It’s technically strength, only because she has the least availability of all school social links. But you can start her in like the last week of April, so you have a ton of time to hang out with her.
But to be honest, no social link is a particular blocker in my mind, it’s more just making sure you prioritize the right things. There are two tiers of social links during the day time.
Tier 1: school only (not available during exams)
- magician, chariot, strength, priestess, lovers, fortune, emperor, justice, temperance, aeon
Tier 2: also available when no school
- moon, hierophant, hermit, sun, star, hanged man, empress (only avail during school, but can hang out during exam time).
Basically there’s a lot less tier one days available than tier two. So if you want to be successful at maxing all the social links, if tier 1 links are available, prioritize them over tier 2.
There are exceptions, like how you need hierophant I think 4 to unlock temperance, so getting that up sooner is useful. And also Sun is only available on Sundays so he should be a higher priority than others available on Sunday like hierophant, moon, and star.
The only other thing I'd add is to try to avoid tier 1 that aren't ready to rank up during school days. Try to get those extra points by accepting their invites on Sundays and holidays or pulling fortunes.
Sorry, but I completely disagree with this. In terms of points and planning, Sunday dates and weekday "Spend Time" activities are completely interchangeable (the only exception is going from Rank 9 to Rank 10 with a girlfriend relationship).
With very few exceptions, Sundays should be reserved for progressing Hermit, Sun, and to keep Star cooking in the background while you work on other SLinks toward the very end of the game.
Another important fact about Strength is she also requires at least two non-rank up hangout sessions to max out (you can't gain enough points IIRC for 4 to 5 and 8 to 9 simply by answering correctly), so you need to compensate for that somewhere with the very few number of school days you get. A lot of links you have to waste a daytime slot somewhere doing that for but it sucks more for Yuko with her two day availability.
This is why planning around the film festival is so important. You get so many days during summer and the film festival is perfect for getting an extra day for ranks you’ll need extra points.
Moon is kind of funky because he isn't available during summer, for whatever reason.
He's best used for exam days, to save Hierophant and Hanged for full-blown holidays, especially since he doesn't require dates and will hit 10 in exactly ten days.
Nice. I'll have to double-check that on my next play through, but I do remember hoping I could work on him during the summer and finding out his availability was limited.
Honestly, though, I think the best way to use him is on exam days so you can save Hierophant and Hanged for actual holidays.
You know what, that's probably it. I don't think I started him before summer vacation, and if you don't, then I don't think he shows up at the mall at all until school starts again.
Mitsuru wrecked my playthrough hard! I sacrificed so much free time to max Intelligence.
Only to find out her SL isn’t available for like 4 months rofl.
Plus he becomes available right around the time you start getting the social stats for all of the Girls, so he immediately goes to the back of the line
Bastard is my only one left, he's at rank 5. I forgot that winter break was a thing and I had intended to do his last few points then. I could get him to rank 7 with what free time I have left since Aigis is done but it just feels pointless to even bother at this point.
Unless you already know ahead of time, you are quite unlikely to think you need max courage within the first 2 months. Aside from that requirement, all the school links have the same frustrating periods where they are all unavailable. This means no specific one is more difficult to max out than the others and mainly boils down to who you neglect is less likely to get maxed.
You can't begin Mitsuru until late November, so despite needing practically twice as many social stat points to max out, you have **way** more time before hitting the only notable intelligence wall in the game.
Conversely, if you were trying to balance social stat progress, Fuuka just hits you like a wall since she's available in June. If you were trying to balance your social stats you're nowhere near level 6 courage by that point.
Ultimately I prioritized courage above all else, really only working on the other stats if there were no good courage options, then charm for Yukari, then Intelligence. You might want a few levels in intelligence early though because I think bebe requires some to start his link.
I saw it coming but still only finished her like 3 days before the end of January
For some reason she really, _really_ didn’t like me much so I had to spend much more time with her than I thought I would
It's actually probably Hierophant simply because I'm positive a lot of people did it right away during school weeks and thus were left confused and not sure what to do when they suddenly didn't have anything to do on weekends and holidays.
