The king took him in at a very young age, but Alaron is now old enough to realize that he was adopted deciding to set out on a quest to track his own heritage. Along his journey, Alaron has had the fortune of meeting up with a party of others that are looking for adventure. You can choose to play as any of 13 characters. A more or less traditional role-playing game, AIDYN CHRONICLES: The First Mage is a brilliant mix of interaction, fighting, and extensive exploration. All of the battles take place in an innovative turn-based system, challenging you to handle both combat and real-time strategy. All of the characters and environments in the game are rendered in full 3D, and the characters have complete freedom in their ranges of movement. There's more territory in the game's expanses than you'll ever get a chance to see, and the sheer diversity of the character types is really impressive. If you like role-playing games, you'll want to check out this installment of Aidyn Chronicles.
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A lot of RPG devs started to developing for the PlayStation 1 after the Nintendo 64 screwed over the RPG genre via being super limiting. So many in fact that there are only 3 true RPGs released worldwide on the Nintendo 64. Those being Quest 64, Paper Mario 64, and this game Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage. This game released so late in the consoles life that it was destined to be the final RPG even if that was more common in the platform. Could this game prove the console could have an above average RPG or was the console destined to be doomed in this regard?
The graphics work but the art style doesn't have any of the charm that Quest 64 or Paper Mario 64 had. It actively was uninteresting to look at.
Non-combat gameplay like moving around massive maps and getting lost easily is unpleasant. Combat also has weird quirks like only being able to load a certain amount of enemies t a time but sometimes more spawn after you kill a few. I don't really have much positive to stay here since it's got the most part subpar. I guess the one pro I can say this has is it actually has party members until Quest 64 and they're more fleshed out gameplay wise than Paper Mario 64.
The other RPGs on the console were more fun to look at and play for me so the ultimate redeeming quality could've been the story but unfortunately that too is weak until near the end when there's mild twists I guess. I genuinely didn't feel attached to any character, the setting, or narrative at all.
In the end this game to me represents the lost potential that Nintendo chose to accept when creating the 64. They were the bosses of RPGs back on NES and SNES with so much third party support but their decision to create the 64 the way it is ultimately lead to a lackluster line up for the genre. While the PS1 thrived with RPGs, the Nintendo 64 was left in the dust with a miniscule amount that are average at best if not outright underwhelming.
The graphics work but the art style doesn't have any of the charm that Quest 64 or Paper Mario 64 had. It actively was uninteresting to look at.
Non-combat gameplay like moving around massive maps and getting lost easily is unpleasant. Combat also has weird quirks like only being able to load a certain amount of enemies t a time but sometimes more spawn after you kill a few. I don't really have much positive to stay here since it's got the most part subpar. I guess the one pro I can say this has is it actually has party members until Quest 64 and they're more fleshed out gameplay wise than Paper Mario 64.
The other RPGs on the console were more fun to look at and play for me so the ultimate redeeming quality could've been the story but unfortunately that too is weak until near the end when there's mild twists I guess. I genuinely didn't feel attached to any character, the setting, or narrative at all.
In the end this game to me represents the lost potential that Nintendo chose to accept when creating the 64. They were the bosses of RPGs back on NES and SNES with so much third party support but their decision to create the 64 the way it is ultimately lead to a lackluster line up for the genre. While the PS1 thrived with RPGs, the Nintendo 64 was left in the dust with a miniscule amount that are average at best if not outright underwhelming.
Aidyn Chronicles is a game I struggled to love for a long time, and a game that's story is more interesting on paper than in practice. H2O, the game's devs previous game was Tetrisphere, a game that I enjoyed but admittedly ran very poorly. Their next title was one of the last games released for the N64. It's not only one of four dedicated RPGs released in the west, it veers closer to a CRPG than Quest 64, Paper Mario or Ogre Battle. The only console comparison I could make would be the Lunatic Dawn ports to the PlayStation, or other PlayStation/Saturn ports of pre-existing CRPGs.
It attempted to shove a full Bioware/Black Isle RPG into a N64 cart, with character stats/classes, party building and a wide cast of NPCs. In terms of combat, these aren't elements that are executed poorly. Different classes and builds have a very real impact on how well fights play out. The gear that you pick up doesn't just translate into pure stat advantages, it changes the way that your characters play. The world feels "big" in the sense that there's a lot of ground to cover, and there's a decently staffed roster of NPCs. It's an experience that's unlike most console RPGs released up until that point, and one that's so poorly executed that it manages to cancel out any goodwill it might have earned swinging for the bleachers.
