[PC] The Legend of Kyrandia - Book One (CD-ROM version) (1992)

How:
Read about it since Amiga times, got on GOG.

Pros:
- No explicit actions: just one click for everything, which works surprisingly well
- Great pixel art graphics and smooth animations
- Good voice-overs overall
- Fast movement, can skip dialogues
- Autosave

Cons:
- Can get into an unwinnable state without knowing
- The game structure and puzzles feel like a King's Quest 1 remake
- Basic inventory puzzles and lots of trial and error
- Too many useless mazes and random items
- Limited inventory slots

You transmute into a pegasus!

Mixing potions time! This is completely random and I created all possible potions.

[PC] The Feeble Files (1997)

How:
Read about it on old videogame magazines. Got on GOG during sales.

Pros:
- Graphics are a mixture of amazing pixel art and low-poly 3D renderings
- Lots of cut-scenes
- Relaxed, humorous mood throughout the entire game

Cons:
- Horrible (in some cases, completely broken) Italian translation
- Very slow movement without the possibility to skip
- Some truly obscure puzzles, the cosmic date one is possibly the toughest I have ever encountered
- Way too long
- The inventory quickly packs up with useless items

The Omnibrain guard looks like a Norm from Normality!

[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] Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender (1992)

How:
Got on GOG on a Black Friday sale.
Pros:
- Nice sci-fi setting
- Nice minimalistic background music
- Nice graphics and animations
Cons:
- Slow movement, not possible to skip
- Basic inventory-oriented puzzles
- Fonts are large and hard to read

Taking a leak - first time ever in a game?

Cosmic innuendos.

I thought the scribblings would be password or coordinates, but apparently they appear in other Microprose adventures (e.g. Dragonsphere). 

[Android] Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp (2014)

How:
Found on Adventuregamers.com after looking for some nice Android games. Bought from the Play Store.
Pros:
- Outstanding voice acting and soundtrack
- Amazing artwork with fluid, cartoonish animations and high quality cut-scenes that are just a pleasure to look at
- Very likable characters with funny, smart dialogues
- Nice spooky setting
- A lot of attention to detail (e.g. different voice recordings for the same sentences, animated buttons, each character has some small peculiarity)
- Different puzzle mechanisms (e.g. construct deductions from sentence fragments) bring some change to the usual inventory-based puzzles
Cons:
- Too many interface gimmicks that do not get used in the end (e.g. count of suspicious facts for each character, notes, etc.)
- Rather short
- Very easy
- The liquid mini-game has always the same solution (i.e. green)

[Android] The Lost City (2012)

How:
Read some review on Adventuregamers after explicitly looking for more Android games to play.
Pros:
- Beautiful graphics and very fitting animations
- Nice, well-balanced puzzles
- Fitting music
- Immersive atmosphere
- Nice game for some relaxed, light-hearted adventuring
Cons:
- Music is a bit repetitive, could be much better with a different theme per season
- Underwhelming, almost non-existing finale
- The overlaid text is too much in the way
- Essentially a back-tracking game, can get tedious
- Some mechanical puzzles can be solved before the PC has a way to find the solution, but the game does not accept the solution even if correct (e.g. combinatorial puzzles)

[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] 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:

[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

[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

[PC] King's Quest III Redux: To Heir is Human (AGDI remake) (2011)

How:
Found it on the AGDI website after finishing the previous remake.
Pros:
- Excellent hand drawn graphics and animations
- Very good, fitting music and excellent voice-overs
- Nice puzzles, many of them with multiple solutions
- Enthralling story providing a neat connection with the previous two games and characters
- You get to play as a fly and an eagle as well as using magic
Cons:
- Having to bring a meal to the wizard every single time is rather annoying. More variety (such as, doing more house chores, which I only got to do once) would have benefited the overall enjoyment
- Some dead-ends (e.g., saving when the mage is about to return)
- The final song is embarrassing

[PC] Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010)

How:

Got this off a Steam sale after hearing rad things about it pretty much everywhere. Already knew about the team for being the creators of the Penumbra series, so I knew I was going for something creepy and tense.

Pros:
- Beautiful setting
- Great graphics, special effects and great music
- Top level voiceovers
- Interesting and mysterious plot
- Very good gameplay, also includes three different endings
- Rather scary
- Well-balanced difficulty
Cons:
- Could have used better physics
- Some showstopping bugs
- Special effects can give nausea after a while
- Puzzles are simple and the game gives too many hints