I haven't played Nocturne so i'll mostly talk about Persona 3 and 4. I'm surprised your gripe about the repetitive dungeon focused on persona 4 instead of 3, which is the definition of repetitive.
You climb up a massive 200+ floor tower, the music is the same, the floor design is practically the same and it's all just so bad. if you get unlucky and the enemy pulls a mudo skill on your MC and it hits... well enjoy restarting. One of the first few games i actually quit just because the game play was fuck awful, only to come back because i liked the characters. At least in persona 4 the dungeons were mostly just 10 floors, had a different theme to it, you could restart in the same floor you were at and just felt better.
And SMT 4 didn't sell well? It's the highest selling main line SMT game, how is that not selling well? I'm getting the impression that you got "the reason it didn't sell is because Persona is better", from me. Persona is not a better game IMO, it's just far more popular because of that dating sim element. I mean i love the game but, when i hear people talking about persona it's never about the story, or the gameplay, or the soundtrack. It's mostly about which character they think is the hottest (talking about other websites here, not vgchartz)
