I just went to GameStop

[Ultimecia]

All I can say about Persona is that most of the games in that series are EXPENSIVE, but I have heard good things about it.

Like Gizmonicgamer, the Persona series came from the Megaten (Shin Megami Tensei) series, and this usually means "Kiss your life goodbye, you're going to spend the rest of your time grinding". They are great games, but they are unforgiving.
Persona's games prices are normal, never seem nothing too expensive about them.
Nocturne is the best Megaten title so far if you ask me. Persona 3 I found kinda of boring. You got the level up in random dungeons with the same background music and only with texture swapping along with a primitive dating sim where you don't get a girlfriend. Megaten 1 and 2 are pretty good but they are very hard, and the PS1 Personas got laughable translations. I still have to play Persona 4.

isn't .hack like final fantasy?

No, not quite. Think of Final Fantasy XII (God, I HATE it's system and I'm a Final Fantasy addicted) but to use any items or special abilities you got to access the menu via pause menu and stuff like that. You level up like crazy, spend all your healing items against the freaking final boss and when you get the next game you discover that you're UNDERLEVELED to continue. And you got another 3 games to play to even try to get a grip about the story (and you actually never does because the series aren't going to explain a shit because they want to sell MORE stuff).