Thoughts on Persona 4 (so far)

Nanako is just so cute that it should be illegal.

As far as the game itself goes, it can be overwhelming deciding what to do with personas/weapons/etc. I'm not really sure how much weight the stats on armor/weapons have in battle, but persona stats also tend to affect how much damage you can deal/take as well. Even if you don't have equipment on your characters that's very high in defense/attack (for whatever point you are in the game) you can partly compensate for it by getting a persona with high strength/magic and defense. Also, elements, as you may have already noticed, play a significant part in the game. It can be very useful to have a variety of personas with elemental strengths. This way you can switch personas and not be left open to certain boss/enemy attacks that can hit your weak points. One more thing about elemental weaknesses, it's a very good idea to get personas who null/reflect light and dark skills. It can be frustrating to get a game over just because your main character got hit by a light/dark spell and was KO'ed by some random enemy. It shouldn't be a problem early on in the game, but eventually enemies are going to start getting instant kill spells.

As far as fusions go, it's usually best to fuse for personas of arcana you have a high level social link with. This way they're easier to level up and they can get better skills with less effort. I already said that elemental weaknesses/strengths were important, but making sure the persona you're trying to get via fusion is getting some good skills is also important. The more skills the personas you're fusing have, the more skills the persona you're fusing for will get. Equally important, you can select the same combination of personas over and over until you get the skills you want on the persona you're trying to get (just make sure you don't actually fuse the persona until the skills you want show up). As far as skills go, most of them have their uses, and which ones you should get mostly depends on what kind of persona you want to make. If you want a persona that can deal lots of physical damage, you want skills that can do lots of damage (most of the descriptions of the skills should tell you how much damage [in relation to other skills] they'll do). Of course, it's also a good idea to have a person with high strength and defense, especially since physical skills use HP. In a way, Persona 4 battles are like Pokemon. You try to get pokemon that have abilities that strike the weak points of your opponent's pokemon, and you also want your pokemon to be resistant against your opponent pokemon's attack. It's a bit simplified, but that's how things generally go in these Shin Megami Tensei games.

I've rambled on for too long, so happy gaming!