girls without walkthrough in one go.
Pros:
- Very nice character pixel graphics, fitting very well with the backgrounds
- Generally fitting music
- Many endings (each ending is an AV recorded by the main character for his almost bankrupt company)
Cons:
- Gameplay is very simplistic, just set a date and go there
- Very few places to visit
- Very few events
- House items have descriptions but no use at all

[PC] True Love (1995)

How:
Came to know of it while chatting with my brother and got a downloaded version directly from him.
Note:
The English translation is the official Windows port.
Endings:
I got the Remi ending on my own and then saw all the others at once by following a walkthrough.
Pros:
- Mostly nice pixel graphics for both backgrounds and characters
- Some nice endings
- Some unexpected routes (e.g. saving a girl drowning in the ocean)
- Grinding skills can be rewarding
- There is a cameo of Akane from the game Venus
Cons:
- Music can get very repetitive
- Some typos
- Some continuity bugs
- A few ugly character drawing, few background scenes (most of them are just recolored)
- Very dumb, clichéd setting
- Unlikable main character
- Unrealistic dialogues

This character here is 茜 from Venus (1994).

[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] Fragment (2011)

How:
Got with the AGS Bake Sale.
Pros:
- Very good character design and animations, as usual
- Suggestive and emotional
- Longer than previous games from the same developer
Cons:
- Backgrounds tend to be too simple and abstract
- Puzzles are trivially easy (except perhaps one)
- Starts rather slow
- Sometimes too much philosophical

[PC] Dark Parables: The Exiled Prince (2011)

How:
Tried the demo and liked it, bought it right away on BigFishGames.com, together with other two episodes.
Pros:
- Neat graphics
- Good pace and well integrated cutscenes
Cons:
- Heavy on the HOG side
- Overabundance of inventory items and collectables (jars, tiaras, potions, etc)
- A lot of backtracking
- Boring and repetitive music

[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)

[Browser] Guilded Youth (2012)

How:
Covered in the monthly freeware games feature on adventuregamers.com.
Pros:
- A fun and lighthearted augmented IF game
- Nice idea of the BBS game mode
Cons:
- For some reason sound effects do not work

[DS] Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (2008)

How:
Just the well advertised sequel to a game which I enjoyed in its previous installments.
Pros:
- Nice story, well integrated with the puzzles, gameplay never gets boring
- A lot of cut-scenes
- Nice mini-games
- Very long
- Sheds a new light on Layton's past and Luke, endowing them with a real personality
- Puzzles are well balanced
Cons:
- Sometimes contradictory in a creepy way, all feelings are rationalized in an unsettling manner
- Flora is for some reason frequently forgotten and overlooked, she mostly feels (and is treated) like a pain in the ass
- All revolves around the cardinal and awkward concept of "being a gentleman", spoiling the good moments in the story

[PC] .heartbeats (2012)

Pros:
- Smart idea of having four heartbeats corresponding to four characters and the beat reflecting player choices
Cons:
- Tries to be sad and so on
- Could have worked better with better music and better graphics in general (although minimal, graphics such as fonts could be made better)

[PC] Ripples (2008)

Pros:
- Nice art and colors
- Fitting music
- A very pleasant short story
Cons:
- Some audio glitches
- Not a game