The game isn't incomplete in the same way that Quest 64 is incomplete, but the game is a buggy and optimized slog. Clipping through floors/staircases is a common occurrence. The nonlinear or more open ended elements of the game might encourage sequence breaking. These usually lead to save-ending bugs or, if you're lucky, just a crash. Multiple spells either flat out don't work, or have the opposite intended effect (like the stamina "buff" reducing your overall stamina).
In terms of performance, the game runs worse than Tetrisphere's laggiest points, with regular frame dips when the game has to render more than five feet in front of the main character. I'm not sure why the game runs this poorly either, this is one of the ugliest games on the Nintendo 64. The art direction isn't doing any favors, but the game's blurry, compressed look stood out at the time of its release, and only got worse with age. I was thinking how to describe the music as well, and I couldn't come up with anything other than "it fucking blows." It's not bad in a bland way, it's bad in a very lazy but distinct way, jarring to the point where I had to mute the game most of the time.
The combat itself, even when it does work, is crippled by the speed of fights. The pace is glacial and even minor encounters can take a full five minutes. Normal spell animations feel more egregious than anything Square was doing at the time. Earlier, I praised the game in the sense that there are meaningful abilities and differences between classes. Most of those meaningful abilities are either crowd control or defensive buffs. The game is balanced around these in such a way that trying to ignore them will make the early game onward much harder. It's focus on them only drags out combat even longer in a game that already had a terminal speed issue.
All of this could have been, if not acceptable, an evil I'd be willing to put up with if the story was interesting. Aidyn Chronicles's biggest flaw is that the story is bland and boring at best, and incomprehensible at worst. Characters aren't developed well, when they do bother to develop them. The worldbuilding "feels" like standard high fantasy from around the time, but it's hard to tell because the prose of this game feels machine translated. Motivations and characterization feels just as smothered in Vaseline as the graphics. Trying to comprehend what a conversation's impact on the overall story is requires constant effort. It even sets up sequels that never happened (and upon retrospect probably were never going to happen given the context in which this game released), so even if the Bethesda level writing resonated with you somehow, you're going to be left holding the bag in terms of narrative.
The biggest praise I could have given Aidyn Chronicles was its ambition, but I don't think there's anything ambitious in its narrative that warrants sitting through the game itself. There's a modding scene that's fleshed out the gameplay and if that interested you, you should track down those romhacks. For everyone else, this is an easy skip. It's the worst RPG on the N64, only saved by it's relative novelty.
It attempted to shove a full Bioware/Black Isle RPG into a N64 cart, with character stats/classes, party building and a wide cast of NPCs. In terms of combat, these aren't elements that are executed poorly. Different classes and builds have a very real impact on how well fights play out. The gear that you pick up doesn't just translate into pure stat advantages, it changes the way that your characters play. The world feels "big" in the sense that there's a lot of ground to cover, and there's a decently staffed roster of NPCs. It's an experience that's unlike most console RPGs released up until that point, and one that's so poorly executed that it manages to cancel out any goodwill it might have earned swinging for the bleachers.
The game isn't incomplete in the same way that Quest 64 is incomplete, but the game is a buggy and optimized slog. Clipping through floors/staircases is a common occurrence. The nonlinear or more open ended elements of the game might encourage sequence breaking. These usually lead to save-ending bugs or, if you're lucky, just a crash. Multiple spells either flat out don't work, or have the opposite intended effect (like the stamina "buff" reducing your overall stamina).
In terms of performance, the game runs worse than Tetrisphere's laggiest points, with regular frame dips when the game has to render more than five feet in front of the main character. I'm not sure why the game runs this poorly either, this is one of the ugliest games on the Nintendo 64. The art direction isn't doing any favors, but the game's blurry, compressed look stood out at the time of its release, and only got worse with age. I was thinking how to describe the music as well, and I couldn't come up with anything other than "it fucking blows." It's not bad in a bland way, it's bad in a very lazy but distinct way, jarring to the point where I had to mute the game most of the time.
