If you enjoyed Persona and are looking for a way to get deeper into MegaTen, I can't recommend DDS1 enough.
It's got a pretty strong atmosphere, perhaps not quite as much as Nocturne, but makes up for it with vastly stronger character writing. I haven't been so interested to hear what minor NPCs have to say in a JRPG since I first played Chrono Trigger, and the main cast has a definite chemistry.
In terms of gameplay, it runs on the same excellent Press Turn system used in Nocturne, which is hard to explain but so intuitive that I'm sad that the simplified One More system originally necessitated by Persona 3's AI-controlled party members continued to be used into Persona 5 instead of it.
But I digress, the primary difference is with your party composition. Not only are you reduced down to 3 party members, but you are also not recruiting demons anymore. Instead, you buy Mantra that, when maxed out, grant you new Skills. This means that you can build every party member's moves to your preference. This tips the balance considerably into the player's favour, which may upset more experienced MegaTen fans, but allows a newer player the agency to get to grips with combat better, which is good, because the game expects you to make good use of your tools to survive.
In the same way, the lack of demon negotiations arguably removes a layer of depth to combat encounters, but it, along with a general streamlining of its story, also contributes to the game being far better paced than the vast majority of JRPGs. The high encounter rate, especially in a few areas later in the game, can serve to slow this down, and the frequent 'ambush' encounters where you'll quickly find the least tedious option is to simply flee the battle can get grating. However, by granting the player more freedom in modifying your teams, these become problems that you have the agency to solve, which is the empowering feeling that I think separates MegaTen from most other JRPG franchises in terms of appeal.
There are some notable problems with this system, however. For example, I can appreciate that allowing the player to save and easily swap between pre-prepared Skill builds could serve to make the gameplay less interesting by incentivising the player to instead attempt to cover all of their bases in a single build. However, the result on my first playthrough as I got later into the game was spending far too much time tediously swapping between builds that allowed for buffing and builds that allowed for coverage every time I suspected a boss was coming near. This was annoying, but the alternative was making every random encounter substantially more tedious by reducing my coverage, or risking going into a boss fight only to find out that without buffing and debuffing I had no chance of winning.
In the same way there's also just a lot of little annoyances, like having to reassemble your party in the menu every time a status effect made one of them flee the battle. The fact that so much late-game content looks identical is a bit disappointing, even if the atmosphere provided by those areas is arguably the best in the game.
However, I kept on playing, because when I got down to it, the combat was snappy, delighful and empowering, and the themes were genuinely meaningful and thought-provoking. Not to mention that the music is Shoji Meguro in his prime. I still get a kick out of the opening beats of the standard battle theme, even after 30+ hours of play. The vast majority of its flaws are just the inevitable limitations of its game design pushed to their most logical conclusions, and that's something very few games can say about themselves. I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing this, and I think just about anyone with a passing interest in JRPGs will too.
It's got a pretty strong atmosphere, perhaps not quite as much as Nocturne, but makes up for it with vastly stronger character writing. I haven't been so interested to hear what minor NPCs have to say in a JRPG since I first played Chrono Trigger, and the main cast has a definite chemistry.
In terms of gameplay, it runs on the same excellent Press Turn system used in Nocturne, which is hard to explain but so intuitive that I'm sad that the simplified One More system originally necessitated by Persona 3's AI-controlled party members continued to be used into Persona 5 instead of it.
But I digress, the primary difference is with your party composition. Not only are you reduced down to 3 party members, but you are also not recruiting demons anymore. Instead, you buy Mantra that, when maxed out, grant you new Skills. This means that you can build every party member's moves to your preference. This tips the balance considerably into the player's favour, which may upset more experienced MegaTen fans, but allows a newer player the agency to get to grips with combat better, which is good, because the game expects you to make good use of your tools to survive.
In the same way, the lack of demon negotiations arguably removes a layer of depth to combat encounters, but it, along with a general streamlining of its story, also contributes to the game being far better paced than the vast majority of JRPGs. The high encounter rate, especially in a few areas later in the game, can serve to slow this down, and the frequent 'ambush' encounters where you'll quickly find the least tedious option is to simply flee the battle can get grating. However, by granting the player more freedom in modifying your teams, these become problems that you have the agency to solve, which is the empowering feeling that I think separates MegaTen from most other JRPG franchises in terms of appeal.
There are some notable problems with this system, however. For example, I can appreciate that allowing the player to save and easily swap between pre-prepared Skill builds could serve to make the gameplay less interesting by incentivising the player to instead attempt to cover all of their bases in a single build. However, the result on my first playthrough as I got later into the game was spending far too much time tediously swapping between builds that allowed for buffing and builds that allowed for coverage every time I suspected a boss was coming near. This was annoying, but the alternative was making every random encounter substantially more tedious by reducing my coverage, or risking going into a boss fight only to find out that without buffing and debuffing I had no chance of winning.
In the same way there's also just a lot of little annoyances, like having to reassemble your party in the menu every time a status effect made one of them flee the battle. The fact that so much late-game content looks identical is a bit disappointing, even if the atmosphere provided by those areas is arguably the best in the game.
However, I kept on playing, because when I got down to it, the combat was snappy, delighful and empowering, and the themes were genuinely meaningful and thought-provoking. Not to mention that the music is Shoji Meguro in his prime. I still get a kick out of the opening beats of the standard battle theme, even after 30+ hours of play. The vast majority of its flaws are just the inevitable limitations of its game design pushed to their most logical conclusions, and that's something very few games can say about themselves. I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing this, and I think just about anyone with a passing interest in JRPGs will too.