The Persona series has always repelled me for some reason and I haven't felt like getting my hands on it, but this game seems oddly intriguing. I might have to try this. Assuming I can get past the protagonist being a typical super young girly boy as per usual with these things. What is it, a Japanese fetish or something? What's wrong with grown ass people who look like they could actually take a hit or two in real life?

Yep, I'm the same. I love Persona for the gameplay and the calander system and RPG progression but tolerate the characters and the setting. I have to say, the characters in this are a lot more matured and the main character as girly as he looks feels more mature for being around them. This game takes almost everything I hate about Persona, throws it out the window and focuses on everything that good, it's quite remarkable but I'm only 14 hours in (and like 8 hours with the demo)

The few things I hate still is the difficulty curving sharply upwards all of a sudden which seems I now have to go grinding or bruise my ego and lower the difficulty among a few other small things like fast forwarding the story from a save file if you fuck up is WAY faster but it's still not instant and quite annoying and lots of loading screens on ps4 from scene to scene. Also, this "press turn" system which can turn into trial and error in many fights and it's not definitive when you will regain turn points and nothing on turn points is explained at all so it feels like it's all wishy washy. They do have "informants" which will help you know in advance what party setup or spells to use but they don't have them for everything. 

All in all I'd recommend gamers who were intrigued by atlus games or people who have just dipped there toes in, in the past. I'm the latter and loving this game, it's very addicting. 

Specifically for Persona, they are made with teenagers in mind, they are mostly self-inserted main characters, that's why all their games take place in high school too. Most people in Japan, specially teenagers, are really ectomorphic skinny guys

Have you watched any isekai anime? They are almost always basement dwellers before being transported to another world, Japan loves self inserted MCs

Besides that I think the main beauty standard of what a hot guy is in Japan is a slightly fit guy, but not muscular. Something like Noctics from Final Fantasy XV

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ3Y_iYG0otlD8ZxfY2lGzM4SZuEgmrxE-zG3WVJrV5r0wgSQjENOP6bH5B&s=10

Man, I'm so stupid. Looked up a guide on leveling to see if there was any particular way to go about it and found that there's are insense items in the inventory you pick up from the world and leveling after master rank on an archetype. Anyone can use them so you can level up new archetypes just through leveling with a master. I like it.

Also, maybe it's that they're not teenage school characters but these are the best written character in any Atlus RPG I've played. 

This game is Persona in gameplay for the most part. Sounds like you ought to play Papa Nier on 360.

Go play Shin Megami Tensei II.III.Strange Journey and Soul Hackers. (not Soul Hackers 2. That game sucks)

Well, after this I might have a taste for SMTV but I suspect a lot of quality of life features in this game and the speed with which everything moves will have those older games at a disadvantage. 

BTW, you found any significant way to level up in Metaphor yet?  

Anyone found a proper way to level up yet aside from the unbelievable grind of killing enemies and waiting for respawns.

My copy is still in the mail. Also SMT series doesn't function like Persona. If you do play SMTV play in Vengence story not vanilla. Trust me.  Tho I love SMTV it's a bit different than other games in the series.  For entry level to the series it's great as well as SMTIII Nocturne HD.

Oh, you're in for a treat. The game takes everything that's annoying about persona and throws it out the window, it's wildly addicting, I'm only 17 hours in and I can't stop thinking about it when the controllers not in my hand. And will do, I'll follow the vengeance path cause I doubt I'll do both and wanna experience the most up to date, that's if it doesn't filter me (I hear they a brutal) or the QoL is lacking.