[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] Fallout 2 (1998)

How:
Got during a Fallout series giveaway at GOG.com.

Pros:
- Limited items and money make resource management useful
- Well written and darkly fun dialogues
- Great graphics, fitting dark ambient / industrial music
- Lots of nonlinearity and side quests

Cons:
- Cumbersome and annoying inventory management
- Using items can be confusing, the "use" functionality is not always the correct way
- Brutal difficulty encourages save scumming
- NPCs keep getting in the way
- Several glitches and bugs

[PC] Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)

How:
Got it for free on GOG.
Notes:
I solved the game almost entirely on my own, except for the dungeon maps.
I never found and used the silver horn to bypass the 100 daemons guarding the shrine of humility. I instead fought all of them.
Pros:
- Heavily dialogue-based, makes exploration interesting and rewarding
- Some convenient interface changes, also easier and quicker fights
- You can ask people to join the party
- Very non-linear
- Battles take place in several different environments, allowing for some strategy
- Food depletes slowly, is shared within the party, and is not a hassle anymore
- Finally, enemies have no diagonal movement (still diagonal attack though)
Cons:
- No music in the original PC version
- Combat can be very slow when many characters are involved
- Getting a ship is still a pain in the ass
- Ships can be destroyed even when parked, forcing you to find another one
- Wind when sailing is still a HUGE pain in the ass

My final character stats.

Only 91,682 turns!

An Indiana Jones reference!

Encounters on bridges involve trolls. Nice touch!

Gazers - another type of beholders (strictly speaking these are all called "beholderkin").

[PC] Ultima III: Exodus (2012 VGA upgrade) (1983)

How:
Got with a Ultima I+II+III sale at GOG.
Pros:
- Finally with music!
- The tactical turn-based combat adds a new dimension to the series
- More items and weapons than the predecessors
- Magic is an important and fun part
- Not a grindfest for the most part
- Dungeon crawling is actually fun and useful
Cons:
- Still no diagonal movement / attack (although the enemies can)
- Wind in the world map is super annoying and makes you waste frigate turns for no reason at all
- The 5s timer for turns is very stressful, especially during combat
- Monsters are not visible in the dungeons, they just attack out of nowhere
- Food is a real pain, and can be drained (unfairly) by invisible gremlins in the dungeons
- Boats spawn very infrequently
- Still a lot to grind

I managed to teleport without boat into the water.

The disappointing ending with my final party.

[PC] Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (2001 EGA upgrade) (1982)

How:
Got it with a Ultima I+II+III sale at GOG.
Pros:
- Exploring the world across time and space can be fun
- Better monster sprites in the dungeons
Cons:
- No diagonal movement (while monsters can)
- Progress is achieved by randomly talking to all characters and slaying innocents (e.g. prison guards) in order to access otherwise unreachable areas. This kills role playing completely.
- The game is basically a long, unrewarding, extremely tedious grinding fest.
- Everything must be obtained with money, which is obtained by grinding, or by random drops by killing thieves. I did not visit other planets because the fuel drop was too rare.
- Overworld monsters are too rare
- Still no music
- Planets are useless
- Too many ingame jokes

My final character.

That L-shaped piece of land is Italy. I am passing Gibraltar strait with my frigate.

I made a bridge with boats.

[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.

[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

[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] Fallout (1997)

How:
Got during a Fallout series giveaway (which means FREE!) at GOG.com.
Note:
I got lucky and got the alien blaster by chance quite early in the game.
Pros:
- Great isometric graphics
- Very cool atmoshpere, setting and lore
- Combat can be unforgiving, and detracts the player from pure grinding
- Well balanced economy, you never have too much money
- Nice turn-based combat system
- A limited but cool arsenal and set of items to use (including drugs)
- Cool lore
- Non-linear gameplay and quests
- A nice variety of death animations depending on the weapon used
Cons:
- Sometimes difficult to control in occluded areas
- Can't reach areas that the main character cannot see; this makes moving in towns very tedious
- Some possible walking dead situations
- Music is a bit forgettable
- Few side quests
- There is a lot of content which is never explored because of the unpredictable outcome of choices
- Carry weight is fairly limited
- Very few companions, with almost no control over them
- Some obscure puzzles (connect a radio to a computer in order to control force fields?)

[C64] Warrior of Ras 1: Dunzhin (1983)

How:
Read about it from CRPGAddict.
Pros:
- Sound effects and victory music
- Some replay value (levels and events are random)
- Reaction-based traps add to the overall enjoyment
- Random dungeons reveal as you explore, which adds to the pleasure of discovery
- Nice tactical combat, in which you can choose whether to aim, force, attack, run, or hide. Attack is specific for different body parts and you have to learn the most sensitive/exposed body parts for each enemy.
Cons:
- No music during the game
- Winning or losing a battle is completely a matter of luck, as a result fights are an exercise in frustration
- The weapon and armor can break with no possible replacement
- Unnecessarily complex control system which requires you to specify how many steps to walk in which direction
- Buggy (or just awkward) player status, in which experience points and statistics fluctuate randomly
- Very high encounter rate

[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.

