The revamped shuffle time mechanics kinda break the difficulty. My wife beat the last four or five dungeons with just a Decarabia with Megidolaon, since she kept getting magic bonuses, and the Persona ended up with max magic. She was over level 90 in the last dungeon despite devoting no time on grinding (heck, in the last two dungeons she literally avoided all battles) and wrecked the final boss (true ending) to pieces.

Seriously, while Persona may be difficult compared to FF, FF is one of the easiest series out there. Seriously, Persona has nothing on mainline MegaTen at least.