Your first persona story sounds like mine, except I started with Eternal Punishment. Anime in my video games? I thought this was so amazing at the time. Thankfully Persona 2 had a lot more going for it, and I became a fan almost instantly. Then they made Persona 3.... *sigh* I did beat the game and even started playing through 'The Answer' or w/e the expansion thing is called, but I was still very disappointed with it. Thankfully Persona 4 was a decent improvement, still not what I wanted, but fixed a few of my problems with 3, enough to make me not feel as disappointed with the Persona series. Which is good because I suspect they are gonna keep making them in this style for some time(please prove me wrong Atlus).
As for the SMT games... I beat both the DDS games, which I loved, but the 'main' series, despite playing several of them to damn near completion, I've never actually beat any of them. If my damn PS2 didn't crap out on me I'd probably go play Noctune right now(emulation of it sadly crap, and I can't use my ps2 controller on my PC anymore, making it annoying to even play).