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.
