The original PS2 release of Star Wars: Starfighter is a beloved classic. But this PC port of it was terrible even when it first came out, and time has not been kind to it. It doesn't seem to commit to either PC or gamepad controls, and it somehow seems to run worse than the PS2 even on modern hardware. If you want to play Starfighter on a modern PC - and you should - then use an emulator, and not this terrible port.
The original Myst is wildly overrated, and I can't recommend it. Riven does better, by focusing (mostly) on a single world, with meaningful connections between the various things you'll see and do. It's a short game, but a slow game, that wants you to look around and think about the world you're in. It's frequently beautiful, its sound design is exceptional, and many of the puzzles are very clever. But while in theory there's a certain wonder in realising that object A on island B is actually the clue to puzzle X on island Y, the actual process of backtracking from location to location to solve these global puzzles is tedious. It's not fun to cross the entire world to re-look at a clue (or re-listen to it), and if you're on the wrong track entirely there's not always good feedback to set you straight. It's a game that doesn't sufficiently reward the player's experimentation, or respect the player's time, which leaves it as a promising and pretty diversion (and, again, better than Myst) but something which falls short of being called a classic of the genre.
Disco Elysium simply can't be recommended highly enough. I'm inclined to be critical of even the most popular games, and yet I can't find it in me to say a bad thing about this one. (Well, okay, the ending is a little rough and doesn't pay off as many of your personal choices as one might hope for.) This is a must-play for any RPG gamer - if you haven't played it, you simply don't have a meaningful opinion on the modern state of the genre - and I'd go further, to recommend it to anyone who loves games of any sort. The mechanics make old concepts seem fresh and vital, the writing is sublime, the characterisation is vivid yet subtle, and it speaks with a voice choked with whiskey, anger and despair about things worth speaking about. Don't sleep on this - play it today.
There's a lot to love about Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but you have to work for it - first and foremost by turning down the difficulty fairly severely. The default settings are withering even for those who are well familiar with the Pathfinder ruleset - and it's a ruleset that the game makes no real effort to teach you or explain. Once you've nerfed the enemies and done away with permadeath, you'll discover a long and satisfying traditional CRPG in the style of Baldur's Gate. The graphics are nice, the loot is plentiful (perhaps too plentiful - install a carrying capacity mod), the story makes sense, and the companions are mostly entertaining. Even with that, the game still has a fair share of glitches years after release - some of them game-breaking - and the kingdom management mechanics are stressful, poorly explained, and have the capacity to leave you in a walking-dead situation after dozens of hours of play. Plus if you don't play it right (or dare to roleplay) you'll miss the entire last chapter of the game. So like I say - there's a great game here, but you have to work for it.
If it's not clear from the product description (and it may not be) this is a relatively benign horror title masquerading as a retro RPG throwback, with the specific level of "retro" upgrading from text adventure, to 2D, to 2.5D, and beyond. It's Evoland meets Pony Island, by way of Undertale, but not quite as memorable as any of those games. Specifically, there's nothing new here. The game (and your in-game Buddy) are constantly exhorting you to keep jumping through generic hoops for the promise of another gameplay upgrade (or, more often, a jumpscare), but nothing is actually fun in and of itself. There's no actual "game" to be played, and to the extent that it's a visual novel, it's just working through the fairly predictable beats of this subgenre, as you wait patiently for Buddy to get creepier, a sad real-life history to be revealed, etc etc. I don't want to overly disparage a game that developers have put hard work into, but you'll be better served by working through adjacent-but-better games like Undertale, Pony Island, The Hex, Inscryption, Doki Doki Literature Club, or even Simulacra.
These are classic adventure games, easily recommendable to fans of the genre. They're more horror-themed than actually horror - no one is likely to be frightened by them. They don't have quite as much personality as the true icons of the genre but the interface is smooth, they're rewarding without being punishing, and they don't outstay their welcome. Unfortunately, neither Dracula 2 nor Dracula 3 work out-of-the-box on modern systems, and both games will require a trip to the forums to get them up and running. It's disappointing when it would only take a simple fix from GOG to make the default installation work properly.
There's a lot to love about The Whispered World - an unusually weighty story, a pleasant soundtrack, and lots of hand-drawn art. But even point-and-click aficionados will be frustrated by the opaque puzzle design. There's rarely any logical process by which you can arrive at solutions, and nor is the process of experimentation enjoyable. This special edition also leaves a lot to be desired. Developer commentary is a nice feature, but it's all in German, and the English subtitles for it are so poorly translated and riddled with spelling errors as to be gibberish. The in-game English audio also has issues, with dialogue lines poorly spaced and frequently triggering before the previous line is complete. As a final frustration, the title screen includes prominent ads for other Daedalic games. This wasn't a polished game to begin with, and this edition adds no extra shine. For collectors and masochists only.
When it first released, Under A Killing Moon blew me away with its complex plot, 3D puzzle solving environments, and rich characters presented in FMV. It's a great game that builds towards a satisfying climax, and the in-game hint system almost entirely removes the need to search the internet. But it hasn't aged as well as it could. The semi-professional FMV looks much more wonky by today's standards, and the non-professional actors provoke cringes. The interface is well-intentioned but imperfect, there's a fair amount of pixel-hunting to avoid overlooking things, and not all of the puzzles are designed intuitively or cleverly. It's still a great game but you'll need to be prepared to engage with it as a product of its time rather than a competitor against modern releases.
The clue is in the word "jazz". Those looking for a structured game with clear objectives, progression, and challenge will find nothing that they want here. Those in the market for a whimsical freeform art piece may be interested. Jazzpunk continually surprises... but only occasionally entertains. It's memorable, but hit and miss. It doesn't always make sense, and it sometimes doesn't even seem professional, but it boldly and confidently doesn't care. If it still sounds interesting to you after all of the above, you should absolutely buy it.
The market for this game already know it exists, and they'll be well-satisfied with the result. For everyone else, this sprawling game is a love-letter to retro western RPGS - but unlike something like Legend of Grimrock or Pillars of Eternity, which capture the limitations that defined beloved games without necessarily emulating their flaws, Grimoire mostly emulates the awkwardness of the era - complex unintuitive systems that require reference to an out-of-game manual; brutally slow pacing where basic journeys can take hours; bugs and interface problems. The fact a single person has made such a vast game is amazing; but the fact a single person should also have trouble providing basic quality assurance for it is entirely unsurprising. If you don't already know you want it, best stay away.
