Persona series

You need a guide to max out all Social Links on a first playthrough. You can easily focus on Social Links on subsequent playthroughs. Oh yeah, and the S.E.E.S. Social Links except for Yukari, Fuuka, Mitsuru, and ????? are exclusive to the Female Protagonist in Portable.

P.S: S.E.E.S. and Pharo's Social Links are plot-mandated so they advance as the story progresses.

edited 18th Jan '17 6:24:56 AM by CybranGeneralSturm

Buffs are extremely OP in the game if you stack them. Attack up on you + Defense down on them multiplies damage. But until you get the auto-buffs or all buffs I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Mitsuru is a late game slink that requires max academics, I think you need to be maxed by the test in October and ace the test. You just want to max out courage then charm the academics, once maxed and at the time they are available then you can start Priestess, Lovers, and Empress respectively.

The final day is on 1/31.

If people die and you leave the floor they just go home for the day, find them and use an item to Rez them and it's all good. You being Sick or Tired can help raise courage if you visit the nurse.

Going from FES to P 3 P is good imo the story changes are refreshing and the various upgrades and short cuts are helpful, going the other way is quite a hinderance.

The max slink guide can get you maxed with everyone in one run but otherwise it's damn tough and you gotta know what you are doing.

edited 18th Jan '17 6:29:31 AM by Memers

Well...shit. I pretty much ignored Academics for the first month or two. I guess it's probably too late to max it out by October, even if I literally do nothing else.

Oh right.

Yeah, if you're sick or tired, go to the Nurse. You get a free boost to Courage that doesn't take any time.

There's so few things in the game that don't take time it's important to take advantage of it where you can.

Are you studying in school or in the library?

Are you getting the pop quiz that the arcade has sometimes?

There are also Social Links that don't start until a certain point in the main story, like Mitsuru's, regardless of social stat.

I haven't been to the Arcade thing all game... I was dumb and wasting time at the library. I checked a FAQ because fuck, I don't care if it's "cheating" I don't want to wait until a second playthrough to get to see everything about my favorite character.

Arcade and this one restaurant and "Great" contributions to the Academic Shrine are the best sources of Academic Points. Also studying on no school days so long as you aren't meeting someone. I have a save from about a week before the July Shadow boss and have been replaying from that with this new, more efficient strategy... My hope is, if I can make it to Rank 4 soon, I should be able to get to 6 by October.

I got to Rank 4 right before the Exams and the summer break stuff... I think I can make it....

I just have to watch out. I hear things get harder later on. I can't afford to neglect Tartarus too much. Literally I can't since everything costs a fucking arm and leg now. I need loot and Elizabeth's reward money.

The fact that you can't get S.Links with the other party members except the girls is one of the main reasons I dislike non-P 3 P.

The others are non-controllable party members, and getting tired inside Tartarus.

I've never had a problem with the lack of Party member Social Links. I far preferred the mechanic with NPCs.

I'd rather all the party get Social Links or none get 'em. Going halfsies kinda made MaleC look even more romantically predatory.

Oh yeah that's another thing, if you want to have a Social Link with a girl, you have to start dating her.

The Male Main Character has no platonic S.Links with girls, so you're forced into cheating if you want every S.Link.

Don't forget the Female MC in P 3 P!

edited 18th Jan '17 11:53:37 AM by RunoEddie

Thank Izanagi that dating is optional in Persona 4 and the Golden remake on the Vita.

Heh makes you wonder if they ever remake 3 again they add in some kind of punishment if you date multiple girls like in 4 & 5.

You don't get punished in P4. It's just barely acknowledged. Dunno about P5.

Really, P3P removed the punishment for cheating.

edited 18th Jan '17 1:46:15 PM by Arha

Seeing as how you were forced into it if you wanted 100% completion for the Male MC, removing the punishment was the best option they had at the time barring rewriting the S.Links and giving them a platonic option.

Mhm, it wasn't exactly fair. I've never played the base game except when I tried the Answer but it just sounds irritating.

I do think they went too far to the opposite side when it came to P4 with optional dating and no punishment.

You should have to put work into double timing so you don't get punished, and the game should still take potshots at you whenever possible.

Don't force players who don't want to do that to do that though.

The punishment in persona 4 golden was nothing. I've no clue why anyone talks it up so much.

I think it ended up as an Urban Legend of Zelda- Not much info when the game came out in Japanese but before it came out in English, a few misreports and then no one wants to try testing it.

It's not as severe as, say, the stuff in the Dragon Quest fandom, which took over a decade to dispel, but still.

Its more of a guilt thing. Its supposed to make ya feel bad or some shit like that.

Too low-key to be effective though. Ya gotta be more direct & hurtful with your punishments after all.

Ya have to really mean it so the lesion is learned.

If you're trying to guilt the player, of course it isn't going to work on everyone. An actual punishment would have to target the Social Link bonuses themselves.

Is that the Valentine's day thing? I'd classify that more as a potshot than a punishment.

A punishment would be getting busted in the middle of a date and reversing multiple S.Links.

And they should do these potshots often, like hearing your girlfriends unknowingly say to each other "Can you believe the lengths some people go to so they can go out with multiple people at the same time?" "Yeah, how pathetic is that?"

edited 18th Jan '17 2:41:42 PM by RunoEddie

Again, though, no one wanted to test it because Persona's appeal for many people, even more than a lot of other RPGs, J- or W-, rests on how invested you get into the characters and their feelings.

Take That, Audience! and the like is cute, but not someone an audience will take seriously when it amounts to nothing substantial.

That's why ya gotta make it hurt, make you feel the pain.

Or at least get a drink splashed in your face.

Actually aside from getting a little beat up, does anything else happen in P5?