Persona Social Link Mechanics I Won't Miss

As much as I enjoy Persona's Social Link(or Confidant in Persona 5) system, there are some annoying mechanics that go along with it, especially in Persona 3, when the system debuted. Luckily, most of these were dropped in several games, and I will look at some of the ones that I won't miss.

No Indication You're Ready To Advance

In order to level up a Social Link, you need a certain number of relationship points with your friend, represented by musical notes, which you earn by spending time witih them and giving the right answers. The amount is unclear(I wish there was a progress meter, but that's beside the point), but if you have enough, the next time you spend time with your friend, you'll get a rank up. If not, you'll gain some points, and will only be able to proceed to the next rank once you have met the quota. In some cases, this may be inevitable, like with Nanako's Socal Link in Persona 4.

Usually, you'll get some indication as to whether your Social Link is ready to advance if you talk to the NPC in question, but not in Persona 3. You won't find out until you actually spend time with them, thus spending a session that could be spent advancing another Social Link or improving your social stats. Portable allows you to save in advance so you can load if you make a wrong choice, but still leave the trial and error aspect.

Holiday Hangouts Don't Rank Up Links

On Sundays or other school holidays, you will sometimes get calls from your Social Link friends first thing in the morning, asking to hang out with you. Unfortunately, while they can get you relationship points, and allow you to give a gift to them for more points, they do not allow you to rank up. As such, while hanging out with friends on weekends can help you with Social Links that aren't ready to advance, your time may be better spent on others, such as Akinari(who is only available on Sundays).

Another minor problem is that you only have one chance to accept the invitation. If you do, you're booked solid for the afternoon, but if you don't, you won't be able to change your mind if you find that there's nothing you'd rather do. Persona 5 changed this mechanic to getting instant messages on night, and allows you to delay responding until the next day.

Worse, the weekend hangouts tend to only give points with one Social Link. Persona 4 and 5 generally compensate for the inability to rank up if you say yes to your friends' invitations to hang out with them by allowing you to get points in multiple Social Links(while Mishima in Persona 5, who invites you most often, does not require points to rank up, he often helps you find new hangout spots).

As a final problem, most Persona 3 Social Links cannot advance when school is closed, especially during summer vacation. Persona 4 alleviated this by having only a handful of school Social Links, and Persona 5 has no school-exclusive Confidants, save for the start of Kawakami's Confidant and the event that unlocks the Mementos request.

Links Reversing If Neglected

Of course, there's another reason why you should spend time with your Social Links every so often apart from getting points and ranks up with them. In the original version of Perona 3, if you neglect a Social Link for too long, it will be Reversed, and require you to spend time with the friend to make amends with them. If you continue to neglect that link, it will break, permanently depriving you of the experience boost for fusing Persons.

Making time for a Social Link every so often is reasonable enough, but it gets complicated when you're juggling several Social Links at once, and may have to choose between advancing one and preventing another from reversing. Female Social Links are especially problematic, since after girls fall in love with you, you have an even shorter window of opportunity before their Social Links reverse.

Luckily, in Persona 4, there are only three instances in which a Social Link can Reverse- telling Ai that her rejection of a suitor was "cruel," refusing to help Ai get together with your sports team friend, or refusing to help Naoto with the phantom thief case- all of which are rather obvious. There's only one way to break a Social Link- agree to go out with Ai and refuse to stay friends with her when she breaks up with you. The Portable remake of 3 also eliminated the chance of Reversing Social Links, and only had one opportunity to break a Social Link on the female route.

Inevitably Romantic Female Social Links

Related to jealousy, there's the fact that certain female Social Links inevitably turn romantic after a certain point. Not only does this mean that you will inevitably have to contend with the jealousy mechanic, but if you want to max out all Social Links and fill the Persona Compendium, you must become a two-timing philanderer.

The subsequent games, as well as the Portable version of 3, offered a simple fix. With romanceable Social Links, there is a dialogue prompt that usually happens at Rank 9, but can occasionally come at Rank 8 or 10, in which the Social Link implicitly or explicitly confesses her love to the player character. The player is then warned to choose their words carefully, and reminded if they are already in a romantic relationship. In fact, there may even be cases in which the player has to make the right choice at an earlier point in order to even have the possibility of a romance, but the choices are relatively obvious if you think about it.

Conclusion

While Social Links were an excellent addition to Persona 3, they had their share of inconveniences and frustrating factors. Persona 4 and 5 helped refine the idea by ironing out some of those flaws, making it a good example of how small adjustments can improve upon a feature and make it more player-friendly and enjoyable in the process.