I actually left off his playthrough on Medium or something somewhere in the middle (right after powering up the evil trinket by killing those damned sand monsters. had to grind a bit to be able to damage them)

Hugo definitely would be more fun to play with the twinstick control scheme.

The Catacomb (aka Catacombs 2)
I can absolutely not tell why I had fun playing this game (and I had fun). I would say that even when the game was released more than 20 years ago the graphics were ugly, the beeping sounds (no music) were outdated, the leveldesign was mediocre at best and the few puzzles that there are were bad (find the invisible level exit). Besides that there is nearly no variety in weapons you can use and there are just six differen types of enemies in the 30 levels. But somehow as a whole it worked and was quite addictive. Even if I didn't play it for hours without a break, I kept returning to the game and completed at least three or four levels per day.

I wouldn't say that it's a must-play, but it's an interesting game when you want to know how Id Software and the Catacombs series started.

Complete list of finished games in 2015

Grim Legends - The Forsaken Bride - An Artifex Mundi adventure puzzle/HOG,and done very well, per normal for the company. The voiceovers are... iffy, but that's pretty typical. Other than that, it was well done: Excellent artwork, good puzzles that aren't too obnoxious or randomly difficult, and it offers a domino game as an alternative to the HO scenes. The storyline is predictable but entertaining, and it was a fun game.

Grim Legends 2 - Song of the Dark Swan - The sequel to the above, and more of the same. The only real difference is that this one doesn't have any alternative to the HO scenes. Also, there were two puzzles that irritated me to the point of skipping them, which I rarely do. (Three, counting the flower puzzle in the bonus chapters, which I skipped because I ran out of patience.)

Both of them are recommended if you like HOGs, but that's pretty much par for the course with Artifex Mundi games. :)

You liked it? I'm still trying to figure out what people see in it. IMO it wasn't a good P&C game at all. Not because I didn't like the story - that's just a matter of taste - nor because of the graphics - I'm used to playing amateur AGS games - but because of the gameplay. I spent a lot of time clicking thorough long-winded dialogue that wasn't all that well written in my book and I thought the story-telling could have been much more elegant in this regard, conveyed the same information with less text and more interaction. The walking speed was painfully slow and there was quite a lot of walking to and fro in the snow part. Maybe fitting for a depressing story in a depressing setting, to express the coldness and loneliness or whatever, but it just was no fun to play. The puzzles were simplistic which I usually don't see as a problem if everything else is entertaining enough, but for me it just wasn't. So what did you like about it?

Finished The Longest Journey, the second game in a row I need to search for a savegame. But luckily I was succesfull, so I could enjoy the end of this good game with a lot of dialogs and bad aged 3D Graphics.

Ah right, thanks for reminding me I need to play that. Decided to ignore it for a while as I need a virtual machine to run it. :P

Me too, as well as a few other games that I need to play before being able to actually play some kickstarter games :) (Broken Sword 5, Tex Murphy...).

I liked the story, and I don't mind reading through the dialog. I thought the dialog was good too, except for Barney's, who was not a very convincing 5 year old. I was confused about some of the aspects though - why the hell was that Lucy so important, for example? Graphics were fine, though it seemed as if the character sprites were made for 4:3 resolution and not 16:10, so they looked almost superdeformed, especially compared to the normally proportioned character portraits. And yes, I thought the long walks in the snow were fitting for the atmosphere.

Ok, thanks for the reply! :)

Must be one of the games you either love or hate. Usually I don't feel as negative towards games that are generally regarded as good, that's why I'm so confused my opinion of this one is so different from what seems like the majority.

Heh, I feel almost exactly the same way as you do when it comes to TtM. I feel like I'm the only person that actively disliked that game.

Belladonna.

Belladonna is a short point & click game that reads a bit like a love letter to Frankenstein, and that's not a bad thing!

The puzzles are extremely simple, each consisting of finding an item, combining items or using items in conjunction with the environment in really obvious ways. There isn't a way to lose and all items are easy to find.

The writing is great albeit a bit predictable. The story is (mostly) told through scattered letters and journal entries, each one lengthy (without seeming padded) and well written (especially for something using Victorian era vocabulary). Like I said, it's like a love letter to Frankenstein, that's especially true of the story.

Graphically it looks great, if a bit bright, clean and overall too shiny in places. Not much else to say here.

The music all fits but Belladonna does use some really cheesetastic sound effects orchestral hits at times, but it goes with the overall theme.

All in all Belladonna is a great way to spend an hour or so, especially if you like Frankenstein.

I beat Ys: Origin again this time with the hidden character to get the real final boss and real official ending. Definitely a great prequel that tells the origins of key characters in Ys 1&2.

Would you recommend starting at 1+2? I would like to play them all (available on GOG, at least), and getting the bump combat out of the way before experiencing the rest of the series seems kinda like the way to go.

While the question is not directed at me i would say no, storywise you don't need to worry, they're all different from each other (except the protagonist and some other characters) and the reason that i said it's not worth it is because that what really shines on the Ys series is the amazing combat (and the music), the combat in 1&2 is just bland, you approach the enemies and it automatically attacks.