[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.

[PC] Eric the Unready (1993)

How:
Got on GOG.
Pros:
- Nice puzzles overall, not too easy

- Robust parser

- Some nice memorable music

- Fun text and dialogue, akin to Terry Pratchett's humor

- Light-hearted and enjoyable text adventure

Cons:
- Quite short, each part is just a few screens and puzzles

- Inconsistent artwork

- Very rushed ending

Amusing example of the game's humor: this character replaces all the R's with W's, hence you must interact with the room by using the same rule... "look at dwawing"

[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] 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!

[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

[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

[PC] Mystery Legends: Beauty and the Beast (2011)

How:
Read about it possibly on Adventuregamers.com forums, tried the demo and enjoyed it immediately (purchased from BigFishGames).
Pros:
- Excellent voice acting
- Superb graphics and animations, totally on another level with respect to any other HOG/light adventure I've ever played
- Nice puzzles and hidden object scenes
- Some light arcade sequences (e.g. playing darts)
- Backtracking is not painful at all
- Overall very enjoyable light adventuring with well integrated hidden object elements
Cons:
- Some hidden object scenes are used many times

[PC] Spaceman in Space (2012)

How:
Got to know about it by following Francisco Gonzales on Twitter, downloaded it when he announced the release.
Pros:
- Amusing little comedy with moderately challenging puzzles
- Very nice graphics and animations
- Humorous sound effects (all made by voice, for example when the spaceman walks he says "left-right-left-right...")

[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] 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] Torin's Passage (1995)

How:
Knew about it from old magazines I had when I was a kid. Grabbed it when I saw its release on GoG.
Pros:
- Very good voiceovers
- Nice cartoon-ish graphics and animations
- Likable characters
- Funny and light humor all throughout
- Mixes 2D cartoon graphics with 3D close-ups of the inventory items, a style that I love
- Well balanced puzzles for a family adventure
Cons:
- Some annoying pixel hunting
- Some screen areas become active only when the correct item is being used on them
- The storytelling feels rushed, character development and relationships develop too quickly (e.g. Torin and Leena) and few motivations are given for most of the puzzles
- Music is of alternating quality
- Underwhelming finale

[PC] King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones (AGDI remake) (2010)

Pros:
- Beautiful drawings and scenery
- Very good puzzles, with different solutions (changing the final score of course)
- Nice story full of humorous takes on fantasy clichés with an original twist
- A great attention to detail all throughout
- Full voice-over with a great narrator
Cons:
- Need to pixel-hunt to exit screens
- Bad speech-music volume ratio, music turns out to be really disadvantaged
- Quality of the voice acting (both the recording quality and the actors themselves) has highs and lows
- The final song is a bit embarrassing

[PC] My Magical Cosplay Cafe (2011)

How:
Found on SakeVisual website after playing Ripples.

Pros:
- Nice drawings
- One very catchy song
- Nice for some light, easy-going gaming
- Nine different endings
Cons:
- Just a few scenes with heterogeneous graphics
- Way too much self-referential and smartass
- Starts well but ends up being silly, as if the developers quickly fed up

[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