dude, it's a jrpg, this isn't even up for debate
The grammatical structure "it's not so much X as it is Y" doesn't mean it's not X. In fact, it means that it IS x, but that it's better defined differently [negation not exclusion].
In what world is Persona not a JRPG? The three things you just said it was a mix of are what define RPGs...
- DRPG is a subgenre of RPGs, and dungeons are massively common in JRPGs on the whole
- Its similarity to dating sims is generally overblown, and it doesn't present its story like a VN in the least, being more similar to modern JRPGs
- SMT is a JRPG series.
Some real 2+2 = 3 math going on there, man.
See above, never said it wasn't.
Second, the reason we use fine tuned acronyms like drpg is so we can do a good job describing a game to others. Jrpg is not a good description of p4g when other, better, more exact terms exist. We can debate what those terms might be, I don't really care, but calling it a jrpg without any qualifications is just as likely to mislead someone that knows nothing about it as it is to inform them. Same reason calling Wizardry a dungeon crawler or drpg is more helpful than just saying rpg or wrpg. If I knew nothing about Persona and you told me it was a jrpg, you would be misleading me in that same way, because I use the older, more traditional definition of jrpg as a genre definer, not a geographic limiter. [I have no interest in debating what jrpg means, it's an endless debate, I'm just stating which I use].
.
