Humans have always been naturally nostalgic creatures. In general the vast majority people I see always think the past was better and how stuff today is not as good. We often don't realize how good we had it until time passes and we look back. And often times when people look back they tend to only remember the good stuff in the past and forget about the bad stuff that also happened associated with that memory in the past.

For example, the Wii is a very beloved and nostalgic system nowadays and people viewed it as peak gaming. But at the time during the Wii era it was also one of the most hated and slandered systems ever. People always made fun of it as inferior and trash for its bad graphics, online, weird controller, not having much 3rd party games, ect. At least the kids I grew up with in school it was was a system consistently made fun of and even by the media in general. People nowadays completely forgot about all the negative press that surrounded the Wii and only remember how amazing it was.

An even better example is now I'm seeing people nostalgic and miss the Wii U era of all things and how it was better than the Switch era, which for the most part is straight up delusion. I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I highly doubt this many people I see truly believe that era was anywhere close to as good as the Switch era. Literally barely any games released on Wii U worthwhile and the press surrounding the Wii U/Nintendo as a whole was nothing but negative and many people at the time speculated Nintendo's hardware manufacterer days were gonna end soon and just become a 3rd party developer.

So I think naturally in a debate like this, the PS2 will naturally have an advantage due to nostalgia alone, especially when it comes to the more general casual mass market of people. But I think since most people on this site are more passionate/dedicated console players who view video game stuff more with facts than just feelings, I think the nostalgia bias in this discussion will be less than the average person, but still may affect the results a little bit.

So maybe 10 years from now when Switch 1 becomes more nostalgic that will even the playing field a bit and people will truly see how both consoles compare. Even today the Switch 1 got a good bit of criticism during its life.

Switch is second only to GameCube as my overall favorite system whereas PS2 is actually my least favorite PlayStation so it's not a hard choice. There were a lot of good games on PS2 but very few truly amazing ones in my opinion.

That's the thing, it really all depends on the kind of games you like.

Personally there's not much on the PS2 I'd rank on the same level as say BOTW, Mario Odyssey, Monster Hunter Rise, Witcher 3, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Metroid Dread, Doom 2016 + Eternal, Mario Bros Wonder, etc, but that's just my taste.

As an action game sicko, PS2 is so loaded with them. In the last year been really getting more of them. I have a huge eBay wishlist atm.

Thats also verry true. Weird how our childhoods shape the way we see the world forever.

It's not weird. That's the law of existence. Everything within this universe is shaped by the environment it began it's inception.

Neither is my favourite system. But if I would have to choose one, based on its impact, I would say PS2. The system was insanely dominant during that generation, and it also established the first generation where games still hold up as they are, IMHO. The open world design philosophy also had it's major 3D breakthrough, something that still takes up most people's time til this day.

That said, I probably did spend more time with the Switch, as I got it first year while I got a PS2 after the release of the PS3.

Neither is my favorite platform.
But I would have to opt for the PS2 due to how far-reaching it's dominating impact was, it not only defined a console generation, but it also set the foundation for future consoles and console games.

The Switch whilst selling very similar numbers, just hasn't had the same lob-sided game release support.