Final Fantasy 5 is probably my favorite. Unfortunately, it was not initially released in the US (though that was later rectified, first by fans and later by Square themselves), even though the inferior FF4 and FF6 did see US release.
There's also the Romancing SaGa games, which did not see US release, and SaGa Frontier, which did. (Note that SaGa Frontier is not at all balanced; I don't know how the Romancing SaGa games fare in that regard. I should probably note that Final Fantasy 6-8 are not what you would call balanced either (FF8 is especially bad here).)
Dragon Quest 6 I enjoyed; the remake of Dragon Quest 3 is also really good. (DQ5 I didn't like as much, and I prefer the original versions of DQ1&2 over the SFC remakes for the most part.)
While very different, the Might and Magic series might be worth looking into; 3-7 were all released in the decade, and I believe all of them are very good (though I haven't played 6 or 7).
Ultima 6 is quite good; Ultima 7, not so much. (I wouldn't even bother with Ultima 8.)
(I should note that I found Baldur's Gate, a rather famous RPG, to not be that good. Same with Final Fantasy 7. (But note that those two games are dissimilar.))