Square's library is loaded with gems. Xenogears and Vagrant Story are my favorites from the PSX.

I've never played the Secret of Mana type games, or Mario RPG, or any of a host of other ones.

I think the PSX was an interesting high point for 3D creativity vs graphics. The PS2 started pushing polygon counts such that the creative/artist teams started to blow out and budgets shot up, but then the PS3 and "modern AAA" budgets took over. Large budgets, low risk, more priority on splash graphics than depth.

There's a FF7 'demake' in the style of FF1 for NES that's really kinda cool and amazing they made it run on NES hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII_(NES_video_g...