Well, I see this thread has not been used in a bit. I've been playing quite a bit of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for some reason. The game is not in my opinion particularly fun, but it had some interesting systems in it. It made me begin to wonder if Japan has a lot of this style of game that it just doesn't export to the rest of the world.
What really interested me of this game was the 'contact' system, while it seemed like a lot of thought was put into it, it was not particularly well accomplished. I've played "Revelations: Persona" a long time ago and the contact system is similar to that, but more involved. The main gripe I had on Persona 2's contact system is it is just well.. boring. Way boring. But within that boredom there were some innovative ideas, like striking contracts with "demons" or basically monsters, where you can later ask monster or demons of the same type for items, information, or other options. For instance there is a dungeon where there is some damaging goo on the floor, and you chat with one of the demons and ask for information and they mention that one kind of demon is a real neat freak, when you start talking to the neat freak type demons they be asked to clean the goo off the floor and they will XD. I thought that was a pretty neat idea. Another thing you can spread rumors that become the truth. That sounds kinda stupid and way out there, and tbh it kinda is, but it is cool at the same time, because you can get further information about a rumor and manipulate the rumor to gain some kind of bizarro control over the rumor. There are a ton of rumors, and this system; to be fair; is WAY more in depth and thought out than the contact system with the demons. It just doesn't seem that way at first. They got a lot going on in that game that I don't think really made it to the main gaming scene, and it's a shame, because with some slight re-iterating on these ideas, they could create a whole new 'genre' within a genre. A sub-genre really. The whole Persona Series though, worth a spin if you're looking for something a little new (if you never played them before). Well I say that, Persona 1 2 and 4 are the only ones that I've played. I will probably beat 2 and play 3 sometime soon.
(And to be honest, I couldn't figure out who demon wise to talk to get the one neat freak demon things to clean the goo off the floor, I read that in a faq for the dungeon while I was going through there. XD Still kind of liked the whole idea of it.]