It was new technology, 3D was a fairly new concept in gaming in the mid 90s. But it took so long to get properly implemented. You have super mario 64, gex enter the gecko, lemmings 3D. I am wondering if it was a business decision and not the devs who pushed for a free roaming camera, since it was clearly not a satisfactory result gameplay wise. Because at the same era, you have games with fixed camera angles that are much better experiences overall.
Oh man, this brings me back. I played Alundra 2 back 2002 or so. The game was advertised with a "360-degree camera," but it was more like an eight-angle camera. And the enviroments often didn't support this in a good way, like you had to look at a room from a certain angle for it to make sense on screen. Looking back, the camera was pretty terrible, but at the time, I didn't mind so much
One weird thing in Alundra 2, is that if you turn the camera while moving in certain direction, you continue moving in that (map) direction even if, from the new angle, you are pushing the D-Pad in the opposite direction. You have to release the D-Pad and press again to go in the new correct direction