What the fuck happened? - JRPGs, but mostly Persona 3

I remember back in the day reading about Persona 3, and how great it was given that the characters were so cute but shoving guns to their heads to release their inner demons.
You play a introverted high-school student, whose main attribute in the opening sequence is your fancy, name-brand headphones, and your stylish high-school attire. Obviously this is you, right? The target audience? Shy, Japanese Otaku who thinks about deep things like, "Memento mori: remember you die."
Persona 3 is pretty bad.
This isn't a "not my sort of game" thing, it's bad. After playing an hour, I had one really un-interesting battle ("Ooh, I had to attack four times in order to kill those two indiscriminate blob things that seem ripped off of Spirited Away's No-face. Oh joy! This is real good gaming!"). Most of the time spent in the game was watching time pass and several characters I know or care nothing (i was given no incentive!) about go to an over-hyped place I despise: High School. A part of the game is even giving your friend answers to the questions in class.
Why is this a game? It seems like an anime disguised as a game. The video sequences are even in anime, and could be pulled from Noir, Blood +, or even Persona 2. Persona 2 was prettier, and it was a PSX game!
Oh, he's a dude with a mysterious past, or he's a regular dude with a hidden power, or ughhh....and they have to fight "The Shadows" who give people the Apathy Syndrome (you know, it's called something goofy because the Japanese are using an English word where they would usually use Japanese, so why can't the voice-acting just be in Japanese with subtitles? It'd be so much more pleasant to listen to. They respect voice-actors there.) The premise is just uninteresting as shit. It's been done so many times before.
Whatever happened to "it's a world where magic has been sealed away for generations, and an evil empire is now using the last remaining capable magic user to destroy a small town and capture a magical spirit, but the rebellion has removed the crown controlling her, and recruited her to save the world from the empire?"
Whatever happened to the mysterious stranger signing up to save the world by blowing up energy reactors run by an evil corporation killing the planet (and that was mostly just that one town. From town to town, people led very different lives), and another mysterious stranger attacking that corporation but with unknown objectives carrying a strange alien creature?
Both of these were premises exposed in the first hour (or so) that made for amazing plots and really fun experiences as the game went on.
But I've realized other questions arose in the plodding storytelling of Persona 3...like what fucking contract did you sign? Why does the opening sequence tell you that your character may only have a year to live? Is that why your character is so willing to "shoot" himself to evoke his persona? This is how I tricked myself into playing FFXII for so long, the whole time going, "Obviously, there's some higher level of depth here, right?" Whether Persona 3 is even worth that time is not clear.

The battle system is not bad. You have basic attacks, skills, and you order your other teammates to act in a certain way (act freely, kill this guy, use this skill). What's nice is taking advantage of an opponent's weakpoint gives you a boost (called One More) where you can attack another time. Unfortunately, then the support party member will tell you the obvious "Hey! You took advantage of that enemy!" I know, bitch! It felt good! Maybe right now I can take a Lynny J signature flow break to point out how little it adds to have voice-acting in an RPG, especially in this RPG where all you really get to see of the characters besides the poorly-shot, jumpy-as-hell anime sequences is their sprites running around a hotel, school, or the dungeon or their set drawing of various facial expressions. Voice-acting without being able to pick up the characters' non-verbal and facial cues is worthless to me. Plus, there's only a handful of American voice-actors anyway. I mean, I get happy every time I hear Spike (from Cowboy Bebop) doing a voice, but I'd rather remember him as Spike than every grizzled character in an Anime or videogame (Rogue Galaxy). Spike's voice as Mugen was incredible though.
Back to the battle system, take advantage of all the enemies in the battle, and you get the opportunity to do an all-out attack where your whole teammates bum-rush the enemies. The battle system's not bad not because it's particularly interesting, but because chaining these attacks together makes battles not overly time-consuming (which is how I got through Lunar 2: Eternal Blue, kill all the enemies in one turn, and battles become more strategically interesting and short!). This is bad considering that the battle system is the biggest action or gameplay element of an RPG, and it's especially bad in this RPG because...
Because...
Because the fucking thing is dungeon-based. Not, ooh, interesting-new-environments-based, but oh-same-basic-concept-repeated-ad-nauseam-based (reminds me of .hack).

Side note: My favorite parts of .hack were the e-mails to your party members, trading up for better weapons from other players, and the tactics system that gave extreme benefits to high-level coordination on opponent's weaknesses from all party members.
Umm...since Persona 3 has you mostly acting alone, you don't really get that level of co-ordination, but you do get a social-link system where you answer questions based on what kind of Persona card (Oh, God. Every single RPG and anime has some sort of weird card game these days, all to sell extra merchandise) you think the answers would give. Collecting cards of a certain type lets you fuse more powerful Personas from cards you gain in randomized post-battle 3-card monty sequences (Super Mario 3 or lame, anyone?). Gaining levels gives you no chance to customize your characters. All stat increases are already set in stone...so...the only real chance for customization is the Persona thing, which I already mentioned is kind of lame. I mean there's like a fusion or alchemy or some other sort of item-combination patooey in like every RPG.

I...

I...

I...continue to play this game under what I assume are false pretenses. If anybody knows why this game is this way and sells and gets good reviews...please tell me so that I might generate some other more interesting reasons to continue to play. Otherwise, this is FFXII to me, and I hated XII something fierce despite how many other people found it to be the best-tasting cock they ever lick-lick-lick-licked like a lollipop.

aheM...Shorty says she mi(g)ht want to lick the rapper, B, after you "get it juicy for [her]"

-Lynny Jo,
but you can call me "Nny"

P.S. "Call me, so I can get it juicy for you?" WTF? Do rappers actually talk to women? Do they say these things and actually get laid? Don't answer. I don't really want to know.