My wife loves games with that sort of gameplay loop, where you have a main gameplay style/loop within a world of people and places you get to know for both flavor and gameplay benefits. Persona is a series and SDV a game that we have put a lot of time into together. She was talking about playing P4 again, but I crave novelty. What are some other fun games with a little community for us to get to know?
Tokyo Xanadu and Trails of Cold Steel both follow a Persona-ish way of being RPGs mixed with socializing with party members and their community. I particularly find their social aspects stronger than Persona because they’re tied to the main story, meaning characters will often having interactions that are based on main events and not completely divorced from their plot/character developments, as well as having a more colorful cast of side characters.
Cold Steel is a fairly long series though - By itself its 4 games long, but its also part of a much larger universe and has some crossovers with other Trails games. I played the first 2, which are a somewhat self-contained story, without much issue but AFAIK they get denser from there on.
Xanadu is a more action-y game, in the vein of Ys, if you’ve played those, instead of being turn-based.
The Yakuza series also has some very strong characterization and side activities involving multiple characters, as well as a multitude of minigames. Like A Dragon (or Yakuza 7) is a soft reboot with a new main cast and also follows a more traditional turn-based RPG mechanic, highly recommended.
Oohh. I really like the look of Tokyo Xanadu. It kinda looks like the Persona formula with action gameplay, which isn’t necessarily bad. I can enjoy a good formula game. As long as the content is high quality, a familiar vessel is comforting. And if anything, action is preferable to long battles. She is not big on turn based and definitely isn’t getting through a long game with extended turn based battles. Persona was an exception because you could use elements to hurry most battles the fuck up xd
In that case not only will I counter recommend the Trails series, but also reverse my Yakuza 7 recommendation to Yakuza 0 instead. Its gameplay is based on the root of the series of being a brawler with levelling up, and its chronologically the first game of the series (As well as technically the first game in release order, since the remakes of 1 and 2 directly reference it) and often called one of the best ones of the saga. Its also terribly cheap in pretty much any platform you want to play it.