Highest High and Lowest Low: Nintendo 64

After Nintendo's two biggest competitors outfitted their fifth-generation consoles with CD drives and Sony enticed many big-name companies to develop games for them, Nintendo made the controversial decision to stick with cartridges for the Nintendo 64.  They also opted for 64-bit design architecture, which many developers of the time were not familiar with; the end result was a system that was notoriously difficult to develop games for and had a serious lack of third party support.  Which also meant it had very few RPGs, as they are among the most difficult and time-consuming game genres to develop.  Still, they did manage to get a few in there, and while they didn't have as many prominent ones as the PlayStation (or even arguably the Saturn), there were a few that are quite high in quality.  And of course a few that aren't.

Best: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Nintendo, 2000)

It may be a controversial pick, but Majora's Mask is easily the better of the two Zelda games on the N64 in my book, as well as one of my favorites in the entire series.   Ocarina of Time gets credit for being the first to make the leap to 3D, but also felt constrained by the format rather than taking full advantage of it - the drab, empty overworld, the really lackluster sidequests and many of the items and dungeons are seemingly built around the limitations of early 3D rather than playing to its strengths.  Well, with the release of a 4 MB RAM expansion, Majora's Mask proved that the franchise could work just as well in 3D as it could in 2D.  The gameplay is now vastly expanded with Link having a total of four forms to explore the world in, some amazingly creative new dungeon puzzles and gimmicks (flip the entire dungeon upside-down!) and a creative setup where you continually replay the same three days, with each and every character operating on a timed schedule and allowing you to complete numerous side-objectives as long as you can find and complete them in time.  It even takes the darker depiction of Hyrule seen in OOT to new heights, with a downright bizarre world to explore and some truly nightmarish, surreal imagery as the world comes closer and closer to its end.  It's a game whose mechanics definitely take some getting used to, but it's very fun, unique and rewarding once you do.

Worst: Quest 64 (Imagineer, 1998)

Pretty much a no-brainer choice here; everybody knows Quest 64 sucks.  It met with a lot of hype before its launch for being the first turn-based RPG on the platform, especially in light of how huge the genre had gotten on the PlayStation (and to a lesser extent, the Saturn).  But when it launched, it quickly showed that it had little to offer any discerning genre fan.  From the threadbare story to the bland protagonist, the boring use of elemental spell effects (throw bigger and bigger rocks or waterspouts or icicles for fireballs, oo!) and lacking basic features like, y'know, shops and upgradable equipment, it was just an underwhelming title all-around.  The bland combat and irritating encounter rate didn't help much either - while it seems to have a bit of a tactical bent at a glance with its gridless movement and varying attack ranges for spells, it mostly just comes down to "spam rocks and heal with water spells until everything dies".  Quest 64 is at least relatively bug-free and has some pretty impressive graphics for the platform, with colorful environments, detailed textures and surprisingly little of the infamous "N64 fog", but doing the bare minimum technically isn't good enough, especially in an era of unprecedented innovation for the genre.

Runner-Up: Hybrid Heaven (Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka, 1999)

Created by Konami's Osaka branch as a rival game to Metal Gear Solid (yes, really), Hybrid Heaven is a relatively unique blend of RPG elements and action-platforming reminiscent of Tomb Raider.  Between fights you crawl under doors, climb up onto ledges, dodge and destroy traps and solve switch puzzles.  In battle, things shift to something like Final Fantasy's Active Time Battles crossed with a fighting game - a bar steadily fills, and once it does you can unleash punches, kicks, throws, armbars, et cetera.  Enemy moves are countered in similar fashion, giving you the option to try to dodge, counter or step back to avoid them entirely.  It sounds like a deep system, but it's honestly not as much as you'd hope - everything is determined by dice rolls, the result of which are entirely random; there doesn't seem to be any hard counter to any given type of attack or any real benefit to using a lot of your moves.  In fact, you can mostly just stick with basic jabs and kicks and go for head-strikes, which do a lot of damage and frequently knock down your opponent, allowing for several free followup hits.  Enemies also tend to take very large leaps in power without warning, which can easily send you to the game over screen and force you to spend a substantial amount of time grinding weaker enemies to power up.  The story is an interesting one involving aliens, clones and hybrid fighting machines, but the overall monotonous design and surprisingly slow combat really drags it down.

Aidyn Chronicles: the First Mage

Aidyn Chronicles was one of the last games released for the Nintendo 64 as well as one of its very small library of RPGs.  It came out only a month after Paper Mario, though, which probably did it no favors whatsoever.  Neither did its presentation, honestly - Aidyn Chronicles is quite possibly the ugliest game on the platform, and if you're familiar with the N64's library, you know that's no small feat.  For its part, the gameplay is at least relatively ambitious - an open world RPG with a day-night cycle and with an away of skills reminiscent of computer RPGs like lockpicking, stealth, disarming traps, reading books, identifying items and even armor crafting and alchemy.  All of these can be trained up after battle by spending experience points, which operates separately from your experience level (which mostly determines what enemies will appear as you wander around).  Combat operates like a more advanced version of Quest 64 with the same movement-range mechanic, though you do get party members and more options to utilize.  Oh, and there's permadeath, too, so if someone dies they're gone for good.  There's quite a bit going on mechanically with Aidyn Chronicles, but it's just not a lot of fun to play - the world is rather large but pretty bland, combat is frequent and rarely has much variety, and the overall story is pretty generic, with a lot of drawn-out dialog scenes and not much in the way of memorable characterization.  Aidyn Chronicles might be worth a look as a relatively unique take on role playing games for the platform (and in some ways, a much more developed Quest 64), but there's not much reason to spend a lot of time with it; especially since Morrowind - a much better open world skill-driven RPG in virtually every respect - came out the following year.

