Short answer: Yes.@Morgan Thank you for the info.
2nd. Question. Do the characters have arcs much like the Persona character s? A compelling story basically
Long answer: Yes. But you won't get all of them in the first playthrough, because out of eight total party members [including the Protagonist/Naoya], four of them are optional, and there are two routes to the story [SEBEC route or Snow Queen route] that will lock in 1 or 3 additional party slots with those other characters. You can fill the remaining slots with the optional party members, but the party limit is 5. Once you get those five, they can't be swapped out, and the optional allies can't be attained. Entire scenes are different depending on choices and party members, so there are different dialogues available based on that, and each of them has their own individual ending to resolve their story.
Naoya is a "silent protagonist" [with dialogue trees to define his character] and not much backstory, but the manga gives him one [as well as his name, since he has three different ones and none of them are official via Atlus].