I hate the controller as well.
Another vote for "Tales of Vesperia."
Don't mind any reviews which say it has a "stereotypical story" and point at its obvious princess character. There are a lot of other ways it breaks the usual mold, by not having:
A) A young hero with amnesia.
B) Non-stop, mandatory quests to collect obscure artifacts.
C) A sappy love story.
D) Insane grinding requirements.
Also, it is kind of slow combat-wise at the beginning, but as you progress, you'll be able to use longer combos, faster moves, and so on, so forth.
It is really quite great and you should definitely get it.
Lost odyssey
Tales of vesperia
Eternal Sonata
Infinite Undiscovery
Fable 2 coming out, should be great
Fallout 3 also coming out, will be amazing.
All of these are listed in order, but do yourself a favor and GO PLAY LOST ODYSSEY!
Yes, it's all turn based. They try to spice it up a bit by having you hold a button to match up some rings for more damage, but a couple of hours in you'll be perfecting most of them without even paying attention. If you want more action oriented RPG's check out Tales of Vesperia or Infinite Undiscovery. Eternal Sonata uses a sort of in-between, it's turn based but you move around during the battle and attack manually-ish.
I loved Lost Odyssey - it's one of the few RPGs I have lying around that I actually have the urge to play again after seeing how the story ended, plus one of the funniest characters in a long time (love Jansen) and a beautiful soundtrack.
But then I LIKE turn based RPGs and turn-based strategy games anyway.