The combat itself, even when it does work, is crippled by the speed of fights. The pace is glacial and even minor encounters can take a full five minutes. Normal spell animations feel more egregious than anything Square was doing at the time. Earlier, I praised the game in the sense that there are meaningful abilities and differences between classes. Most of those meaningful abilities are either crowd control or defensive buffs. The game is balanced around these in such a way that trying to ignore them will make the early game onward much harder. It's focus on them only drags out combat even longer in a game that already had a terminal speed issue.
All of this could have been, if not acceptable, an evil I'd be willing to put up with if the story was interesting. Aidyn Chronicles's biggest flaw is that the story is bland and boring at best, and incomprehensible at worst. Characters aren't developed well, when they do bother to develop them. The worldbuilding "feels" like standard high fantasy from around the time, but it's hard to tell because the prose of this game feels machine translated. Motivations and characterization feels just as smothered in Vaseline as the graphics. Trying to comprehend what a conversation's impact on the overall story is requires constant effort. It even sets up sequels that never happened (and upon retrospect probably were never going to happen given the context in which this game released), so even if the Bethesda level writing resonated with you somehow, you're going to be left holding the bag in terms of narrative.
The biggest praise I could have given Aidyn Chronicles was its ambition, but I don't think there's anything ambitious in its narrative that warrants sitting through the game itself. There's a modding scene that's fleshed out the gameplay and if that interested you, you should track down those romhacks. For everyone else, this is an easy skip. It's the worst RPG on the N64, only saved by it's relative novelty.
This review contains spoilers
Welp! I finally finished this game after buying it in store 20 years ago.
It's a tough game to review, as it holds a bit of a special place in my heart as one of the first RPGs I played; however, there's a lot wrong about this game in spite of its ambition.
For starters, the pacing of the plot is completely all over the place, and nonsensical. It's also a challenge sometimes to parse what you're reading with the broken dialogue that I would assume was translated from a different language to English. Sometimes the characters will just be spouting dialogue that doesn't match up to what was said previously and it feels like everyone is having their own separate conversation.
As for the characters themselves, there's really not too much to say. Alaron, the main character, is kind of blank slate with his main trait being that he is bound by the quest he is on to cure himself of poison and, further along, to find his "true name." Apparently, not having a "true name" will doom him to madness, and the world to chaos unless he can find someone to name him soon; this is the backbone of the plot.
Ultimately, the game's plot boils down to your character visiting various people to have them give him his "true name" through a magical ceremony, but finding they are unable to help him and instructing him to find someone else who can. This ends up being a dragon that you blow a horn at and then it tells him that, "he is himself." And thus, his true name is Alaron, and he is saved. Also, his dad turns out to be the King of Gwernia (that he was serving as a squire) that boinked some lady who lives in the woods, thus making him the next in line for the throne after the King dies in the ending cutscene.
Throughout the game you'll run into different side characters that you can add to your party, but in this playthrough I only added the side characters you get at the start of the game: Brenna, Abrecan, and Rheda. There are more side characters you can get on the way but you can only have up to 4 in your party, and the late game side characters are easy to miss. There are cutscenes involved for the characters, however, the writing is quite clumsy at times, which makes the characters themselves seem bumbling. Also, some of the cutscenes take a bit of, uh, "imagination" from the player, as they are usually limited to the characters standing in place and talking. As for following the main plot of the story, which is pretty much what you'll be doing, since there are incredibly few side missions, you'll definitely be finding yourself at a loss what to do more than once; the game does a poor job of instructing the player on where they should go next. Adding to this, the map is huge, by n64 standards, but quite sparse with only a few landmarks spread throughout. Most NPCs will also offer little in the way of dialogue, and they are usually rude to your character or outright aggressive.
I would certainly be lying if I said I completely understood the history of the world of Aidyn Chronicles, or remembered the different factions exactly, but none of those things felt important enough to try to understand.
The turn based combat system itself is also rather glacial with its pace. For instance, encounters will usually start with your party on one side of the map, and the enemies on the other side. This usually ends up with around one minute of your characters slowing making their way to the other side of the map to fight. Along with this, area of effect spells take too long to cast on each of your party members, as well as when the enemies cast the same spells. There's also an issue with how weak your party is at the start, which ends in having to power level in order to beat one of the first bosses. After that point, however, you'll find most encounters can be beaten by casting air shield (enemy attacks do way less), and mirror (magic spells have no effect), thus making your party almost immune to damage, and throwing out any strategy needed. Oh right, and there's a spell you can acquire called "wall of bones" that will freeze an enemy forever, which can be used to cheese boss encounters. This can also be used on your party, so look our for that lol.
