My favorite, personally, is LE.
It's a no-nonsense, get things done, attitude.
A real "ends justify the means" kinda thing.
It's the most interesting to roleplay, for me.
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Probably CG.
No binding moral codes, you are good which is appropriate for a protagonist. plenty of great god options. Certain character options work better for you (warpriest sacred weapon and blessing options, original summoner with various evos like DR and magic attack, etc.).
Overall, it is an appropriate alignment for a party of adventurous heroes going out doing their own thing and saving the day.
I always tend to go True Neutral. I generally do good things, but can sometimes take less then savory paths to achieve the good goals. After all, I'd rather live in a world with good or neutral people. Evil people tend to try to enslave, kill and generally make my life more difficult either directly or indirectly. For me, it keeps all of my whims an option, allowing personal flexibility.
True Neutral. It's the only way to go. It also means I can play the character however I feel is appropriate to a given situation, and let's me pretend that alignments arent a thing.
Any of the good alignments suit me best. As a DM, I'm generally happier if the players are all good (or lawful on the old law-chaos axis).
True Neutral also has a mechanical advantage by automatically taking half or even a quarter damage from spells like Holy Smite and having no extra effects(like being blinded for one round) when they fail their saving throws against them.
I have trouble, for some reason, choosing much beyond NG and CG. Lawful Good for the occasional monk or paladin. I think I'm NG in real life. Or Empirical Good?
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The best for what? Because each alignment is best, given different criteria.
CE is awful fun when you want to watch the world burn.
Anything evil.
I've played TONS of good characters, and very few evil, so I enjoy when I get to play a necromancer, or pyromaniac mage and so forth...
Antipaladins can be fun too.
Assassins...
I rarely focus on the mindless, chaotic aspects of evil though, so tend to lean towards LE.
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I have never played an evil character and I think my group is likely to want to play Hell's Vengeance as soon as realistically possible. I've never had any inclination to play evil either so this should be interesting.
For my own part I really like LG and some of the best RP moments I've experienced are the tensions differences in alignment and motivation can bring between groups. Let's not forget in the majority of cases an adventuring party is a group of special individuals thrown together by a common cause - just like the Avengers, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Xmen and as many other superhero teams as you can think of - and I'm sure we all love the tension between Cap and Tony Stark, Wolverine and Cyclops and so on.
CN
Trickster archetypes are a lot of fun to play with, and the alignment lends itself to clever solutions and guile. Very fun to play out what they do when backed into a corner.
I tend to enjoy neutral good and neutral evil.
Same here.
With being NG in real life, NE is probably the most intuitive evil alignment to play. And playing evil is nice for a change.
Any evil for me. A pragmatic villain can create some interesting schemes that I would otherwise not get to enjoy as a PC. It pretty much means anything goes if another villain gets in your way too.
Really, there is no "best alignment" in my mind.
That said, I tend towards LG because the other players at my table tend to make CN a-holes who are constantly toeing the line of CE and threaten to dissolve the entire game.
My personal favorite is CN.
Mostly i keep to the good side to be honest , being good is far easier than being evil , but when you are bad , you can be really bad.
For example a current PC , he is a sorc human that was kidnaped by fey when he was a baby and then they raised him to defend their land usually at war against a human kingdom that keeps invading their forest. Most of the time said PC is good , he will save people , share his stuff , atempt to save all lives he can , free slaves... Pretty much full CG , BUT when facing this kingdom (or those that harm neutral/good fey in their forests) he will do some evil stuff that is better left to imagination.
LN. Because nothing is scarier than following the rules without regard to moral consequences.
I have a few favourite alignments.
Chaotic Good is my favourite for heroic characters. They value freedom above all else and travel the world liberating people from oppression. These characters are not bound by tradition, laws or other social conventions and have no interest in accumulating money or power.
Neutral is my go to alignment for anti hero type characters. These characters have good intentions but are just a little too eager to punish the villains for their transgressions. Good at dispensing justice, not so good at showing compassion. They tend to value money highly, but what is wrong with being adequately compensated for your efforts?
Lawful Evil, for my villain characters, they are thoroughly evil and hell bent on world domination but they do also have a code that they follow, which for me makes them more interesting than other villains.
LG is probably the trickiest to do consistently and well. It's easy playing Lawful Stupid, but playing a smart character who regularly weighs the moral consequences of their actions is hard. Not to mention needing a sympathetic group if you need to discuss why you're not happy just killing every enemy outright. If you can get LG right it is satisfying.
Personally I'm Neutral tending toward Good and Lawful, so any combination of L/N/G is what I'm most comfortable with. Hence my bias.
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The usual disclaimers; in my experience, IMO, your mileage may vary, you might even not use mileage and do something like kilometers...