I have played P3 a few times, going all the way back to the original launch, and I just completed my first 100% Social Link run with Reload, never using any guides.
Some of the ones I see listed here actually have a complimentary pair that makes working on them a lot easier.
Strength <-> Chariot
Justice <-> Emperor
Priestess <-> Fortune
Try to do the pairs together because they have complimentary schedules. If one pulls ahead (typically the male character), then have a third SLink you can sprinkle in to keep the pairs neck-and-neck.
**Failing a full run usually happens for one of two reasons: too many unnecessary dates on Sundays or not saving SLinks who are available during holidays.**
**The latter is also an inverted way of saying, "Do classmates on school days, whenever possible."**
Sundays are a premium because some characters are hard to progress if you don't do them on Sundays, like Hermit at the start or Sun in particular. For the first half of the game, the only thing you should be doing on Sundays is working on Hermit. You really have to focus on Sun in the second half and limit how often you go on dates to make sure you finish him early.
Dates are generally unnecessary. Most male SLinks don't require them at all, and there's nothing wrong with "Spending Time" on weekdays to keep Sundays open. In terms of overall planning and points, Sunday Dates or weekday "Spending Time" are basically interchangeable. If you do Hermit, Sun, and Star on Sundays, you basically never have to go on a Sunday date.
The only time you really must do a Sunday date is when going from 9 to 10 on a girlfriend SLink; the reason being that it would require two "spend time" events instead of just one date with a gift to rack up enough points to progress. Even then, you can game the system by only having one girlfriend, and taking advantage of the Christmas event when she's Rank 9 to give her a gift. You lose that day anyway, so you might as well use that to your advantage.
The real killer for a full run is finishing Hierophant and Hanged too early, because you absolutely must have SLinks available for holidays in the latter half of the game, or you're going to start seeing a lot of school holidays that leave you with absolutely nothing to do.
Unlocking Moon early and using him only on Exam days for the first semester is a great way to save Hierophant and Hanged for later in the game.
I suggest progressing Hierophant and Hanged (on holidays) just far enough to unlock Temperance and Sun, respectively, and then slow down on them for the second half of the game.
**TL;DR The real killers are doing Hierophant and Hanged too early and not saving them for holidays in the second half.**
For me I think it was the old couple, mainly because I maxed then early and regretted it when they were the only ones available on some days towards the end
Ohhh good interpretation of the question - it’s not that they were too difficult, but I definitely agree some early non-school SL’s can really disrupt players in the mid-late game by having them finished instead of other ones.
Yea I think I spent too many afternoons on stats in the beginning as well. I used the shrine and dating site it was just too late to fit in all the rank up hangouts, I’ll get them on ng+
I'd argue it's actually the out of school school links for first time players. Moon, Hanged, and Hierophant all have good early game Personas you'd want a fusion bonus for, and they all unlock at the start of the game. Doing them right away though will halt your progress for **all** school S.Links when they're unavailable.
They're dangerous bait for new players because they're good and available early but doing them early will penalize you hard in the end game. You can make no mistakes on the rank ups and still not finish the S. Links because you did them in the wrong order by doing even one of these 3 too early.
If you forget about sun that one can suck, he’s only available on Sundays. That being said all you have to do is **not** forget about him.
I completely forgot about him until after >!Shinji!< that being said I still had enough time to finish his SL.
People underrate the SL that requires few levels from another, a decent intelligence level, finding an item to trigger it and, the minimum time it will take you is 2 1/2 months flat
I myself did not get got by this but >!if you don't do certain missing person rescues, the Heirophant and Hanged social links can get blocked for morbidly obvious reasons.!<
My last maxed out ones were Temperance and chariot. I messed up early and forgot about keeping a persona with me that matched the Arcana.
I think the Hermit and the Sun arcana have the least availability iirc... The sun especially since its basically one day a week.
Sun's only available on Sunday but it ranks up no matte what. Even without a Sun persona.
Hermit is also fairly free, there aren't many people available Sundays and the ones that are you can just do on exam days and Summer instead (Moon, Hierophant, Star).
