I’ve made it through the whole modern Persona series (besides dancing games) and the whole 3DS library. Also Nocturne and SH2.
I don’t play to play the really obscure games like Majin Tensei or Demikids, but something like SMT1,2 or Devil Summoner (is that one translated?) sounds like something I’d still play. So, I’m barely halfway there, and these games were my main focus for a few years now.
SH2 was slow in both dungeons and combat at launch, which was my main gripe, but the first and especially the second were sped up in a patch, so it should be great now.
I really liked the combat, it’s one of the best ones in the series. The main thing that makes Persona a bit less appealing for me its that the preset party members feel like they drag down this series’ potential, and SH2 making everyone a “wild card” makes it more like the main series. Maybe even more so, since you have not 3, but at least 4 demons to keep up-to-speed. And you can actually switch out without losing buffs, which I used a lot.
That, and the bosses are generally designed to be dps races, which I thought was actually good and challenging since you couldn’t stack buffs or abuse Press Turns. Even if lazily implemented in the optional bosses (it’s just a party wipe after X turns the game doesn’t tell you about)
The main problem of speed though means I didn’t feel like doing random battles, which means I didn’t have resources for cool upgrades, and also meant spending relatively more time in the boring dungeons. I hope the patch brought it at least to Nocturne-like standards.
This’s a really interesting take on the battle system, that I like on paper! Thank you!