Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

Boasting a charming plot and a lot of fun but pretty basic dungeons. Goemon was revolutionary for its time preceding OOT, but a lot of its archaic elements such as its camera control don't hold up too well. Still, the game has a lot of variety in gameplay (far more than OOT) and the attention to detail and solid controls make it a satisfying and enjoyable game to play through from beginning to end.

Badly balanced, the robot boss fight at the end of world 1 was some serious BS, and there were many enemy encounters before that which didn't give enough time to react. I have a feeling it will just get worse from here on.

On a gameplay level it's definitely a bit of a poor man's Zelda (you know the drill - overworld, secrets, towns/shops, dungeons, items, boss battles, etc, just with much less elaborately engineered dungeons than Ocarina of Time would give us a year later), but it makes up for any deficiencies there with enormous charm and Japanese flavor and attitude and a great sense of humor and outrageously catchy musical numbers. It's just a game with a great vibe to it.

Mystical Ninja is hilarious, over-the-top, endearing and totally bonkers. It's one of the best adventure games the N64 has to offer and offers some beautiful graphics and environments, freedom to explore and a serious and fair difficulty curve.