It seems to be a fucking amazing RPG.
As for the story, yeah, it should be pretty story focused. Expect it to be more serious than what you see in persona too.
If you can beat the Persona games in medium difficulty, I think you'll be okay in IV. There's even an easy mode that triggers after you die two times, so you can play on that so you can enjoy the story and atmosphere and not worry too much about dying in every encounter.
It's not hard. As long as you read the text and fuse you'll be fine.
Most mistakes are from people trying to just use attack over and over.
The stories are good but are presented in a different way than Persona and isn't as character-driven. But besides that the press turn battle system is great, music is as awesome or better than Persona. "Dungeon crawler" here just means the focus is on the dungeons and battles, that's all, but SMT IV looks to have more story than Nocturne and the other main SMT games.
Also no SMT is not super difficult.
Excellent. I'll take the gamble on it when I get paid on Thursday, and when I complete Xenoblade. Especially since I was able rationalize it in my head of it only truly costing me $20 (because of the $30 that was going to go to AA5 anyway).
But hell, I'm still surprise this cost $50.