Developer: H2O Entertainment

Publisher: THQ

Released: 2001

Platforms: Nintendo 64

Highest High and Lowest Low: Sony PlayStation (1)

The PlayStation was Sony's first entry into the home console market; originally working with Nintendo to develop a CD-based addon for the Super Nintendo, those plans ultimately got dropped after the Sega CD proved to be a flop.  Sony wasn't deterred, though, and decided to release their own console instead, getting numerous high profile companies on board with less restrictive contracts and the higher storage capacity and video/audio streaming capabilities of CDs.  So mainstay companies like Squaresoft, Capcom and Konami largely jumped ship while Nintendo moved their focus more and more to lower-stakes handheld games.  Sega for their part was mostly busy shooting themselves in the foot over and over again and would soon withdraw from the console market entirely, but that's a tale for another time.

Best: Suikoden II (Konami, 1999)

The original Suikoden was a bit of a sleeper hit in the early days of the system, retaining a 2D style when Sony was pushing everyone to utilize 3D graphics and providing some solid turn-based RPG action.  It did have a few unique twists, though, most prominently being its large cast - there were ove 100 characters to recruit in total who could build up your castle, aid you in large scale war battles or even fight alongside you in the field.  Suikoden II got a limited printing run years later and was enormously overlooked as a result, which is a definite shame as I personally think it's the best RPG on the system - not a small claim to make considering it was competing with incredible titles like Final Fantasy, Grandia, Lunar and Symphony of the Night.  Taking the formula of the first game to perfection, it has some downright gorgeous 2D animation, greatly expanded gameplay in every respect and a wonderful, very personal storyline that ties together brilliantly throughout.  It's also one of the earliest console games I can think of that took advantage of being able to transfer data between games - doing so with a complete save file of S1 allows you to unlock that game's protagonist as a powerful playable character in 2.  Now that's awesome.

Worst: Ancient Roman: Power of Dark Side (Nihon System, 1998)

Final Fantasy VII was very much the big game of the era and arguably the game that moved JRPGs into the mainstream, so it was inevitable that people would try to copy its success.  A lot of games and genres suddenly had plots with prominent Abrahamic elements and apocalyptic stakes and similar visual styles and dark science fiction elements, some of which were quite good and other which were... very much not.  Ancient Roman, despite its name and prominently featuring a map of Earth on its title screen, does not take place in ancient Rome or even on Earth, but rather on a distant world of sorcery and magic devastated by a plague that turns people into monsters.  Sounds like a passable RPG plot, and it even borrows the visual style of FF7 with its prerendered backdrops and low-polygon characters, but the overall design in every other respect is amazingly awful.  The game is poorly optimized with long load times, a very low framerate in combat and having to constantly pause to load in sound effects (which don't stay loaded - the same pause still occurs every time a sound plays).  The balance is completely out of whack, with weapons that inflict debilitating status effects to enemies and insanely overpowered spells that resolve most battles (even bosses) in moments.  Dungeons rarely last more than one or two still screens, and the dialog and writing is uniformly and hilariously awful.  The soundtrack is bad enough to become meme material in Japan, with every track being out of tune and generally awful-sounding owing to more shoddy coding.  Basically, it tries to be another Final Fantasy VII clone, but with absolutely no clue as to what made that game so fun, fluid and memorable and no competent programmers on staff.  I never thought I'd see a PS1 RPG that makes Shadow Madness look masterfully made by comparison, but here we are.

Runner-Up: Beyond the Beyond (Camelot, 1996)

Camelot (formerly Sonic! Software Planning) are mostly known these days for Mario-themed sports titles, but they did make a couple of cult classics in their earlier years - the Shining Force and Golden Sun franchises both retain a dedicated fanbase among long-time gamers.  Their style and presentation is definitely distinct, but not all of the games with it are winners.  This is perhaps best illustrated with their first PS1 release, Beyond the Beyond - a pretty bland Dragon Quest knockoff with slow pacing, a formulaic storyline, a generally obnoxious encounter rate and gameplay that tries to innovate on turn-based design but does so in probably the most annoying way possible.  The "Active Playing System" is this game's combat gimmick, working a bit like Mario RPG's minigame-oriented mechanics but much worse - basically you watch for a small diamond to appear above a character's head, then hold a direction and mash a button to trigger blocks, criticals, double-hits or counterattacks.  It's poorly explained even in the manual and just ignoring it outright isn't an option either - enemies will absolutely whip you if you don't seize every opportunity to activate an APS.  There are also numerous bugs that can make the game unwinnable, so that's fun to deal with.  Not even Camelot's charming spritework, animations and character designs can save this one from being an underwhelming, overly annoying experience.