I know it's important, or at least I believe it could be important, but is there a way to go about fusing personas? I still have several that are really low level, and am having a hard time considering fusing them. Should all personas that I fuse have a lot of the same stats? What are the main reasons to fuse? If it matters, I'm level 20 and right outside the door of the boss Prince Charming.

I kinda just half-assed it all the way through, fusing was never important to me, I just fused powerful persona together and made sure they inherited some useful skills, I made sure to have all the elements i.e fire, wind, physical etc.
 
Which difficulty are you on?

So many "is fusion necessary?" questions lately, here and everywhere.

I'm the wrong person to ask, though!

Fusing is incredibly important, but you don't need to worry too much about making some sort of ultimate persona thanks to the compendium. You can always just try again. If you don't fuse, quite simply, you'll have a lot of trouble keeping up with the difficulty of the dungeons. Just fuse things. Don't worry about breaking things. They'll most likely be better than what you had.

For me I never really thought about it. I fuse everything I have all the time, if there's something I haven't fused before. The thing is that it takes a lot more experience to level up your personae then to fuse one that is your level (and then get social link exp to push it even higher than your level). At the point you are in the game you don't need to worry because you don't have any high social links. Just fuse something with fire resistance. Fuse for your needs.

@Venatio: I'm on the normal setting. That's kind of what I've been doing, I just didn't want to back myself in a corner.

@mattscout007:Thanks.

This wouldn't have been a question I'd have asked if it weren't for my inexperience in the turn-based RPG market. My past attempts at Final Fantasy, a franchise I've always wanted to get into, had me doing the broken record of heal, change turns to the enemy, heal, change turns to the enemy, that I'd give up. Persona 4 on the other hand has been pretty good to me so far, and I'll stick with it till the end. Like I said, I just don't want to give up on the game because of not fusing or making a mistake at fusing. And for those that would ask, I'm not playing on easy, because if I can beat this on normal than it should open up a gateway to other turn-based games I've neglected because of the broken record scenario.

Your personas (personae?) take so much XP to level up that there's no way to keep up with the level of the stuff you're fighting unless you spend a whole lot of time grinding. The main benefit of fusing your personas is getting that big SLink XP bonus so you can keep your personas leveled up high enough. Don't worry too much about the specifics of what you end up fusing, just try and makes stuff that carries over the useful skills and doesn't have too many bad weaknesses and you'll be fine.

Thanks everyone. I'll just fuse and not worry about making a mistake. I do like how nothing is permanent, so there is a level of trail and error before everything is final...or my safety net in fusing.

I just wanted to re-thank everyone. I think my biggest issue was not wanting to get rid of trusted personas in my collection, even though many were under-leveled and held very weak spells. To give an idea of where I was standing, I was between levels 20-25 and most of my personas were from the first area, and none of them were over level 11. Now I'm rocking several in my collection and all are over level 19 and my battles have more in terms of strategy and might to turn the tide in battles. If I hadn't had come to this board I would have never trusted myself to fuse and would still be trying to grind without the necessary tools at my disposal. So, thanks again everyone!

For me I tend to cover all the base elements.

Have one for fire, while another for ice,then wind, then elec..and so on.

If I can get someone that has the best stats and skills for a certain element, I replace the guy that was doing that purpose before.

It depends on the type of Persona I need and whether he is strong enough to make my other Persona useless or not, setting each to a certain type of element just keeps them organized and easier to use.