"There are several aspects of the game which are just stupid. For example I seem to be buying all my weaponry from a POLICE OFFICER at THE POLICE STATION. "I don't know what's going on here, but I guess I just have to trust you" he mumbles, as he sells a Katana to a teenage boy. "

" @Sweep said:

" @C2C: I'm going to keep playing. It's just weird. I'm fighting shadows for reasons I can't explain and nobody has yet presented me with a reason as to why I should care. After getting so immersed into Persona 4, the indifference of Persona 3 feels worlds apart. "

this is is addressed. The lack of a clear explanation for what SEES is fighting or why is what makes Yukari so angry and paranoid towards mitsuru. It is explained. Also, not everything is as it appears. Some things don't make sense because they don't make sense. Remember what the arcana is for SEES. It's the fool. That is supposed to tell you something.  Trust me, mitsuru, yukari, and akihiko have very good reasons for fighting. Ken has a very good reason for joining sees, and so does a girl who joins later. The characters with the weakest motivations are Junpei, Fuuka, and koromaru. Junpei doesn't have a very good motivation to fight, and that becomes a veeeeeery major plot point and is the reason why he is initially kind of dickish to the protagonist. Fuuka feels indebted to SEES and she likes being able to help and the game specifically has a scene where mitsuru apologizes for getting Fuuka involved and Fuuka explains her motivations. Koromaru, well hes mostly for fun.  Don't forget that just like in persona 4, each of the party characters in P3 have problems they are trying to work through. They all have "awakened" versions of their personas which they get at key plot points. Before these points they really are a bit lost and confused about their lives, just like normal teenagers.  As for the plot, without giving any spoliers, Persona 3 is basically a retelling of the plot of Neon Genesis Evangelion set in a normal tokyo.  The shadow bosses are like angels (especially later in the game). The characters are like the child pilots, and i can't say more really without spoling stuff, but P3 gets almost as messed up as evangelion except that the MC is awesome, where as Shinji is not. Stick with it, it is really great. "

" @Sweep said:

"There are several aspects of the game which are just stupid. For example I seem to be buying all my weaponry from a POLICE OFFICER at THE POLICE STATION. "I don't know what's going on here, but I guess I just have to trust you" he mumbles, as he sells a Katana to a teenage boy. "

Everyone tends to be more trusting in Persona 3. Everyone's confused about the strange stuff going on, so they're more willing to unusual answers and that kids would need weapons to deal with the problem.
 
In Persona 4, the threat is obvious. Someone is going around killing people. It could be anyone, so no one ever fully trusts anyone. They never let anyone outside of their group know what they're up to. Not the police, not family, not other friends, because the murderer could be anyone. In Persona 3, it's not clear what's causing the apathy syndrome, but they can be reasonably sure that it's not the result of any human. So they place their trust in each other, Ikutsuki, the Kirijo Group, and even Officer Kurosawa. SEES knows he won't pose a threat to them, and Kurosawa hasn't seen any negative result of selling weapons to teenagers. There are lots of weird things going on, but none of them involved weapons obtained from Kurosawa. There's no guarantee that he really can trust them, but he's willing to help them out if they really believe they can eliminate the problem. The Kirijo Group has also done research on Shadows, so if he really needed proof it could probably be provided. "

" Neon Genesis evangelion and persona 3 spoilers, Ahoy!
 

@SpiralStairs:

  the comparison to NGE is especially apparent if you compare

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

the seventeenth angel (Kaworu) to Ryoji, Gendo Ikari to Ikutsuki, and Rei Ayanami to Aigis.

"

I'm still crawling through my first playthrough. After 100 hours I'm in the last month of the story and I've missed a bunch of stuff. My only frustration with games like Persona is how easy it really is to miss some pretty big things. It has only occurred to me now that I missed out on the Sun arcana S-Link entirely (I had rarely encountered Sun when fusing Personas and I honestly didn't take notice until late in the game) . Reading up on P3P at GameFaqs was a humbling expereince. I think it really takes more than one playthrough to really master all of the game's concepts. All things considered, I'd easily consider P3P among the greatest JRPGs of all time.