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.