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?
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.