[PC88] Cosmic Soldier (1985)

How:
Found about this game after reading of Psychic War on the レトロゲームの塔 blog.
Pros:
- Nice setting
- The character leveling system is mildly interesting
- You can recruit allies among the enemies
- Generally well balanced, requires some strategy
- Nice variety of monsters
- The accompanying android idea is not bad
Cons:
- No music at all
- The few sound effects are unpleasant
- Requires a considerable amount of grinding
- Junk shops are totally useless
- Limited variety of weapons and armors, and no special attacks whatsoever
- Very limited and repetitive gameplay mechanics
- Only one save slot per party
- Very high encounter rate
- Ugly interface, the game could have looked much better with a bigger first-person view

My winning party. This must have been my fourth or fifth party overall.

The End. All playing characters and enemy sprites are seen dancing with pom-poms as if nothing ever happened.

[C64] Halls of Death (1983)

How:
Searched for other C64 rpg's on CRPGAddict master game list after enjoying Sword of Fargoal.
How to play:
"/" : down
":" : left
";" : right
"@" : up
"+" : use stairs
"p": spells
Movement can be made faster with F1.
Spells: Sleep (1), Teleportation (2), Lightning (3), Fireball (4).
Levels:
I was proclaimed: Apprentice Bumpkin, Yokel, Trainee Warrior, Warrior, Swashbuckler, Seasoned Adventurer, Hero, Dragon Slayer, Champion, Necromancer, Sorcerer, Superhero, Guardian.
Pros:
- Cool first-person view animation on the lower right
- Spells can be used to destroy walls in the dungeon
- The game forces you to take careful choices, because:
   1) a successful game sees you going back to the surface (i.e. you need to backtrack or teleport)
   2) stats grow with items found in the dungeons, and decrease with enemy encounters, traps and magic spells
   3) game ends when any of the three stats (Strength, Psionics, Constitution) falls below zero
   4) using spells consumes both Strength and Psionics, is not always successful and becomes mandatory at the deeper levels (vs wraiths)
   5) Strength and Psionics points can be transferred to each other with a 1:3 ratio
- Gameplay can get addictive and very tense especially during the ascent phase
- Successful ascents are very rewarding
Cons:
- Fight success only depends on the strength and magic levels of the PC
- Grinding is possible only to a limited extent, as it depends on what items you find in the dungeons and the outcome of encounters
- There is no use for the collected treasure
- No sound
- The time you can spend in the dungeon is only dictated by luck, since Constitution depletes as you fight and it can only be recovered by finding Stamina, which is rare

This is as far as I got. Getting the Lord of Light rating is a matter of grinding for treasure, perhaps one day I'll do it.

[C64] The Sword of Fargoal (1982)

How:
Read about it on CRPGaddict, bought C64 Forever and played it right away.
Note:
Apparently this is the first game ever with random dungeons.
Pros:
- Simple, yet addictive quasi-roguelike gameplay
- Some interesting game mechanics (proximity sounds, pit traps usable as stairs) and magic spells (beacons, teleport)
Cons:
- Dungeons are quite repetitive
- The game gets almost unplayable from level 15 down
- Very few types of monsters
- Waiting at the temple to heal the character can take a lot of time

Actually, of those 8:54 hours several were spent regenerating health while doing something else.

[PSP] Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (2011)

How:
The game was frequently mentioned on review websites and forums, bought it for 5€ at Gamestop as a first game for the PSP for long trips.
Pros:
- Huge replayability value with loads of extra contents
- Extremely non-linear
- Can be very challenging
- Epic final battle
- Some very good in-game graphics and special effects especially near the end
- Very good character portraits
- Can revisit past events and undertake new paths to get different outcomes
- A lot of different classes, skills, magic spells, items, and so on
- Many special moves that gradually unlock with experience
- Economy works well
- The game records all previous events, dialogues and cut-scenes
Cons:
- The story is very contrived, full of difficult-to-memorize names, and dialogues that are extremely hard to follow
- Sometimes when action happens at the borders of the screen, you cannot see who's aiming at who and what's the induced effect (you only know a posteriori)
- Music is boringly epic
- Some of the game mechanics are too tedious to be actually usable (e.g. recipes, beast hunting)
- Some character classes cannot use certain magic spells for no apparent reason, even if the spell can be learned and the character has the right magic skills
- Not being able to see the map/enemies before entering the battle field greatly reduces the strategic value of the game (e.g. entering a map full of undead without bringing someone able to exorcize them)
- Grinding new characters for experience can be very difficult as the game progresses, since enemy strength is balanced with the player's strength

[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

[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)