Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
Persona 1 isn't a bad game per-say... it's just aged REALLY poorly compared to the other Persona (2) at the time. It's systems are obtuse (I still don't get what the point of moving my party around manually is supposed to do) and the main story (NOT THE SIDEQUEST) is completely... not... there. You get pieces of story for like every 2-5 hours of dungeon crawl. It's very... dripping... compared to the "story a minute" nature Persona 2 on took.
I do believe all the positions in battle mattered due to the ranges of the weapons the characters had.