Varkana

The key to this is setting and aesthetics. Most of the gameplay revolves around running errands, finding a cat, meeting your friend for lunch and so on, but you're doing it through sun-dappled vineyards and grand old libraries. It's (somewhat girly) high fantasy, which isn't really my genre, but it was a very pleasant space to inhabit nonetheless.

Plot-wise, the game ends just as the action begins, which is sort of an anticlimax; it feels like the intro to a much larger game. "More please" is hardly excoriating criticism, but as it stands the grand-scale political intrigue and the closing action scene feel like a distraction from what the game's good at.

There are a few pieces of art, which are effective as far as they go; there aren't really enough of them to contribute much to the game proper, though, so it's probably best to think of them as cover art.