Ahead of it's time.
From the first moment you can clearly see what inspired Resident Evil's gameplay. It's extremley similar, right down to the 3d characters on static 2d backgrounds, enemies coming from the windows, the list goes on but I think it's too pretentious to compare this game to Resident Evil.
Basically, you have to chose between a woman or a man to play as, their stories are different but the game is really the same no matter which you pick. Anyway you go to the mansion to investigate the mysterious death of a man named Jeremey. The story is kind of hard to follow because it's mainly told throuhgout memos which you find laying around the mansion.
The game play takes getting used too, at first it's really hard to aim and manuver, but as you get used to it, it gets easier. You start out with a sword but it quickly breaks (but you can still attack with the handle, which I think is pretty cool), but later on you get a better sword and some guns to attack with.
Gameplay feels a little clunky, due to it's age but luckily there's not too much direct combat. This game sort of suffers from "How was I supposed to know that?" syndrome, like "HOw was I supposed to know you had to throw a statuette at the suit of armor to get the sword?" but it's still interesting to try and figure out, even though it kind of leads to a lot of back tracking and head scratching.
My two biggest gripes in this game are that it's easy to screw up the entire game. There's several "cursed" objects in the game, and if you tocuh them they spawn a one hit kill ghost , if you escape it will camp out in the area and kil lyou whenever you try and enter, it really sucks when ther'es a ghost in an area so you can't go where you need to go.
The second problem is the platforming, it's a matter of luck, guessing, and save + loading. Very annoying.
But other than that, it's a short interesting game. If you're interested in the origins of the survival horror genre, this is a must see.