This is an interesting mid-90s FPS curiosity but unfortunately, I think the issues with the game outweigh the good. I like manor environments and the manor is this game is pretty big and cozy to explore. The game’s jank is charming and– frankly– I played this for the jank and the jank is pretty manageable for the most part. The game has a weird idea of aiming your weapons alongside an old school idea of moving your character around.

I lost my patience during Chapter XVI, though, where you have to search a large dark dungeon for 16 brains. I dropped the game and watched the rest on YouTube. Disappointing but I made the right decision instead of playing the rest of the game and being bitter about it.

I first experienced this game by watching a stream of it years ago, and that’s probably the best way to check it out. A streamer streaming with people in chat making jokes about the FMV cutscenes. It’s a shame that it ended for me on a sour note but I’m glad to have this once under my fingers.

Realms of the Haunting is a lengthy FPS and point and click hybrid that will have you fighting enemies with ranged and melee weapons as your progress through the environments but will also pick up items and notes that can be looked at and used to advance to new areas or just to learn more about the plot. You can find hidden areas by interacting with the correct objects, such as hidden passages behind bookshelves or hidden objectives behind pictures. Realms of the Haunting's story is told through full motion video cutscenes and through voiced dialogue during gameplay for story moments and when examining objects in the environment, the voice acting is well done with a nice combination of serious and amusing. For some sections of the game you will have another character with you, not visible or helping you fight, but they will comment on objects and events with you. For the game's time the music, graphics, and sound are all excellent and give the game a great atmosphere, though the old CGI and green screen effects don't look very good. You will travel through increasing outlandish environments compared to the house that you begin in, which helps make the game more unique visually and was a good choice because due to the old graphics normal locations don't look very realistic.

The game has a terrible controls scheme that has you needing to use the mouse and buttons all over the keyboard, but there is a patch that will improve things. The motion bob when moving remains annoying. Enemies have poor AI that sometimes has them ignoring you and that has some of them unable to leave rooms, allowing you to stand outside while shooting them in some areas.

While Realms of the Haunting won't be as impressive now as it once was, it is still worth playing for an entertaining story and with the exception of a lot of mazes and backtracking the gameplay is enjoyable.