Before playing RTFM! (Read The Frakking Manual)

There are no hand-holding tutorials in this game, it expected you to read the manual before diving in or referencing it when you didn't know how to preform an action.

Manual is in Steam Folder so read it before you play.

Don't let my Steam time fool you, I actually bought this game when it was new (And on 4 CD's if I remember correctly, I think I still have them somewhere). I have played this game from beginning to end multiple times and for its time, it was an amazing game. It hasn't aged the best and could do with a remastering that's for sure, but it still has all the classic difficulty and random scary moments (which now seem a bit tame) which gave it the charm I fell in love with.

Pros:

- Excellent story
- Wonderful Puzzles
- The mix of Point & Click and FPS is a refreshing change
- Challenging without being impossible
- Does not hold your hand (you can spend hours trying to figure out a simple puzzle because you missed an item earlier in the level, which is wonderful!)
- Those FMV sequences are wonderful despite the aged quality

Cons:

- Controls cannot be remapped in game
- Mouse is super wonky (it was designed around ball mice, so optical mice go nuts on it, lower your dpi if possible)
- The resolution is pretty bad
- Sound levels aren't normalized and can sometimes be a bit much on headphones.

I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a classic game with some excellent story and a very unique feel. I will probably finish this game again. However, one thing everyone should do is remap their keys (you'll have to find the .ini for it), as the default keyset is pretty bad (though old school players will fall into it pretty quick). For a game that's almost two decades old, it hasn't lost its charm, even if the graphics are dated.

From 1996, a notable experiment mixing fps, graphical adventure and survival horror elements.

Pros:

- beautiful environments
- evocative atmosphere
- live actors videos are AMAZING lol
- general game experience is ok and funny

Cons:
- sometimes repetitive
- difficult controls
- bots are graphically limited and way too much stupid (i.e.: if you exit a room they don't follow you and start to move around randomly lol)
- a couple of absurd enigmas and pixel hunting

...superPro: the game is old, with very old mechanics... but in the end it aged well like good wine, and it can give a pleasant experience if you want to remember retrogaming sensations.

I had it as a gift, so i recommend it, expecially with a good sale.
7/10

This game hasn't aged badly at all. I played it for the first time ever in 2015, and it was a great experience. Having said that, there are a couple of things you need to bear in mind:

1. No tutorial. Look up the manual onine and give it a read so you know how to play (it's important, trust me).
2. No autosaves. Save often, and use multiple save slots in case you screw up badly.
3. The controls are weird. This game's from that era where developers were still figuring out optimal controls, and these are NOT optimal. You get used to them after a couple of hours though, by which point they feel fine.

If you can get past that, and the dated graphics, this is a very enjoyable game. The story is interesting. The gameplay is solid. The puzzles make sense. The acting is... not terrible, certainly better than a lot of other live action FMV games. It's also worth noting that, even though the graphics are dated, they're well designed and in my opinion, quite nice. The blend of point-and-click and FPS action also works really well.

If you're looking for a retro PC gaming experience, you can't go wrong.

No game truly tackles the underlying dilemmas of the human psyche quite like this experimental masterpiece. You, Adam Randal, must traverse the horrors of the mansion in addition to the many Realms (of the Haunting). This game helped me through some tough times, from the death of my child to the eventual collapse of my wife from leukemia.

“Realms of the Haunting” is a strange synthesis of three major early 1990s gaming trends: adventure games, full motion video, and old school first person shooters. But while RotH seamlessly combines all three elements into a single package, it also arguably sounded their death knell in the process. Released in late 1996, it was in direct competition with “Quake,” “Tomb Raider,” and, several months later, “Dark Forces 2,” three milestone games which set the trend for gaming in the late 1990s and left RotH’s dated looking, Doom style, 2D engine in the dust. Likewise, the adventure genre was also on the wane, with just “Grim Fandango,” “Gabriel Knight 3,” and "The Longest Journey" to look forward to before going mostly dormant for nearly a decade. By the end of 1997, the short lived full motion video craze would be eclipsed by the advent of dedicated 3D graphics cards, and mammoth 8 disc, FMV epics like “Phantasmagoria,” “Gabriel Knight 2” and “Under a Killing Moon” would be relegated to historical oddities.

Given this, it’s no wonder that RotH flopped on release. It was conceived as the hottest game of 1995, but as a testament to just how quickly technology and gaming trends were moving in the 1990s, by the time it was released just under 2 years later, time had already passed it by.

Which is a shame, as this very well could have been the best game of 1995 had it been release just a year earlier. Despite the limitations of its engine, in its design the game is arguably a missing link between “Doom” and “Thief.” The game world is highly interactable, with lots of objects to click and use. Levels are also sprawling, labyrinthine, and nearly open world. They rarely close off once you finish them, so if you really wanted to you could walk from one end of the game world to the other. Plus, barring a few tedious, late game, mazes and switch throwing, the puzzles are mostly pretty fun and reminiscent of some of “Thief’s” best.

