Wanted to reply earlier, but I needed some time to write a post. I feel like in general the core appeal is definitely the JRPG high school stuff where you can make friends and choose how to spend your time, with the after school dungeon crawling coming in second. I can’t speak for others here, but I feel like no game full on does what it does on its level on the social sim front and for some online there is an understanding you know what you are in for to get to the stuff you want from the game which does lead to whiplash for those who have yet to dive in when it’s ultimately far more messy than the high praise suggests.
I know I made the Will It Ever Come To Switch Thread, but despite that my enthusiasm for the series in general is relatively lower compared to others. I think the series has a lot of problems and Persona 5 in particular is extra trashy and more extreme on certain fronts. It also has an arc at the start that raises expectations, Kamoshida being a bully and an abusive creep, but is ultimately comically in a bad way uninterested in living up to the rejection it has for him in terms of being better to the extent it feels like that first part was written by a different team entirely. I think the modern games in general have this huge disconnect at their core as well where it’s battling being accepting of others against excluding others with its gay panic / homophobia for example.
To speak to your post more, I actually don’t recommend this game/series widely to people in person because it is so messy and occasionally straight up hurtful. I think it skated by more criticism from myself and others when it was a smaller series, but at least for myself with Persona 5 exploding the prominence of the franchise and as time goes on I know I’m going to continue to be more critical of the series and other Atlus games moving forward if it doesn’t improve. Unchecked homophobia and transphobia isn’t going to fly with me in future games at all and I’ll be skipping future games if they are present. After Persona 5 in particular, they definitely are aware of the criticisms from their own Western staff at least if not from fans and they have new people in charge so I’m hopeful at least for some positive change.
A bit of tangent to end on, I said in my first paragraph, no one does what they do best on the social sim front, but I really wish we would see a direct competitor come forth that has different values. We have games pulling from parts of Persona, namely the social links, but there is no other high school/college/life social sim out there quite like it. I’d love to have other alternatives for games about making friends and choosing how to spend your free time in real world and fictional settings where that’s the main focus rather than a side feature. Some farming games seemingly touch on this, but I don’t really like farming all that much lol.