That's all well and good, but when I praise Nier's story, I praise two aspects in particular:

1. The Sacrifice ending. And I'm far from the only person who thought that ending was genius. 
2. The second playthrough could effectively be named "Nier, You Bastard!", because of the Shadow of the Colossus-like player guilting that goes on the whole time. 

I'm personally fine with Nier not being so "f***ed up", because this also means that Nier's story didn't lose me with any sort of contrived ridiculousness. The point was to tug at the heartstrings, and I firmly believe Nier did it better than most RPGs that came out in recent memory.

Yeah if you don't like dungeon crawlers and grinding, then Persona isn't for you. That's the essence of Persona.

It is unfortunate though that you didn't like the social sim aspect of it because the games are best known for that unique blend. I can definitely see why you thought the game was boring though because the point is that you are meant to balance going up the tower with your character's stat and relationship build up in real life. If you do one or the other exclusively, you are not only going to find it boring, but also run into trouble later on in the game. Personally I thought almost every character you could have a social link with had something very interesting to share and taught you some kind of real world moral. By the end of all of their segments, you overcame some kind of hurdle and really got to know and learn from them. This led me to have almost the opposite effect to what you had where I felt like I wanted to keep doing more social links (or build my character's stats to access more social links) and started ignoring the tower climbing. It was once I played the game a bit more that I realised the balance that you need to overcome the challenge later on.

You see, if you wanted to, you can actually skip the days, ignore the social links and move forward to the end of the month in 10-15 minutes time if you wanted to. That would allow you to push the story forward as well as unlock newer floors of the tower. All you have to do is just return straight home after school and just go to sleep in your room, which essentially skips the day. Although this doesn't affect you in the beginning of the game, later on you wouldn't be able to keep up with the increased challenge in Tartarus, which has a steep increase. This is because your persona level up more the higher the corresponding social link level is. So if you have really low social link levels, your fused persona levels will be extremely low, leading to you being destroyed in battle, or alternatively requiring you to do an inhumane amount of grinding.

So yeah, all in all, I don't think Persona is the type of game that'll suit you. It turns into very much like a Pokemon game where you are trying to get the best critter (Persona) ombination and give them the best moves strategically possible. So yeah, I think I've ranted way too much. Funny enough, I loved TWEWY as well. Another amazing game. Both games to me were breaths of fresh air. While I love the classic JRPG formula, these changed things up quite a bit.

You´ve got lots and lots of games to play and savour.During the 5th generation, I was a bit different, as it was when I got into RPGs, while you skipped over them.

It´s sad, with SquareEnix being shit for a long time (my opinion), and with the JRPG genre as a whole being relegated to handhelds (I don´t really enjoy handhelds, though perhaps I´ll give the 3DS a try), the genre is more of a happy memory to me, than something to get excited about nowadays :(

Anyway, happy gaming!

1. Is that the ending where Kame dies? That was alright, but I saw it coming, so I didn't like it.

2. Drakengard shares that feeling, but to a higher degree. Furiae is the main characters sister in Drakengard, and a big aspect of the game revolves around her. Either someone being infatuated with her, her being kidnapped, sacrificed, commiting suicide, etc.....her and the Dragon, allmost all of their endings are sad (usually except 1), and the game still makes you struggle to save everyone, only to have you half succeed in the end (you either live, but with consequences, or die without any)

Drakengard is pretty convoluted, but that's what makes it so good. The gameplay is fairly repetative, and it gives you a lot of time to think about what you're doing and why. It's one of the darkest games I've ever played, and Nier to me just feels like a simplified version of Drakengard, which to me just sucks.

But to each their own right?

1. No. It's the ending where you choose to save her. It's probably the only proper final, true ending, for that matter. 
2. Yeah, that's very similar. Although I believe Nier has the advantage, character-wise.

You're 5 years older then me, so you may have gotten into JRPG's at the same time I have. I for the most part beat a good amount of PS2/Gamecube JRPG's, with few exceptions. I didn't get into JRPG's until I was a teenager, and when I did I started with SNES/GBA. As a result I've beaten most of the better 16-bit JRPG's. Now it's time to move onto 32 bit

I agree with you about Square Enix, GBA and PSP are great systems, but when you look at their libraries, half of the games are SNES/PS1 remakes. SNES/PS1 was the era of quality Japanese games. When you look at Final Fantasy, and the JRPG's SE makes now....it is sad. I mean 3 of the best console JRPG's from the 7th gen aren't even Square Enix (XenoBlade, Lost Odyssey, Valkyria Chronicles). I would even put Namco above Square Enix since the Tales of franchise has been really enjoyable last gen.

Also P.S. with all the games we've mentioned between us, I know I'll love them all. I've either beaten games in those franchises, or played a solid couple hours into each game to know I'll love them. Damn.....I'm not going PS4 any time soon.

1. I still saw that coming too lol
2. I disagree, but I do admit Emil is a damn interesting character. I wish more levels in the game brought up details about his back story, I read all of his files in the game, he could be a game on his own. :-O

Of all the JRPGs I´ve ever played, Xenogears has the best story.It´s very convoluted, and I had to look for explanation on the net, in order to try and understand it.

It´s quite complex and deep, plus it´s one of the best games I played on the PS1, a reminder of how good Square was in the 90s.