Zelda is not much of an RPG, but that is mostly a definition question. :P
What is lacking are games like Ar Tonelico, Disgaea, Dragon Warrior, The Elder Scrolls, everything Bioware...
Well, if you'd list every great RPG (series) you'd have around two hundred options at least. ;) Maybe the question is better asked without a poll, being open for everything.
yea, although there are tons of good stories in most JRPGS, the most fun in overall sense would be Diablo 2, then again by definition of RPG, Deus Ex & Fallout counts too
For myself I would say the best rpg is Suikoden, the entire series is absolutely awesome in my opinion. A close second for me to the first installment of Suikoden would be XenoGears.
I did love the FF series, but I went and found Legend of Mana. By Enix, Oh! My Gosh! No story line, some of the most beautifulest animated graphics and you could do any quest in any order. Plus it had references from the rest of Enix's games.
D2LOD, boy was that a lot of monster killing until I got into LLD. For a while there I had the best LLD Javazon on US west ladder server with a +4java/30Ias rare javs. She could hold her own even against some of the best LLD hdins and fire sorcs. I remember killing a high lvl pve fire sorc with her once, granted I stacked my fire res with noko ammy and hotspurs :). Man all the hours and hours of time wasted on that game only to loose it all because of d2 loader so I could run multiple chars for xfers.
Otherwise as a consol game, my favorites are the Final Fantasy series starting from FFIII in the states on super nes. I stayed up two nights in a row and still went to school to beat that game :).
Thought I still had an s/s of my LLD Javazon's gear, but only have my LLD Fire Sorceress.