Darth Sidious was omnipresent throughout The Phantom Menace.  Other than his many appearances as Senator/Chancellor Palpatine (HIS IDENTITY AS A SITH LORD WAS A SECRET!), the only time he appeared as a Sith in the flesh was when he met with Darth Maul on a balcony on Coruscant.  Most of his scenes were as a hologram.  His outfit isn’t quite the same as that from when he was Emperor.  By then, his face was deformed, he walked with a cane, and he sported a fancy clasp at the neck of his cloak.  Here, he’s just an old guy in a black bathrobe, before he went full on Galactic tyrant.  He also appeared once at the very end of Attack of the Clones in this same look. 

Looking at the figure quickly, you might think that it’s pretty good.  For 1999, it was pretty good, so you were correct to think that at the time.  It had a nice sculpt, and the hard plastic robes dutifully replicated the look of the figure on screen, even with the hood.  The face was painted a bit brutishly, that is to say it lacked any subtlety, similar to the terrible faces on Nute Gunray and Rune Haako.  The robes have a blue/black appearance that seems fitting, although I prefer a straight black look to the Sith robes.  Darth Sidious comes with no weapons or accessories of any kind.  It does have some nice texturing sculpted into it.

The figure is about as close to a statue as you can get, without it being an actual statue.  Sometimes that works for the purposes of one’s collection.  Sidious has no relevant motion at the neck.  He does have swivel shoulders, elbows, and wrists.  His legs are articulated at the hips, but the hard plastic robes prevent any meaningful lower body movement.  Sidious is essentially a salt shaker; a salt shaker with no head or waist.  The arms have articulation enough to accomplish three things.  Sidious can stand at rest and clasp his hands in front of his belly.  He can move his elbows apart as if to ask, “why are there so many ostriches?”, and he can spread his arms in a position that, thanks to his huge plastic sleeves, looks like he’s trying to fly.  That’s it.  Now, that last position is a throwaway, so the other 2 are ok.  Those of you that would say, “So what, all he does in the film is just stand there,”  I have two things to say to you:

And also:

That’s how an Episode I Darth Sidious should be done.  VC79 Has full super-articulation, a nice sculpt, a well-executed mix of soft goods and plastic, and weapons.  This is exactly why characters that “just stand there” should often NOT be made into figures that “just stand there.”  Sometimes you don’t even know what you’re missing until you see it with your own eyes.  You may think you don’t need an updated Nute Gunray or Rune Haako, but you wouldn’t believe you ever thought the 1999 figures were still acceptable if you owned modern updates.  Sidious was the same way.  We were probably okay with it, until VC79 came along.  Then we felt shame.

I’ll give this a 3.  It isn’t the worst looking figure, but it was more or less made obsolete with the release of the TVC version.  If you prefer the plastic to the soft goods robes, you might still find some value in this figure, but I am comfortable calling it obsolete.  Get VC79 and skip this one.  Time has not been kind.