YMMV / Realms of the Haunting

• Anticlimax Boss: Belial in Chapter XVII: Father Of Lies.
• Ass Pull: There's no real reason for Adam to end up in an insane asylum at the end of the game, nor any foreshadowing tied into it — even the Framing Device was never established beforehand. It just sort of happens.
• Breather Level: Aqura. Unlike the other three realms, there are no enemies, no horrors, just a bunch of puzzles you have to do in order to get Eternity.
• Complete Monster: Belial is a man who serves Satan and seeks to destroy the world for him. To bring about the apocalypse, Belial would conduct various experiments on those branded in the Mausoleum, skinning their hands and torturing them so he could touch the Shrive. Many people would end up dying throughout the many years he has been doing this. When Adam Randall enters the house, he ends up coming across Belial who locks him up, attempting to kill him several times after Adam escapes.
• Disappointing Last Level: The game starts to decline around the middle of Chapter XVI: The Gate where you get to Sheol and you have to collect brains and it goes downhill from there.
• He's Just Hiding: Some fans insist this about Belial.
• One-Scene Wonder: Gnarl. A mysterious and presumably very powerful being, you meet him only once in what looks like ancient Egypt, wearing frayed robes that cover him completely... and he talks to Adam like a grumpy old man who has no patience for the foolishness of youngsters. This includes him waving a spiked metal mace in Adam's face like he was shooing at him with a cane. He also has one of the single most memorable lines in the entire game:
  Adam: Are you some kind of time traveller?
  Gnarl: Time is the traveller here. I am constant.
• That One Puzzle: The trials of Sheol, more commonly known as the marathon of remarkably contrived and far-fetched puzzles that occurs late in the game.
• What Happened to the Mouse? / Left Hanging / Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Quite a lot of plot points or even little things are simply dropped in the game, glossed over, and then totally unexplained at any point, even in the copious lore entries the game provides you with. The game is exceptionally good at raising questions about things that it never seeks to then answer.
  • You go to Ancient Egypt and then the Gnarl appears, and then he disappears... that's it. The Gnarl has no further impact on the game or its plot and is scarcely discussed again.
  • The purpose of Aelf's breastplate that's found in the Observatory is never given; it appears to have no impact at all on the gameplay and may even be entirely skippable - results from speedruns indicate that it's not even slightly crucial.
  • On multiple occasions some kind of "Pact" is mentioned. This "Pact", what it is, who agreed to it or how we broke it (or pleased it in one case) is never elaborated on at any point during the game.
  • We never find out what the fuck happened to Charles Randall's house. Nor do we ever find out why he has a viewing portal to the Tree of Life in his basement. Or a laboratory in his basement containing said key. Or a two-headed demon in a cage, also in his basement. Or why Rebecca calls a poster depicting the band Radiohead an example of "future sight". Or why there's a TV in the same room that's showing their movements.
  • The significance of the infamous Sheol brain maze is never explained or even hinted at, and is never discussed before it begins or after it ends. The Halls of Doppelgangis and Adam seeing his double, similarly, have no apparent impact on anything.

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