The graphics are okay enough; however, some NPC faces are rather painful to look at because they're so ugly, and the environments can look bland almost to the point of it being difficult to figure out where you are, or if you're going in circles.
As for the music and sound effects? Well... It's definitely nothing you'll be wanting to remember.
And that's all I can really say about the game. It's a long game that definitely overstays its welcome but I'm still happy to have completed it after all these years. Perhaps, if the developers had more time to work on it there would have been a potential classic on their hands, but alas, as it stands, I would give the game a 2/5, and I think that's being generous.
It's a tough game to review, as it holds a bit of a special place in my heart as one of the first RPGs I played; however, there's a lot wrong about this game in spite of its ambition.
For starters, the pacing of the plot is completely all over the place, and nonsensical. It's also a challenge sometimes to parse what you're reading with the broken dialogue that I would assume was translated from a different language to English. Sometimes the characters will just be spouting dialogue that doesn't match up to what was said previously and it feels like everyone is having their own separate conversation.
As for the characters themselves, there's really not too much to say. Alaron, the main character, is kind of blank slate with his main trait being that he is bound by the quest he is on to cure himself of poison and, further along, to find his "true name." Apparently, not having a "true name" will doom him to madness, and the world to chaos unless he can find someone to name him soon; this is the backbone of the plot.
Ultimately, the game's plot boils down to your character visiting various people to have them give him his "true name" through a magical ceremony, but finding they are unable to help him and instructing him to find someone else who can. This ends up being a dragon that you blow a horn at and then it tells him that, "he is himself." And thus, his true name is Alaron, and he is saved. Also, his dad turns out to be the King of Gwernia (that he was serving as a squire) that boinked some lady who lives in the woods, thus making him the next in line for the throne after the King dies in the ending cutscene.
Throughout the game you'll run into different side characters that you can add to your party, but in this playthrough I only added the side characters you get at the start of the game: Brenna, Abrecan, and Rheda. There are more side characters you can get on the way but you can only have up to 4 in your party, and the late game side characters are easy to miss. There are cutscenes involved for the characters, however, the writing is quite clumsy at times, which makes the characters themselves seem bumbling. Also, some of the cutscenes take a bit of, uh, "imagination" from the player, as they are usually limited to the characters standing in place and talking. As for following the main plot of the story, which is pretty much what you'll be doing, since there are incredibly few side missions, you'll definitely be finding yourself at a loss what to do more than once; the game does a poor job of instructing the player on where they should go next. Adding to this, the map is huge, by n64 standards, but quite sparse with only a few landmarks spread throughout. Most NPCs will also offer little in the way of dialogue, and they are usually rude to your character or outright aggressive.
I would certainly be lying if I said I completely understood the history of the world of Aidyn Chronicles, or remembered the different factions exactly, but none of those things felt important enough to try to understand.
The turn based combat system itself is also rather glacial with its pace. For instance, encounters will usually start with your party on one side of the map, and the enemies on the other side. This usually ends up with around one minute of your characters slowing making their way to the other side of the map to fight. Along with this, area of effect spells take too long to cast on each of your party members, as well as when the enemies cast the same spells. There's also an issue with how weak your party is at the start, which ends in having to power level in order to beat one of the first bosses. After that point, however, you'll find most encounters can be beaten by casting air shield (enemy attacks do way less), and mirror (magic spells have no effect), thus making your party almost immune to damage, and throwing out any strategy needed. Oh right, and there's a spell you can acquire called "wall of bones" that will freeze an enemy forever, which can be used to cheese boss encounters. This can also be used on your party, so look our for that lol.
The graphics are okay enough; however, some NPC faces are rather painful to look at because they're so ugly, and the environments can look bland almost to the point of it being difficult to figure out where you are, or if you're going in circles.
As for the music and sound effects? Well... It's definitely nothing you'll be wanting to remember.
And that's all I can really say about the game. It's a long game that definitely overstays its welcome but I'm still happy to have completed it after all these years. Perhaps, if the developers had more time to work on it there would have been a potential classic on their hands, but alas, as it stands, I would give the game a 2/5, and I think that's being generous.