Prince Akeem
Its not that deep breh....
Y'all nikkas bugging Persona 3/4 is not better especially 3. nostalgia got y'all tweaking. P3 is a terrible Persona game. That shyt had me wanting to quit damn near half way through nothing happened until like fukking September.
Persona 4 is still one of my favorites but P5 blew it out the water imo. Dudes was saying the same shyt when 4 came out claiming 3 was better. I think 5 done made dudes realize that dungeon crawling ain't their thing since 3/4's dungeon crawling was something you could simply rush and get out of the way whereas in 5 it's much more involved and integral to the game.
I don't even fathom how people can say P3/4 is objectively better than 5. There are so many quality of life improvements over the previous 2 games.
-Dungeons are better. You don't feel pressured to run though it in one go.
-Social links are better and offer more than just extra levels for Persona
-Velvet room is better
-Combat is better
-Menus are even more stylish


"
I mean the gameplay mechanics are dated af but at the time, they were pushing boundaries...just about the progression of games in general. 

after a few dozen hours of repetitive drudgery the lingo changed on that too.

you're reaching. had those polls said otherwise you would've been glad to use em but sure.
are you even saying now? The combat being so fast when you solve an enemy helps keep the dungeon progression moving. Are you suggesting that it'd be better to have to waste 10/20 minutes fighting random mobs of enemies? Also you didn't even mention that there's luck and stats involved. Half the times I died later on because the enemy got a critical strike or they used some status ailment that I wasn't prepared for so clearly that introduced even more layers to the "trial and error" gameplay that you trying to position as some sort of flaw. If you played on Normal it was a bit easy but on hard it was just right.
edit: i can't even get through the rest of your post after that. straight up NAW THATS NOT WHAT HAPPENED even though its exactly what happens lmao