It’s not a Persona game. Yes, it has influences from Persona, but it is meant to be mostly an original title with elements from both Persona and Fire Emblem. Calling it a Persona game would be like calling Kingdom Hearts a Final Fantasy game.

It’s more of a lean towards characters from the Arachnea games (FE 1, 2, 11, 12) and Awakening.

You can get “proper demon and skill setups” through means other than grinding, such as just wisely fusing the right demons and choosing the right skills, along with making good judgements on the skills to attach to your character. I didn’t grind at all either playing through the game, I almost always just went from…