Dragon Quest VIII is quality and a good jumping off point to bigger and better games. It's highly linear but not quite as long as I'd like but it's still very good. The strategy guide wouldn't be a poor investment if you want to find secrets, but the linearity makes it more or less unnecessary.
I would recommend any Final Fantasy game that isn't II, IV, VIII or IX. Not because they're bad (generally speaking most gross nerds I know at least grudgingly admit that those games have an excellent story). But they're linear and much of the sidequesting requires a fair bit of prior knowledge. If you're into it, there are some excellent LP's by Something Awful goons I'd suggest you read before playing them.
On that note, I'm playing FFVI right now. It's the last to use sprite based graphics (excluding the FF tactics games) and it's slowly shaping into something with a lot more substance than FF7. I suggest playing both of these games because FFVI is where Square really opened up the battle system/numbers and FFVII essentially lets you make any character any combination of jobs at any time. And they're both on PSN.
If that's not your flavour, however, there's an EXCELLENT RPG called Xenogears about some Chinese National salughtering people with a robot, great battle system and a very nice looking game to boot. I didn't get too far the first time but it pleasantly surprised me. I'd especially recommend Xenogears if you've played Chrono Trigger.
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