This was a hard question. First off Mario 64 was total perfection. Everyone who complains about the camera is wrong. Personally this is still my favorite Super Mario Bros. game and always will.
Metroid Prime delivered on the most daunting task. The world the music and atmosphere; just mesmerizing. The features like X-ray visor and things like that lived up to all the promise. But! MP was missing the long jump boots and it wasn’t a dual stick fps.
Ocarina of Time was, as someone said, the closest we could get to an open world at that time. Riding on a horse that you earned as well as earning your inventory was grand. The dungeons were perfection. Story had nice progression. I think I replayed it 7 times. This one wins for me. The open world is why.