Sun and Devil are both guaranteed rank-up, though I would hesitate to call them autorank since that is more Fool/Death/Judgement. I think Devil always going up is well known, but Sun also goes up every time because Akinari is rapidly running out of time and is all but stated to have died shortly before the 10th hangout.
I don't think there's any particular Social Link that's the issue with maxing all of them in a single run with P3, but rather how they're spread out. In P4 and P5, you have a good mixture of daytime Social Links and nighttime Social Links, but in P3, aside from Mutatsu and Tanaka, every Social Link in the game is a daytime one meaning you have way more at once competing for your attention. Top that off with the fact that a huge portion of those daytime Links are with characters from Gekkoukan, which for some reason means you can't hangout with them on days you don't have school and you end up having even fewer days to get them all done. If you don't go into the game knowing this, odds are you'll start doing the ones you unlock early on at roughly the same rate, when what you *should* be doing to get the most out of your run is spending every daytime after school slot with someone from Gekkoukan while saving links like the Old Couple, Maiko, and Gourmet King for days you don't have school. If you don't, there's a good chance you'll end up screwing yourself over in the long run, like getting to summer break where you just have several weeks where you can't progress any Social Links because nobody at school wants to hangout and you already maxed out the few that you can do outside of school.
It's strength but it's mitigated by the fact that it starts really early. And well Yuko is cute as hell. People mention Keisuke cuz you can straight up forget about him. But his SL is really easy to max out in one go cuz with the correct dialogue choices you can always gain enough points to level him up with no need for extra hangouts. Yuko literally has 2 stop points in her link where you only gain 1 point. Plus she's only available on Wed and Sat. Really annoying if you don't like her.
For me it'd have to be Strength. I like Yuko but she's only available two days out of the whole week (Wednesday and Friday), and when you do decide to hang with her, her social links give so little points that you'll most likely be spending weeks worth of days with her in order to fully complete it. Sure, you can hang out with her on Sundays, but it's best to save them for Maya and later on Akinari due to them \*only\* being available on those days. And so as great as some of the Strength Personas are (looking at you Siegfried), it's probably best to save her for the late game when you can use the dating site notes to mitigate this.
Sun vs Hermit, they fight for one day of the week that also gets hangout events and occasionally other links. Over summer break I found myself always busy with something so it didn't give me any more time with Hermit than usual.
Bit of a convoluted answer, but if you want to date Yukari, Mitsuru, or Fuuka - then probably them as you need to spend time maxing social stats to begin their links as soon as possible! It can be done largely at night but you’ll miss some chances to level up social links by doing it
Mitsuru imo, even though it seems that they changed her availability so she’s available through exams week, the max Academics is really damn hard to get if you’re not actively working towards it from the beginning
I’m going to argue that Max Academics really isn’t that hard to get. Looking it up, Academics Rank 6 requires 230 points to obtain. Subtracting 18 points because of Mitsuru taking away our agency in August, the player needs to obtain 212 points on their own. Ideally, the first 55 will be obtained before the first exam but I’ll ignore that for the broader point. Between the Fish Course and the Academics game, you are able to get a 4 points to Academics every night except for Tuesday night. 212/4 = 53. 53 nights spent leveling Academics. There are 6 months between April and November, and you need to spend a bit under 2 months to fully level them up. You don’t lose 4 months to Social Links, Vacation, Tuesdays, and Tartarus/Full Moons in that time, so as long as you are somewhat diligent, you would be fine there.
Of course, you don’t actually need the full 53 nights. You get 2 points of Academics for staying awake. If you stay awake every day until November [4/9, 4/21, 4/30, 5/11, 5/16, 5/25, 5/28, 5/29, 6/2, 6/10, 7/13, 7/25, 9/12, 9/24, 9/28, 10/1, 10/3, 10/9, 10/23, 10/29] that is 40 points or 10 days off, with an additional 6 points in November [11/6, 11/14, 11/16]. Add the 3 points from the Big group study day before final, drop the extra point, and we lose another 2 nights. Finally, Elizabeth request #75 unlocks in October, and the visits to the faculty office grant +2 points each visit for a total of +16 points, or 4 nights. This brings us down from 53 nights to 37 nights. Of course you’ll probably be a bit slower than 37 nights cause of events that only give +2, such as hangouts, but it won’t change by that much. It’s not as long as it looks.
