As an addendum to what I posted before, because I'm like fifteen years late to the party but I finally got around to beating Majora's Mask (Yes, I know, it's technically for JRPG section, and yes I know it's been a long time coming but I never owned it as a kid and when I borrowed it from my friend some years back I got stuck on the fucking fish boss)
It's striking how empty recent Zelda games have become since Majora's Mask with games up to Skyward Sword(haven't played BotW yet) completely bungling the NPCs, which really sucks because MM had some really endearing NPCs accompanied by quite a few decent quests. It was a relatively small cast but you build up an emotional attachment to them because they feel like actual human beings instead of cardboard cutouts with a quest attached that you only do for the EXP, so the game gets a lot out of a little. Even feels sort of like an adventure game (You know, Day of the Tentacle and the like) because of the puzzle element to the quests.
It helps that their dialogue actually changes based on the situation, like if you don't do the ranch quests the poor family is basically catatonic with grief over their livelihood being stolen and the impending apocalypse but if you do the quests and come back on day 3 the two girls are in the barn and, you don't really get anything for it but it's worth going back at least once because the older sister is giving the kid an adult drink because she knows it's their last night and the poor kid is oblivious to the whole thing. It's those little things that certain developers *coughBethesdacough* completely drop the ball on and it results in a dead world.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like it when an RPG bothers to give the NPCs some flavor beyond just being a walking quest-giver or some sort of caricature/archetype, or an info-dump. It's the little things.