Cloud and Squall posted...
PS2 era, totally.
I used to think PS1 era was awesome. Then I looked back, and while it had some amazing games, there weren't as many as I seem to remember there being.
Yeah, I'm torn between PS1 era and PS2 era. PS2 era are generally higher quality games, but there's also less variety as a lot of them are FFX clones for a bunch of core gameplay elements (which is fine; CTB is the best and all that, but variety is nice too) and it feels like plots are converging too (for all that yes: PS2 era plots generally have better writing, character development, translation, and voice acting, they also become more standardized).
These are easily the two best eras, though. Towards the end of the PS2 era, the Japanese market was collapsing, so JRPGs haven't gotten funding in like...five years. And the SNES era was plagued by stuff like "we haven't figured out that we should hire real writers yet" and frankly lacks the gameplay-games; outside of japan only releases, there's nothing on the SNES on the strategic level of FFT or FFX or Fire Emblem 7 or Paper Mario or Wild ARMs 4. In fact let me go a step further: I care about Pokemon's gameplay more than every SNES RPG combined, and I'm not much of a Pokemon fan. (Red/Blue came out when I was in university, and I thought they were good, but I've played like...all of one Pokemon game since then).
--
Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision