[PC] Return to Monkey Island (2022)

How:
Got it through GOG for my birthday!

Pros:
- Several genuinely funny moments
- Great music, colorful graphics, several cutscenes
- Great voice-overs in general, with some misplaced accents
- Solid puzzles, although a bit on the easy side

Cons:
- Inventory grows fast pretty soon, although it does not get too confusing
- Some very sad vibes
- Some graphics are a bit below the bar
- Could have been longer

A small cameo of the purple tentacle from Day of the Tentacle (on the table).

[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!

[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.

[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] 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] Anna's Quest (2015)

How:
Got it from a GOG winter sale.
Pros:
- Very nice graphics and smooth in-game animations
- Some nice cutscenes
- Quite lengthy with nice variations and quite adventurous feeling
- Overall good puzzles
Cons:
- Annoyingly naive main character
- Very bad and unfair ending towards Winfriede
- Several open threads are never explained (e.g. who's the fox?)

The chapter with Winfriede as a playing character is actually better than the rest of the game. Also, this explores the connection between magic and science!

[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). 

[PC] Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet (1993)

How:
Read about it on Hardcoregaming101, bought it on GOG during a winter sale.
Pros: 
- Cool creepy atmosphere and story
- Some nice puzzles
- Very nice graphics
Cons
- Spooky but very repetitive music
- Unintuitive interface, sometimes you must Use items, sometimes you just need to have them in your hands in the right place at the right time
- Easy to lose bearings in town, and understand which locations are accessible
- Slow dialogues
- Possible dead-ends
- Too much trial-and-error towards the end

The game comes with a separate mini-game called "Lovecraft Museum".

[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

[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] Sanitarium (1998)

How:
Played the demo when it came out, finally bought it during Halloween sales at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Cool isometric view
- Nice music fitting well the creepy mood
- Plenty of cut-scenes
- Engaging story with a slowly unraveling mystery
Cons:
- Some game-breaking bugs and crashes
- Puzzles tend to be sparse and easy, they mostly serve to move the story along
- Lack of dialogue continuity; the character reacts to dialogue in a fixed manner even if he already has the information he needs

[PC] The Whispered World (Special Edition) (2010)

How:
Read about it on Adventuregamers.com, got during a Daedalic sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Awesome background drawings and in-game animations
- Puzzles are quite clever in general
- Very nice music, although a bit monotonous
- Nice, relaxing mood for the most part
- Quite lengthy and adventurous
- Nice unconvential puzzles to be solved using Spot's transformed versions
Cons:
- No wide screen, a real pity
- Stuttering animations, usually at the beginning of each scene or location
- Glitchy sound in the dialogues
- A couple of annoying puzzles (e.g. move around rooms in the Asgil's city)
- The main character is unlikable, unhearable, and depressing for the most part of the game
- Some puzzles can be solved by accident, destroying continuity
- The clock puzzle in the oracle's hut was automatically solved for me without me asking for it
- Lots of pixel hunting
- Some game-breaking bugs (e.g. character stuck in the background, door does not open, etc.)
- The cinematic parts among chapters do not live up to the rest of the game

[PC] Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon (1994)

How:
Had the title in my head since forever, found and got it from GOG.com.
Pros:
- Cool sci-fi / noir atmosphere
- An interesting unfolding story of conspiracy and mystery
- Some nice puzzles, including optional ones
- Amusing dialogue system, where you get to choose a "way" of saying things rather than the specific sentence
Cons:
- The sloggy movements make me feel nauseous after a while
- The game takes a while to kick off (at least the entire Day 1)
- Commands can get frustrating, especially adjusting the motion speed with the mouse
- Basically the first 3 days take place in the same few locations
- A few time-based puzzles

An amusing Alien reference. The little beast here is referred to as a "geigger".

[PC] Space Quest V: The Next Mutation (1993)

How:
Got with the Activision Quests sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Music and sound effects are much better than the previous episodes, and a pleasure to hear
- Very good graphics and animations
- Gameplay is relaxing and offers some variety. Even just sitting in the spaceship giving orders is fun and rewarding.
- You visit several locations
- Interesting, slowly unfolding story
- Cool comic-style cutscenes
- Nice puzzles
- Fewer dead ends and sudden deaths make the game much more enjoyable
- Cool climatic ending
Cons:
- You spend very limited time in each location

Alien references are my favorite!

[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] 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)