When I said presentation above, I was mostly talking about the voice acting and how there are weird pauses all over the place, how the translation is sometimes odd, etc. But I've only played the PS2 version and haven't even made it to where Rorie is in the Quick Look. As someone who didn't play it when it was new, you have to be really accepting of wonky dialog and voice acting to get to those juicy plot points. And yes, just from what I played, the plot does seem fairly "juicy".
But nevermind that. The real reason I quoted you is to ask why you think the battle system and stat-improving of the Persona games is in any way "limited". God, if anything, being able to carry around a bunch of mythological creatures with varying strengths, weaknesses, and skills in your back pocket is fairly freeing. I speak as someone who is way into SMT games and who likes, but doesn't love, Final Fantasy, so it will be interesting to see the other side's complaints. I also think the Sphere Grid is a pretty horrible way to level up, so there's that.
On a final note, I'll agree that the Persona games aren't a good representation of JRPG's in general. As far as turn-based combat goes, yes, but their structure is completely different from most.
Again, I'm not going to deny the game has translation problems - just it seems like a less-then-great reason to not want to play it. I was more aiming towards the OP though, who was saying they wanted to go for a PS2 or later era of game but that found the presentation in FFXHD lacking in the Quick Look (sort of implies to me that they really mean they want to play a game from late-PS2 and PS3 era instead).
Anyway, as for Persona I'll preface this by saying I only completed PErsona 3 and got bored with Persona 4 meaning I didn't move to other games in the Persona series (though I have played some other Shin Megami Tensei games). My problem with it stems less with the core character and more with the party. While I enjoyed the mixing of the Persona's in that game ( think that's what they were called - the mythological creatures you spoke of) for the main character, I found through the entirety of Persona 3 (And the part of 4 I played) it was a minor gain to make up for the fact that the other party members were very restricted and felt underpowered. It was like the game was incentivising me to make the main character's Persona vastly superior to all the others characters to the point of the rest of the party was sometimes more of a burden in battle than being useful.
Added to that, the actual battling felt limited to me because it was so standard. That's not really a criticism in itself, but it seemed like all the status affects of the game were kind of pointless (straddling the line between easy to ignore and just annoying - like the status ailments in the Pokémon series). As such, the items introduced in the game seemed like cheap ways of negating these affects and nothing more. (As I said about one of my main loves of Final Fantasy X, its highly fleshed out number of uses of items that may look fairly standard - such as "cures poison" - on the outset but are actually much more useful than their base description for many different reasons).
Then the weapon system in Persona 3 seemed like the usual "pick weapon with highest ratio of Attack to accuracy that you have for each character". Without anyway of augmentation or having unique things for different types of weapons, they seemed kind of pointless. Oddly, every time I got to a point where my normal attacks weren't doing enough damage and I wanted to buy a better weapon rather than wait to see if I found a better one soon, it felt like I was wasting money since money is useful for things in the relationship part of Persona.
Persona 3's battle system felt like it wanted each character to be uniquely strong in different areas with the main character able to compliment them. But it ended up for me feeling like the main character had to make up for the other character's weaknesses while also having the ability to fit the other character's roles better than they could. That's just how I found it though, and maybe P4 or others fixed those problems that I just never got to the point to see (heck, maybe even FES fixed those problems - I never bothered to go back and play that part).
As for the Sphere Grid, my love of it stems from the fact that on first look it will seem like each character has a set path (especially if you pick to play it on the normal Sphere Grid arrangement) resulting in just a normal progression of characters. But actually it isn't like that at all. It's more of a web that every character is apart of. If you want them to meet up on it and learn the same abilities (such as having multiple Black Magic users) then you can do that. Even during the story, about half way through they give you a friend sphere to basically say "hey you wan warp a character to any other character if you want - try it out". Further from that, because you can unlock spaces adjacent to the one you are on, it gives you a lot more versatility in how you go between points since you just have to plan for being within one space of something you want. Then, at any given moment you can very quickly return to an earlier point to branch in a different direction if you want (since moving along a line you have previously gone through will allow you to move 4 spaces per level instead of 1). It's basically a respec system that's open to you at any time - all it costs is the number of levels you need to move back to the point you want to go (and you don't even have to lose the stuff you've already gained). Soon you get spheres that allow you to change a blank space into an attribute gain you want (one of the earliest one you get is if you win the Blitzball mach you get a Strength+4 space to drop down). This might just seem like a normal "give the stat item to a character" from most games (like proteins in Pokémon - or there was an equivalent in Persona 3 if I remember correctly). But it isn't just that. Sure, you could give that strength sphere to one person. Or you can plan to give it to multiple people (in my current playthrough, I got Yuna, Lulu, Kimahri and Wakka to pass by the Magic -ra abilities like Fira, I dropped a magic+4 next to it and now 4 of my characters gain the boost).
Then this is where it becomes really great for me - the late-game. AS you go through the game, you'll get to the end of the line each character went through getting that lines final ability. Then you get a lot of options on where each character goes (this is the point in the game where the normal sphere grid opens up - though the Expert one kind of allows this immediately). There is an almost-canonical path afterwards (e.g. Rikku moves into Lulu's sphere grid and learns Black Magic to mirror the fact that in the story she is persuaded to try out magic despite her fear of thunder magic - this is just a tiny thing that's referenced at a specific point). But that's not the only way to go, and if you have some Key Spheres, there's even more to their straight path to go for if you want it*.
Nevertheless, past this point into the final end-game (going up against Dark Aeons for instance) you get one more ability that seals the deal as why I like the sphere grid. You gain the ability to delete nodes back to clear spaces and then refill them with a different attribute or a better version of the previous one. This is how you max out stats. But also, to the players who don't want to max out characters it means you can continue to boost characters in their current role passed the point of where their line which focuses on those stats ends. Your black mage can go back through the black made sphere grid and turn all the +(1 to 3) nodes into +4 nodes and very quickly you can get super powerful characters without having to complete the whole thing for every character.
Add to that the ability to customize weapons, then the game continues to allow you to augment characters even if you want to continue down each character's basic line. (E.g., got some Lvl 2 key spheres but don't feel the need to use it anywhere as you don't want the abilities or stats they allow you to get right now? Why not use it to give piercing to a character that usually doesn't have it!)
Sorry for the long Response, but I just wanted to explain properly why I'm disappointed in Persona's battle system and love FFX's. Either way though, JRPG's are great!
*Quick tip: FFXHD in the Help Menu under references allows you to look up what each ability does by the way, so if you're unsure if you want to go for an ability then the game allows you to find out what it is beforehand.
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