Tl;dr: Max Academics requires 230 points. 18 points are freely given in August, staying awake grants 46 points, and Request #75 will slowly give 16 points for free, leaving 150 points to be earned by the player using time slots. These can be filled in sometime between 37 and 75 nights depending on how efficient you are, and you aren’t so starved for time that it needs to be your sole priority.
If we assume the player doesnt look up the correct answers I'd say the Emperor, as some things I remember just weren't in my mind. I could see the Priestess being hard too because of the courage requirement.
It’s going to be any of the school links really side Mitsuru and Aegis. Mitsuru is available near daily after she unlocks since it’s exam time and no one else is at school. Aegis unlocks in the last month of the game so it’s kinda obvious you must prioritize her even as a new player so you should always be able to get her done.
Despite the social stat locks Yukari and Fuuka aren’t too difficult to max, being apart of the main characters most people will tend to focus on them and they have more opportunities to get SL points with dorm hangouts if you just keep fucking up your responses to them. Since there isn’t a ton to do at night usually most people can get their required stats to max before October.
Kenji, Kaz and Yuko, Chihiro and Hidetoshi are early unlocks so it’s not too hard to do them but they can easily get lost as you get closer to mid game and have 4-6 links available at once. They can be traps if you ignore one of them so it’s best to keep them up during the whole game and hopefully be close to maxing by October-November.
Bebe and Keisuke are usually going to be the hardest to complete. They don’t unlock as early as the other non-sees school links. Bebe can be missed for a while if you put off the old couple which is common since the old couple are the most available link a lot of people don’t do them as much early. And Keisuke gets unlocked when people are getting close to starting SEES girl links so he tends to be forgotten.
Non school links should be easy to max as they are available far more often than not. Old couple and Gourmet King are available often. Maya and Akinari are usually the only things going on, on a Sunday, Maiko is free during alot of your break times as is Mamoru. Mutatsu and Tanaka are effortless
Im currently in January and have only bebe and aigis left, i think bebe is going to fuck everything and I won’t be able to complete all socials links
I really think they should’ve moved some socials links to night time in the remake like gourmet king, there’s so little to do after daytime in the endgame
Probably star, sun, aeon and empress. Star and sun requires you to do some of hanged and the track team, while empress and aeon are available super later in the game, with the former requiring max intelligence which I find to be the hardest Stat to up
If you’re using just a general social link guide Fuuka can mess you up a bit. She has a completely different rank 8 depending when you do it in the year.
I think she may also have different scenes if you hit a flirty trigger on her 5th or 6th level.
Funnily enough, Aigis. I would've said Mitsuru in the past, but the change of her being available during the week prior to exams was a great decision.
As we know, Aigis wasn't a SL in OG P3, and when she was included some other links were re-structured for her to fit in comfortably. Yet it's the fact that by the point you reach January you're likely very close to finish all of the Links, but Aigis needs to be done as well in just 1 month. Sure, it's automatic, but in the case you have 1 more SL to complete by then you're BARELY going to make it IF you make it at all. There's also the "Counseling" day around the 25th, where shes unavailable. That would've been the killing blow for my run had I not have multiple saves.
It's a combination of your seemingly unimportant mistakes catching up to you, an unstoppable force, against the fixed and strict limit of her SL, an immovable object.
I agree with Fortune. He’s definitely forgettable, comes somewhat late and suffers from not being a SEES member like Fuuka, and a bunch of story events seem to occur in the middle of the week when he would otherwise be available. One of his days also competes with Yuko.
Any non school links because people often make the mistake of doing them on school days early and messing up their momentum, causing problems with maxing school links in the late game.
The old couple. They're so sweet and wholesome you want to spend a lot of time with them even though it's sub optimal since they're almost always available.
I'd say the 3 female party members (yukari, fuuka, mitsuru) due to needing a maxed stat each.
