It was a fun time as a gamer in some respects. Games had never been this aesthetic, online and DLC wasn't a thing yet, so we got the whole game, and it wasn't streamlined for mass appeal, so game felt like games.

I'm old enough to have experience all the generations so far, and this was a stand our for the library that was building at the time, great split screen games, and seeing some games truly evolve from 2D to 3D (GTA being one of the biggest... seriously, we had no idea what was possible and what was coming). Backward compatibility kept the classics going, while innovation was still coming instead of remasters and crappy remakes.

The releases were spaced out so we didn't have a market as saturated as now. Games then felt more like events, now even the best games feel like samey shovelware.

The PS2 was the obvious winner early on.
DC just sputtered out and Sega's hardware got the death it deserved (they were greedy af).
GCN made no sense except for the exclusives, and even then no proper Mario for the system was a huge "wtf?"
Xbox was solid, but lacked eastern appeal and western devs were not great. Halo was over-hyped, but Xbox guys were thirsty. Best controller for shooters, bar none.

It was a totally different atmosphere. The last age of physical media only. Online and digital ownership was not being pushed, so things just felt more like ours. By the next gen people had been suckered into MS points and horse armor, and now you don't even own the games you buy.

For gaming, it was a very different kind of time than now.