CG, NG, NE and LE are my favorites, for different reasons. I like the notion that Chaotic Good is willing to break rules (and occasionally bust some heads or start up an underground railroad in a slave-legal-society) to accomplish the goals of Good. I like that Neutral Good is neither bound by unjust laws, nor particularly predisposed to burn it all down, including the *good* parts of a legal system or civilized society. NG is just pure, and as long as it isn't played as naïve or doomed by GM fiat to always fail (what? You rescued the X? They betray you, idealistic fool!), it's fun to play. My favorite AD&D character was NG. For that reason, I like NG a bit more than CG, although CG always seems to have the more compelling deity choices! Same with LE, willing to focus on law, and yet so concerned with the 'right' thing, that they aren't always worried about the people slipping through the cracks. 'Yes, some filthy peasants are whining about being oppressed, but we still have the most economically successful and culturally advanced nation in the Inner Sea! The good we are doing (for us, mostly) vastly outweighs the evil (which always seems to happen to those people I don't see very often or care very much about...)!' NE, like the mirror of NG, is just pure selfishness. It's so easy to roleplay, because it's the objectivist dream. What is good for me is good, end sentence. If other people were as willing to step all over the weak and foolish, they could be here too! It's delightfully uncomplicated by tenets and dogmas and whatnot. 100% undiluted evil. There's no lid on that Id. I want it. I take it. You don't like it? Take it back from me like a man, or shut up and cower before me.
CG, NG, LE and NE, in my experience, seem to get along well with others (particularly NG).
I do not like LG or CE, since they are two different sides of the 'does not play well with others' coin, which seems to lead to PVP, all too often. Even then they don't, they never seem to lead to a fun experience grouping, since both want to impose their own narrative (whether it be bossing others around or forcing other classes to obey their Paladin Code of Conduct, while gaining none of the benefits of being a Paladin, or disruptive behavior like goosing the Queen/insulting the King/upending the table full of alchemical gear to 'see what happens' or 'liven things up') on everyone else at the table.
True N is still tarred in my mind by the old Greyhawk notion of crazy balance-seeking characters who want to prevent either evil *or* good from getting too big for their britches, which just came across as insane, to me. I know. I am judging an alignment by the way it was played 25 years ago. It's a grudge I'm holding onto with both hands.
LN and CN are again, two sides of a coin, occasionally leading to people playing either overbearing dictator Evil or disruptive spoiler Evil, without the honesty of just putting an E down on the sheet. They are potentially cool, particularly LN, IMO, but I've been burned enough times to frown a little frown when seeing them.
The only times I'll play one of the alignments I'm not a fan of is when there's some wonky mechanical benefit. Yes, that's cheese, but I'll eat that cheese, and sign me up for LN, CN or N if the campaign has 'lotsa demons and devils spamming Unholy Smite' on the label.
NG. Altruism without the baggage or biases of law or chaos.
This. I am most NG in real life, so it's super easy for me to play in game.
I also enjoy CG and TN characters.
For evil I actually find LE the most compelling, they usually make for the best villains in fiction/media (Vader, Magneto, Tywin, Doom, Bane, Thrawn, Lex, Dalamar, etc).
I actually miss old school "tendencies", I played a TN mage with Good tendencies back in the day and it felt perfect for how I envisioned the character.
I find lawful good the easiest to play, since that most resembles my natural inclinations. Other lawful alignments are good, too, though.
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My favourite :
CN For I love free spirited character.
I am glad that I manage to avoid chaotic stupid (But my GM is glader).
The one I like :
True Neutral : beyond morality, quite a balanced outlook.
LE : pragmatic villainy.
NG : good without the idealism of the CG and the zeal of LG.
The one I find meh :
LN : Conservative, and the line between the zealot and the oppressor is thin.
The ones I dislike :
CE : I dislike playing psycho.
LG : I dislike playing zealot and holier-than-thou.
The one that puzzle me :
NE : I am not quite sure how to understand it or to play it rightly. I oscillate between the greedy, coward and nihilistic.
CG has always been a fav, because I love the idea of being a good-hearted rebel. I believe if you strip away social convention, religion, indoctrination, people still have the capacity to be good human beings and do the right thing. In fact, maybe that's when people are at their best. Not that CG characters can't have belief systems and structure of a sort, but it seems less imposed upon them by some societal more or myopic view of the world. They do what they believe is right because they choose to.
Then again, it is also fun to be the Lawful character in a less-than-structured group of players. Leads to some interesting dialogue, to say the least.
Speaking from a mechanics standpoint:
Neutral - The best general caster alignment. Get to ignore the otherwise entire school of magic crippling Protection from X.
Lawful Good - The best alignment if you are a super CHA SAD monster and want to really rock the CHA box with Bestow Grace of the Champion.
Neutral good is my favorite as it represents pure, undiluted good, which is really cool. Also, Sarenrae is awesome.
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One thing I do want to say though. Alignments are extremely loose. They're a bit more descriptive than calling Luke Skywalker "The good guy" and Darth Vader "The bad guy". Please don't complain about the alignments being to tight. LG is not a "zealot" alignment. Lawful Good does not necessarily mean Lawful Nice, but most LGs should be. Also, please don't complain about alignments being too loose. They're If your character is defined by their alignment, they need to be fleshed out more. You can't define someone with 1 or 2 words. Alignments don't try to.
I've always liked lawful neutral, and then lawful good. LN more so because it blends into most groups exceedingly well, and it gives your character a good set up for moral frameworks.