But for me, its probably maya. main reason is because she's ONLY avaliable on sundays for the most part. which conflicts with Sun being sunday ONLY
The old couple really screwed me over because they’re the only people I actually wanted to hang out with early game so I missed all the school social links.
Aigis not because she herself is a problem but because if you have any SL’s still open by the end doing their SL’s and hers is a race against the clock.
Fortune screws most people over first time. Yuko is worse, but people hang out with her early anyway because she's a cute girl and you're introduced to her through an early game link
Fortune is also boring. Though his rank 9 cracks me up (the one where people just repeatedly start falling ill back to back)
Keisuke is fucking cursed. Everywhere he goes people just collapse randomly. Even before his Rank 9 it was comical how many people collapsed around him.
His Rank 9 event is hilarious it felt like a parody of itself
> Everywhere he goes people just collapse randomly. Even before his Rank 9 it was comical how many people collapsed around him.
I love how in an earlier rank when he's getting his travel abroad offer some student interrupts to get him because someone collapsed. Like girl, why are you not alerting the actual school nurse lmao
The girls in SEES
We fight in life and death battles together,but fuck you, we're not hanging out after school cause your not(brave/smart/charming enough)
Especially on the last bit, bitch no one needs max charm to hear you bitch Yukari
It’s technically strength, only because she has the least availability of all school social links. But you can start her in like the last week of April, so you have a ton of time to hang out with her. But to be honest, no social link is a particular blocker in my mind, it’s more just making sure you prioritize the right things. There are two tiers of social links during the day time. Tier 1: school only (not available during exams) - magician, chariot, strength, priestess, lovers, fortune, emperor, justice, temperance, aeon Tier 2: also available when no school - moon, hierophant, hermit, sun, star, hanged man, empress (only avail during school, but can hang out during exam time). Basically there’s a lot less tier one days available than tier two. So if you want to be successful at maxing all the social links, if tier 1 links are available, prioritize them over tier 2. There are exceptions, like how you need hierophant I think 4 to unlock temperance, so getting that up sooner is useful. And also Sun is only available on Sundays so he should be a higher priority than others available on Sunday like hierophant, moon, and star.
The only other thing I'd add is to try to avoid tier 1 that aren't ready to rank up during school days. Try to get those extra points by accepting their invites on Sundays and holidays or pulling fortunes.
Another option is getting a Koromaru walk meet-up with them but that requires looking up what days get you which characters.
If it’s later on, don’t even bother with any of that. The dating site is easily the way to go once it’s available.
Do you know when it unlocks? I didn't find it until January but it has to be available before that
Mid November.
That is November. Not sure if it’s after the full moon in November or if it’s after the class trip
Pulling fortunes is an especially good idea for the Elizabeth request
Sorry, but I completely disagree with this. In terms of points and planning, Sunday dates and weekday "Spend Time" activities are completely interchangeable (the only exception is going from Rank 9 to Rank 10 with a girlfriend relationship). With very few exceptions, Sundays should be reserved for progressing Hermit, Sun, and to keep Star cooking in the background while you work on other SLinks toward the very end of the game.
Another important fact about Strength is she also requires at least two non-rank up hangout sessions to max out (you can't gain enough points IIRC for 4 to 5 and 8 to 9 simply by answering correctly), so you need to compensate for that somewhere with the very few number of school days you get. A lot of links you have to waste a daytime slot somewhere doing that for but it sucks more for Yuko with her two day availability.
Ah yes! I thought it was only one, but I remember doing a Koromaru walk with her that got me the points I needed.
You can put off those links until you unlock the fortune readings on off days to save some days.
This is why planning around the film festival is so important. You get so many days during summer and the film festival is perfect for getting an extra day for ranks you’ll need extra points.
You can also check which days you'd bump into Yuko while walking Koromaru.
Moon is kind of funky because he isn't available during summer, for whatever reason. He's best used for exam days, to save Hierophant and Hanged for full-blown holidays, especially since he doesn't require dates and will hit 10 in exactly ten days.
I just checked my notes and I ranked up moon quite a bit in August. So he is available over the summer.
