Persona 3 Redux

After posts "What the Fuck Happened? - JRPGS, mostly Persona 3" and "In the interest of friendly debate," I gave Persona 3 another shot.
By another shot, I mean I played it several nights through to 6 am. I really enjoyed it. It starts off really slow, true, but the apex of the game comes from the fact that it's not a JRPG with dating-sim elements, it's the other way around. It's a dating sim where successful social interaction makes you better in battle, or this is the way I like to think of it because the battle system gets really old. I got really tired of switching my persona based on which enemy I was facing, using the same attack on each individual enemy then doing the all-out attack. Boss fights were more fun except for the one where my lack of battle training and proper Persona creation made a fight against a boss with no weaknesses (attacking a weak point disables the enemy, this particular enemy had moves that could severely hurt one of my party members. I ended up letting him die in the interest of conserving resources) near impossible, but that's not the game's fault.
There's no growth in the battle system. Doing well in battle makes it so you can get cash or make higher level Personas, but leveling up by itself only increases your health and spirit points and your party members' Persona level. So, Persona 3's battle system is too repetitive with too few benefits. Also, in order to progress to fight higher level enemies, you have to complete a story event, so leveling up takes longer because lower level enemies give much less experience.
The boss battle sequences and requests (a.k.a. side-quests) are fun and rewarding, but are the only times when fighting becomes really important and meaningful. Otherwise, you're better off spending your night upping your charm or academics so you can date one of your party members in the future.