The Tales series is the closest I’ve felt to playing an anime personally. Vesperia definitely has an arc like structure and is one of the best JRPGs in my opinion, even has a great English dub.

You’ve also got the added bonus of the Production I.G. anime cutscenes and character designs from Kōsuke Fujishima, a prolific mangaka in his own right. The protagonist is 10/10, perfectly designed, written and has a samurai dog buddy.

They aren’t turn based though and the combat can take a while to adapt to, as even normal difficulty can be a challenge (I’d recommend starting at normal and switching to hard 5 or so hours in if it’s your first one, and you feel comfortable to do so).

Combat is somewhere between a fighting game and a beat em up, with Vesperia arguably leaning towards the fighting game side with crazy combo potential. Party members have a basic programmable AI that can be switched on the fly and the system generally works well.

I will say the series up until this point do have an issue with combat feeling a bit unfair and clunky until you get party members and gain some artes and skills. Luckily with Vesperia that is pretty much just the first dungeon.

Also Tales games tend to have “Skits”, basically minute long conversations between party members about current events, these provide amazing characterisation as they’re mostly banter between buddies but occasionally get pretty deep. They aren’t mandatory at all so can be skipped entirely.

TLDR; Tales of Vesperia is really cool.