Things to Watch Out For

[Mike]

#7905

Realms of the Haunting is a really interesting game but when the adventure game club played through the game, there were a few things that seemed to give people trouble. I wrote an intro guide for the game a while back on my blog but the important things to look out for are:

Save Often
You will want to save regularly. Encounters with enemies or traps can go poorly and may require reloading, especially since there are points in the game where the game isn’t generous with health pickups. As far as I know, there are no softlocks in this game that require you to restart the game because of something you missed or action you took.

Don’t Save on Moving Platforms
There are a couple parts in this game where you have to do some platform jumping. Due to the clunky controls, people will be tempted to save each time they make a successful jump. Do not do this! There is a bug in the game that will cause you to fall to your doom as soon as you load a save on a moving platform. Just save before and after each platform jumping segment and use multiple save files.

Conserve Ammo
Even though there’s technically no softlocks, the game can feel like it’s impossible to complete if you’re not careful about your ammo and health. Early on in the game, try to use your melee weapons when possible so you’ll have lots of ammo. Also consider redoing an enemy encounter if you lose a lot of health.

There’s another thread here that mentions that you can remap keys. This is also important. I think you can also switch weapons with the number keys. From reading this article at The Genesis Temple, it sounds like there’s also a patch to switch the game to WASD + mouse controls

https://genesistemple.com/realms-of-the-haunting-first-person-graphical-adventure-with-bonus-fmvs

[Wesbat]

#7909

Those are great tips, thanks Mike.

I save a new slot at the start of each chapter, and use f9/f10 to quick save/load in between action. Quick save uses slot 0, which is not listed in the menu, so it won’t overwrite your last slot-save.

[Pix]

#7924

My main tip for this is to make full use of all the charging weapons. You’ll build up quite a number of these weapons that need a time to recharge after each shot but they continue to charge while in the inventory so conserving ammo is often about rotating between all these weapons. The number keys swap weapons based on what inventory slot they are in from what I recall.

If you are on original hardware and having to set the game up yourself, note that it’s playable in 640×480 resolution but the game does a good job of hiding this option. From what I recall, you have to actually start a game then cycle through modes with the F6 key. There is a also making of video hidden in the main menu.

There are a ton of mazes in the game. It does give you maps but not in the most usable way, I’ve always just turned in one direction every time and it gets me through.

ROTH defaults to automatically selecting the inventory items you need, effectively autosolving puzzles by clicking on them twice. If you don’t want this, you have to switch it off with with F3.

[Tijn]

#7931

Man, I wish this game had more health potions.

[Pix]

#7932

I don’t remember health being a massive problem in this game but I was probably being a lot more careful in the combat. I played through this a whole bunch back in the 90’s, it was a bit of a favourite of mine at the time. I can’t remember what it was like the first playthrough and may have had the same trouble for all I know. You need the potions more later on anyway when you run into enemies that can hit you from range. I’d definitely play it carefully from here and try to build up a stock of them if I was you. The enemies are all really dumb and will just chase you around Serious Sam style so you can usually keep them at a distance and pick them off.

As mentioned by websat, there is a quicksave you weren’t using yesterday which may help.

[Tijn]

#7970

I played it again on stream tonight and found a lot more health potions than I did on my first run. I think I overlooked a fair bit of them, because they’re easy to miss really.

I’ve also got the shotgun now. I’ve made it to chapter 5. Things are looking up really.

Also I can’t believe how quickly this game gets utterly weird. I was expecting some bizarreness for sure, but the pace at which it’s thrown at the player is really something.

[Dreamkid]

#7978

I just finished the game. I hope no one had to put up with the lag I experienced at a few parts — the final part was almost unplayable for me D: (played GOG version on a macbook).

Also, I missed something that ultimately caused me to skip chapter 9, which I managed to trigger after starting the last chapter.