Lost Odyssey is the game I was going to lead up to recommending if you're not against JRPGs on a mechanial or aesthetic level. Ignore anyone who tells you that you have to get Vesperia; unless your wife's tastes diverge from yours so seriously that she inexplicably can justify playing through 60 hours of mindless anime cliche bunk, it's not going to be worth it.
Lost Odyssey is interesting for the balance of its gameplay and because it's probably got the best writing in any JRPG.
The level system in the game is scaled; in areas where you are too low-leveled to beat the boss, you will quickly hit the appropriate level and leveling beyond that is very slow, so you are almost always more or less where you need to be. It's very convenient.
The game is also full of short stories which were penned by a rather famous Japanese author; I don't know that they are high literature or anything of the kind, but they are thematically consistent, presented excellently, and are one and all quite touching. It may not be as literary as you would prefer, but if you can imagine Guy Gavriel Kay or Steven Erikson writing short stories then they would probably come out like these do.
The main character is characterized primarily through these short stories, and your understanding of the world and its history is similarly dependent on them. It takes you out of the action for a bit, but I like how it ontrols the pacing of the game and I think the story was much, much stronger for being presented in this way.
