They're high school students. High school kids don't speak eloquently, they act like four years old until you start treating them as such and then they act like whiny 2 year olds cause you don't give them respect. This dialogue is just accurate

Combat is okay, it mostly shines from the negotiation system. It does have its strategy since your weapons affect your character range but it gets a bit less annoying once you get access to firearms. Not to mention SP regenerates as you walk through battle so you never really have to worry about using SP restoring items unless you are a pansy and don't level. It grew on me when I was playing the PS1 version. Mostly, I'm happy to have the negotiation system back as it was my favorite part of Nocturne and P1 and 2

Persona was originally a really weird game, it doesn't take itself as serious as P3 and P4. It has its moments of high drama but like the old school FFs, its buried under some really comical absurdity like the battle with RoboRat and the little girl who attacks you with her monster Teddy Bear. Once the main plot starts to go on it feels like Silent Hill with the Umbrella Corporation thrown in to amp the evil.

The Snow Queen quest is much darker but I find it less satisfying since it literally derails the main plot and basically magically resolves the conflict of the game without addressing anything that actually caused the problem to begin with...

Also, the girl who calls the guy a perv, is a major fan-service. Tami is the official name of the girl MC from a previous MegaTen game Shin Megami Tensei If... Which is the game that originally inspired the creation of the Persona series and P1 takes a lot of its story cues from.

I will say that Persona 1 does have one of the most unlikable casts of characters... well ever. But if you plan to play through P2 you should stick with Nanjo, Elly, and Yuko as they all return as playable characters in P2 in fact P1 does play a pretty large role in P2:EP.