The best part, however, is the plot, which is a completely silly hodge-podge of b-horror films, 90s comic book clichés (there are undertones of both Garth Ennis’ “Preacher” and Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman”), and even, in the game’s dimension hoping with a female sidekick, shades of “Dr Who.” Of course, comparing RotH to any of these sources is giving it way too much credit. Its FMV sequences are often leaden and stretch on way too long, suffering from the bad, soap opera, editing technique where the video cuts to super long reaction shots of characters looking pensive after every single thing anyone says. Plus, things get nonsensical fast, and about half way through the game, the FMV sequences mostly just focus on people appearing to tell you what absurd, magical artifact you have to track down next, before disappearing. But, honestly, bad acting, z-grade special effects, and nonsensical plots are the main reason for playing 90s FMV games….so I mean none of this as a criticism.

Unfortunately, the game does show its age in some less enjoyable ways. Combat sucks, enemies tend to have way too many hit points, and strafe is locked to the “.” and “,” keys, which makes it unnecessarily difficult at times. Likewise, in the grand tradition of old-school adventure games, many puzzles come down to pixel hunts, a fact which is made all the more frustrating by the fact that you have to search pixels both above and below you, rather than just on a flat 2D plane.

That said, RotH is such a bizarre genre mash-up that could never have been made at any other point in gaming history, that I couldn’t help but find it charming, despite its flaws. This is exactly the game I dreamt of making as a kid back in 1995, when “Doom” and Sierra adventure games were my main obsessions. And ultimately its a facinating look back at an entirely unique species in the evolution of FPSs, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the fact that many of its unique genetic mutations have since been selected out of the gaming population.

Velmi dobrá hra

I played Realms of the Haunting when it was first released in 1996. At the time, it was one of the best example of fusion gameplay and it is still a great game. It also included inventory puzzles that make the environment more interactive that most shooters of time.

It’s good enough that I bought it again on steam, even after buying on GOG just so I could tell everyone here about it! (Don’t be fooled by the low playing time. Steam requires a certain amount of ingame time to write a review so I installed it. It may say 11 minutes, but I actually played the entire game 17 years ago)

It is definitely a piece of its time and if you require” ultra super high funtime” graphics to enjoy a game, you should give it a pass. It has FMV sequences, a relic of another time certainly, but my memory is that they were not intrusive and actually pretty well done at a time when most developers grabbed the receptionist and stuck her in the game so they didn’t have to hire an actual actor.

The story, and there actually is one, centers around the death of your father and your inheritance, a house. The house has portals to multiple dimensions and what seems to be a straight up good vs. evil becomes more complicated as the game progresses.

The weapons are varied from a colt (which you don’t want to have to reload in combat) to a sword. The shotgun has to be seen to believed. Unlike most shooters of the day, it’s not a straight escalation of damage from near useless to BFG2000. Instead damage varies depending on the target. Some do more damage against some foes than they do against others. Strategy is more important than simply blasting everything that moves. Although you will do some serious shooting throughout.

This is a great one and you should play it all the way through. A really superb game from the 1st golden age of PC gaming.

By accident I felt on the review on the internet after having watched the steam store page about this game.
The review said that purists of point and click and fps at the time criticized the mix they tried in Realms of the Haunting.
But with Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, Realms of the Haunting was considered as one of the most vast game of its time!


But it's a real gem. I've played for few minutes and I really enjoyed this game.


Videos are very nice if you notice the quality of FMV (Full Motion Video). There is nearly no difference between the actors and the game. The music doesn't annoy. The graphics are correct. Environments are nice (apparently you can access different dimensions which radically changes the atmosphere), I only regret the lack of detail of monsters. Story is interesting and the interactions with the game are numerous because this is a point & click (your character has always something to say about anything he encounters... like in a real point & click).

Controls: thanks to Arucard who gave us the hint on the Steam forum, there is a list of all the keys of the game and a way to change theses. Be ware there are some game tips spoilers at the end: http://www.gog.com/forum/realms_of_the_haunting/tips_for_beginners/page1

Controls were the only bad aspect of the game before I’ve found this link!


Actually I’m really happy to have found this game.
Because it didn't receive the success it deserved... and it's time to change that! ^^

Bonuses:

A better review than mine: http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=5987&tab=review

And some info: Gremlin created on Nintendo 64 the game "Body Harvest". Released before GTA III and considered as a true GTA like. Quite original (you travel in 4 different times) and one of the most underrated game of the history.
Realms of the Haunting even surprises you at the downloading, its file weights 1.4 go. For its time (1996) it was amazing. Another clue of the huge amount of content this game has.

