Hooked up my N64 a few weeks ago for the first time in over a decade. I've actually been pretty impressed with how well Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time have stood the test of time, even if they look a bit boxy. Playing Mario Party and Super Smash Bros. with my roomie was also quite fun. God damn does the N64 controller assault your hands, though. Mario Party is brutal for extended sessions, and even just playing Mario / Zelda for 2+ hours can start to wear on the thumb.
By far, the game that's been holding up the best is Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Calibur (and not just cuz it's easy on the hands~) The attention to detail in the 2D pixel art is fantastic (battles and cutscenes still look nice), and they're much slicker than the bulky polygons of all the early 3D games that dominated the system. The orchestral soundtrack is also pretty solid and does a good job of setting the tone / getting you pumped for battle.
pretty :3
The plot is really intricate, with a ton of characters that all have their own agendas. It deals heavily with the politics and mythology of Palatinus, a puppet state of the Holy Lodis Empire. With themes of revolution, idealism, classism, religion, imperialism, slavery, poverty... it actually gets pretty dark. You can pull up character bios and replay cutscenes if you ever need a refresher to keep up. The paths you take, decisions you make during the plot, and, most importantly, ways you go about capturing or liberating strongholds will affect how the world views you, in turn changing available areas, which characters will join your forces, and which of the multiple endings you'll get. That gives it a pretty nice replay value, and you can expect to sink about 35-50 hours into a playthrough.
it's the second mission and shit's real >.>
The real complexity is in the gameplay, though. It's an RTS / RPG hybrid. In each area, your battalion faces off with another, where the winning condition for both sides is taking the enemy base or killing the opposing leader. You're always taking the offensive here (though you might need to play D early on), with most towns (strongholds) under enemy control (and usually a neutral town or two somewhere). Your troops move along the field in real time, though you can pause the game to change commands, adjust formations, use items, etc. You don't have much direct control over battles (just changing general commands or retreating, and, later, a more specialized form of attack that can only be used rarely). Instead, unit formation dictates how often your characters attack, which enemies they can hit, what moves they'll use, and possible combos.
a pathetically weak warlock in "action"
Each unit has 5 (or less) characters arranged on a 3x3 grid. Classes like Knights and Beserkers fare better in the front row, while Clerics and Wizards are better off in the back. More powerful monsters like Dragons and Ogres limit formations and count as 2 characters in the unit. Unit formations can be exploited by attacking from behind or the sides, so you'll usually want to account for that as well. Killing the head of an enemy unit pretty much nullifies it, but units don't actually battle to the death; instead, characters attack however many times they can before a winner is declared based on overall damage dealt (with the loser being bounced backwards on the map). You'll always lose and get bounced back against the enemy boss unless you kill them, and they'll typically sit on their base gaining health as you make your way back for round 2. Later, you can build legions that arrange up to 5 units into different formations, though battles are still fought by the individual units (with some added assistance by weak soldiers that hold the legions together).
you can make a lot of units~
The RPG elements come from the characters that make up your battalion (of which there are a bunch). They gain experience for each battle, especially when an enemy character is killed, allowing them to level up and gain stat increases. They also grow chaotic or lawful in battle based on their opponents' alignment and the difference in levels (picking on lower-leveled units brings your alignment down [chaotic], while taking on stronger units brings it up [lawful]). Alignment and level affect which classes can be unlocked for each character, which in turn affect stat spreads (which can be further augmented by various items).
everyone's customizable ^.^
You'll want a range of alignments among your units, as overall unit alignment compared to town morale affects whether or not it's considered liberated or captured when you take it. Any captures, including any time enemies take your strongholds or either side takes neutral towns, will bring your popularity (an unseen stat) down, which affects available characters and endings. Liberating strongholds brings it up. So, while it's easy to plow through the game with just two units (alternating each campaign which one attacks and which one guards your base will quickly get both over-leveled), those units will both wind up super chaotic and you'll be pretty much guaranteed a bad ending due to all but the lowest morale strongholds being captured rather than liberated. You'll have to play slower, more careful games with more varied units if you want the better endings (there are 3 main ones possible based on your popularity, with additional scenes based on which characters you gained along the way.)
units moving along the field / a sweaty doll master. off-road terrain affects movement speed based on what's in your units
While that all adds a greater depth to the game, it's still not particularly difficult. I'd say it's a shame there's no multiplayer, but both sides being able to constantly pause an RTS would probably get old fast. Neither side being able to pause would put a greater emphasis on reflexes than strategy, which would just feel like a loss in its overall value (as it is, it's an RTS with TBS elements, which is a big part of the appeal to me.) That said, while the liberation system can still be gamed somewhat, it's actually easier to just take a more calculated, conservative approach to campaigns, which is cool (being more strategic is beneficial, yay!) Training outside of campaigns costs money, and trying to find wild monsters to level up against is a slow grind (though getting them to join your battalion is always cool). This helps balance things, as it's not as easy to put together a large, well-trained army, especially if you're saving up for better items.
I'm quickly remembering why this was my favorite game as a kid, and I'm glad to see there's an even greater mechanical depth behind-the-scenes (kinda like Pokemon). I'm guessing most peeps on this forum are fans of strategic RPGs, so I can say it's definitely worth checking out on the Wii Virtual Console (only $10 there). The N64 cartridges are pretty rare these days and kinda pricey, though :(
