Curses

This game is a puzzle galore. It is long. It is tough. It is great.
Starting from your mansion's attic, you simply have to find a Map of Paris, for your soon-to-be holiday trip. Though what this game does, is show you how a simple task can become incredibly arduous. You'll discover family memorabilia, curses, and travel time (and not only that). *Only* to find that blasted map. Nevertheless, don't let this banal task deceive you: Curses is full of atmosphere, and the stories you'll discover around your mansion - and around your ancestors - will totally capture you.

Again, this game is long. Both because it is big (very big, almost huge), than because the puzzles are so tough that you'll spend ages wondering how to solve some of the most difficult ones. But if you take notes (and you'd better - and you'll also want to draw an accurate map), you'll find that all the puzzles are quite logical, and this is extremely good for a puzzle game. The only drawback is that some of the logical deductions/connections you'll have to do are so hard that they're almost impossible, and maybe they might've been implemented better (but this doesn't mean they're badly implemented).
Al lot of the stuff you encounter is not considered (you might well find a table in a room description, and get a "you can't see such thing" message when examining it). But, for once, this is no drawback, because it allows you to concentrate on the important stuff.

On the bad side, sometimes Curses can be really frustrating. It is easy to get stuck (tough puzzles, remember?), and also to reach an unwinnable condition, because a lot of what you do is irreversible, and you might not be prepared. Though, if you pay attention and save often, you will catch the wrong actions soon enough.

Overall, if you are a puzzle lover, you HAVE to play this game. This will be a real challenge, and if you can complete it without any walkthrough, go out and buy yourself a prize: you're a genius (sadly, I was not, and had to recur to some help in a few of the most difficult situations).
If you don't like puzzles instead... well: go away ;-)

One last note, about a thing which is always given as expected, but which I'd like to point, for such a complex IF: this game must've taken many months of development, then more months of debugging, and IT'S FREE!!! A bow to Graham Nelson, and to all the makers of huge IFs out there.

I really enjoyed the game in the beginning. Sure, I got stuck almost immediately, but I pulled up a walkthrough to get a general idea of what I was supposed to do. I made my way through a large chunk of the game, while writing down important pieces information and hand-drawing maps. I was starting to feel good until I got stuck again. I then realized I'm messed something up ~15 save files ago. Never would have guessed it was a mistake.

Well, I went back and fixed my error, but when the same thing happened again I packed up all my notes and maps and moved onto another game. I didn't want to follow a walkthrough word-for-word, but it felt like that was the only way I was ever going to finish.

Perhaps I'm simply not experienced or patient enough, but this just isn't a good game for me.

Of course, this game is very well written, and there is a lot of findings and innovative ideas, even two imaginary languages have been created, making the gameplay quite unique. There are some humorous comments, there are parts which are very realistic while others are oniric (and sometimes absurd).
Nevertheless, the game greatly suffers from the fact that it is extremely difficult, requiring the help from a walkthrough, and absolutely unfair to the player, up to the point that the author seems to have forgotten that a game (or a novel, or whatever) must not be done for oneself but for others to enjoy. Let me sum up the weakpoints:

* too many puzzles are of the "guess-the-verb" type. Sometimes the verb is common, but the action is absurd. Some examples are (Spoiler - click to show)go port, say time, say yellow, turn noise, tighten the skull, push cat to, jump, wave branch, blow whistle, "hole,!go west", etc
* the command "look at" is poorly implemented ("you see nothing special about...") where it could have been used to give a small hint to the player and make the game a lot more enjoyable. This is also the case for other commands and objects, as explained in another review of this game on this website.
* the order in which you visit locations is vital. If you visit them in the wrong order you can get stuck without knowing it! The problem is that you are not allowed to teleport twice to the same location using the device (Spoiler - click to show)the projector using cards, so you are not free to explore, and guess the solution by some trial-and-error. And there are no clue of what is the right order, or the clues are very obscure.
* some objects are absolutely mandatory to finish the game, but these objects must also be magically converted at some point to other objects(Spoiler - click to show)(rods). The problem is that they can not be converted back, so you get stuck long after having wrongly converted the object, thinking doing right, with the only option to restore a previous saved game.

In conclusion, unless you like twisted and cruel games, and don't bother saving/restoring a hundred times and restarting from the beginning several times, don't play this game!