I went into this expecting some real Sierra Adventure Game bullshit, but as it turns out, this is a surprisingly benevolent one of those: unlike many of its contemporaries, Phantasmagoria features a hint system you can use at any time without penalty. Perhaps real adventure game sickos would hold this against the game, but to any normal person this is a much more enjoyable experience than getting immediately frustrated and sticking to a guide for the rest of the playthrough. I briefly glanced at a guide at the very end of the game, but otherwise found it to be quite breezy and fun.

As far as the story and all that, well, it's as cheesy as you'd expect from FMV games of the era, but it's got its moments. Getting deeper and deeper into the mysteries your weird ass house contains is sincerely intriguing, and the subplot of domestic abuse is handled with surprising gravitas. I do, however, find it to be undermined by the supernatural element that supposedly caused it: I do not believe the demons of Phantasmagoria are analogous to, say, BOB's stand-in for the evil brought into the world by mankind—or even that it's making all that salient a point on a controlling relationship at all. Rather, it just kinda seems that your Good Husband went Bad because some ghosts got his ass or whatever. I don't know. Feels like some great lost potential, even if it gets some things right along the way.

Nevertheless, it's a worthy experience for sure, and engaging to a degree I never expected when I went into it.