[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] Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (1996)

How:
Had as a Christmas gift by my brother from my GoG wishlist.
Pros:
- Cool music fitting the b-movie atmosphere
- The final part (the alien planet) is nice and more adventure-like
- Some cool cut-scenes, especially at the end (meeting the alien, etc.)
- Decent special effects
Cons:
- Dull story even for a b-movie
- Very unlikable characters, the main character in particular
- Boring and very repetitive gameplay, consisting on clicking on everything everywhere
- Very few puzzles
- Only 5 places to visit on the map

[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) 

[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 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

[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

[FC] ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 妖怪大魔境 (1986)

How:
Explicitly looked for Kitaro-based games for the FC, out of an interest for the manga series.
Pros:
- Some nice gameplay elements (e.g. the lit-the-candle levels)
- It's always nice to see the usual monsters from Japanese folklore in a game, including those coming from Kitaro's world (e.g. ねずみ男)
Cons:
- There is no proper ending as the game levels repeat after 8 world maps
- Very repetitive gameplay
- Some levels can get frustratingly difficult
- No introduction, no story, no plot, no ending
- Couldn't understand how to use the "special weapons" (the three monster icons appearing in the bottom part of the interface) during boss fights

[Android] Escape the Room - Limited Time (2012)

How:

Explicitly googled for (exclusive) adventure games for Android devices, this was basically the only decent result I got to (with most people suggesting ScummVM and Flash-based games).

Pros:
- Very polished presentation
- Nice puzzles in general
- A nice mystery to solve
- Reasonably lengthy
Cons:
- Some accurate tapping is required
- A hugely frustrating bug (can't find the light switch in the dark)
- Given that there is a time limit to escape the room, some puzzles are unfairly difficult and require time for reasoning
- The number puzzles in Room 10 are stupidly difficult to solve in a limited time; they totally kill the idea of mobile gaming and make you want to give up the game for good
- Dialogues are often buggy (people saying things in place of others)
- Korean names are totally confusing
- Music is not looping properly

[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