One of the reasons I like revisiting games from the 80s and 90s is because there was so much diversity to the experiences being offered. Nowadays, the vast indie gaming scene is left to provide titles that aren’t battle royales and open-world collectathons, but in the earlier days of gaming, even prominent developers were experimenting with the boundaries of the medium. That gave us a healthy crop of full-motion video games in the mid-90s, games that fill me with a comforting nostalgia for the days of developers in ill-fitting costumes emoting in front of chunky pre-rendered backgrounds. Realms of the Haunting hails from such a place, marrying FMV drama to an unexpected mix of FPS action and point-and-click puzzling. If it sounds awkward, that’s because it is, but it also manages to be so dang charming that you can’t help but love its efforts.

Adam Randall has a lot going on in his life right now. His estranged priest father just passed away in a remote British manor, a creepy visitor entrusted him with a box of broken seals, and he keeps dreaming of demons alongside a rather lovely lady. All these ominous portends have led him to the house where his father expired, and where he immediately finds himself sealed inside. It quickly becomes clear that something greater is happening here, with ravenous beasts stalking the halls and portals to fantastic worlds dotted all around. The spirits of the manor are unquiet, your father included, and together they have a tale to tell that will determine the fate of all humanity.

I could go into more detail on the story, because there’s a lot to unpack there, but it’s much more fun to see how this epic sprawls out from the humble haunted house beginnings. The story winds through mythology, history, religion, and its own unique cosmology to spin something that’s honestly a little too ambitious for the scope available. This is a pretty long game, clocking in between 12-15 hours for your first playthrough, and much of the story is found in whole volumes of supplementary reading pulled off of library shelves along the way. As much fun as the FMV sequences are, with some legitimately great performances from some of the actors, they’re not really paced to fill in the story as much as they are there to punctuate the more notable moments.

“A little too ambitious” is probably the best way to describe the game as a whole, especially once you start drilling down on the gameplay. Realms of the Haunting is equal parts first-person shooter and adventure game puzzler, all playing out across a dizzying network of connected, wide-open levels. The manor serves as something of a hub for journeys into catacombs, caverns, and stranger places still. It’s not exactly a small manor, either, and while the scope of the maps is impressive, they can be very confusing to navigate given the now-antiquated graphics and a distinct lack of detail many of the areas have. The worst offenders are easily the mazes, of which there are several, and which all tend to use the same repeating texture for every wall, floor, and ceiling. Fortunately, there are some interesting puzzles to balance out the confused wanderings, and only a few places where you might get hung up figuring out what to do next. Again, for a game of this scope, that’s not bad at all.

The other half of the equation is the first-person shooting, and it’s…well, it exists. Realms is hampered by an extremely outdated keyboard/mouse layout that can be alleviated by editing the game files, but definitely isn’t ideal for shootouts. Your weapons actually follow your on-screen cursor during combat, which means you’re not going to be guiding your view with the mouse and will have to click on foes to fire at them. The arsenal is an eclectic one, starting with a familiar handgun and shotgun and then progressing into a selection of powerful magical devices. These are nice and impactful, but require a long time to recharge, leading to most fights being long strings of cycling through your inventory as weapons power back up. Foes themselves have unique looks but mostly wander around aimlessly and take potshots at you, or try to charge you only to end up stuck in a doorway.

Definitely don’t come for the combat, is what I’m saying here, but do come for the ambitious story and charming puzzling. The developers of Realms of the Haunting tried to cram an audacious amount of content into an engine that doesn’t seem particularly suited to it, and mostly pulled it off. You’re sure to notice some strange pacing and spots where content was clearly cut, but don’t let that distract from the achievements this game managed. I know this isn’t the strongest recommendation in the world, and it shouldn’t be. Realms of the Haunting is a fascinating relic, a cult classic with a lot of heart, but it asks a lot of a modern player to see its sprawling tale to the end. I think it’s definitely worth it, and if you hold any love for strange adventures and FMV, you’ll probably agree.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

Bought this game just to review it. I still have the multi-CD box from back then!

It's one of my fondest memories of gaming as a kid if not the most. The game was and still is cheezy. Controls and graphics have obviously aged but still, this game offers a unique athmosphere and an interesting story with a nice twist and is still pleasant to go through.

I thought I wouldn't play it not to ruin my memories but I had to give it a try at some point and I ended up getting caught again. Still fun to play, even though with the experience, the gameplay is much easy and straightforward. I'm not getting stuck going in circles this time around. The cheezy videos still bring a smile on my face and only the Duke could do that after so long.

To be honest, it could (should?) be cheaper but buy it if you want to know what a good 20-smth motion video game of that time plays like. Then if you like it, go for The X-Files game (it's a overdone mega monster but extremely good albeit more click and play). Maybe they'll decide to have a remake of this game, in these times of crowdfunding and unity engine... why not? Solid 11/10.