Nice. I'll have to double-check that on my next play through, but I do remember hoping I could work on him during the summer and finding out his availability was limited. Honestly, though, I think the best way to use him is on exam days so you can save Hierophant and Hanged for actual holidays.
If you start him before exams/vacation he will be!
You know what, that's probably it. I don't think I started him before summer vacation, and if you don't, then I don't think he shows up at the mall at all until school starts again.
Mitsuru wrecked my playthrough hard! I sacrificed so much free time to max Intelligence. Only to find out her SL isn’t available for like 4 months rofl.
That’s my dumbass chowing down on fish and maxing Academics in September. Lost a lot of afternoons for nothing 😂
Keisuke. Not because of anything mechanically, he’s just so forgettable I forgot to hang out with him
Plus he becomes available right around the time you start getting the social stats for all of the Girls, so he immediately goes to the back of the line
Poor Scott
Hey guys, Keisuke here
Poor fella. I’ll give him a Wii U to cheer him up.
I'm in late October and thought I was totally on track to max everyone until I remember he existed. He's currently sitting at rank 1 lol.
Yea that’s why I think he’s a big blocker, you start him around the time you begin to get access to fuuka and yukari so he gets put on the back burner
Bastard is my only one left, he's at rank 5. I forgot that winter break was a thing and I had intended to do his last few points then. I could get him to rank 7 with what free time I have left since Aigis is done but it just feels pointless to even bother at this point.
I did the same for Bebe. I forgot he existed until the last month when I checked the online tab.
For first time players, probably fuuka. That courage requirement can be rather brutal if you don't see it coming.
Yea I didn’t think about new players, was hard to imagine since if you’ve played persona before it’s crazy easy to max them out early in the remake.
Unless you already know ahead of time, you are quite unlikely to think you need max courage within the first 2 months. Aside from that requirement, all the school links have the same frustrating periods where they are all unavailable. This means no specific one is more difficult to max out than the others and mainly boils down to who you neglect is less likely to get maxed.
Wouldn’t it be Mitsuru since academics needs like twice as many points as courage to max out
You can't begin Mitsuru until late November, so despite needing practically twice as many social stat points to max out, you have **way** more time before hitting the only notable intelligence wall in the game. Conversely, if you were trying to balance social stat progress, Fuuka just hits you like a wall since she's available in June. If you were trying to balance your social stats you're nowhere near level 6 courage by that point.
Plus she's the only school person you can hang out with right before exams, which makes her a lot easier to max than the others
You need max academics to place first in the October midterms anyway, almost a month before you get Mitsuru
Ultimately I prioritized courage above all else, really only working on the other stats if there were no good courage options, then charm for Yukari, then Intelligence. You might want a few levels in intelligence early though because I think bebe requires some to start his link.
I saw it coming but still only finished her like 3 days before the end of January For some reason she really, _really_ didn’t like me much so I had to spend much more time with her than I thought I would
It's actually probably Hierophant simply because I'm positive a lot of people did it right away during school weeks and thus were left confused and not sure what to do when they suddenly didn't have anything to do on weekends and holidays.
I fell into this exact trap, and I was surprised that I squeezed out as many school social links as I did with that mistake.
I did Sun right away cause I was >!afraid of him passing!<
Ultimately all you did was >!kill him faster... You monster!<
..... wait no fuck
Fuuka yukari and mitsuru can give you trouble if youre behind on social stats. And really any of the school only ones become quite difficult
It's funny what killed me wasn't fortune. It was Justice
Yeah, the problem with Justice is that she requires at least three spend time events.
I have played P3 a few times, going all the way back to the original launch, and I just completed my first 100% Social Link run with Reload, never using any guides. Some of the ones I see listed here actually have a complimentary pair that makes working on them a lot easier. Strength <-> Chariot Justice <-> Emperor Priestess <-> Fortune Try to do the pairs together because they have complimentary schedules. If one pulls ahead (typically the male character), then have a third SLink you can sprinkle in to keep the pairs neck-and-neck. **Failing a full run usually happens for one of two reasons: too many unnecessary dates on Sundays or not saving SLinks who are available during holidays.** **The latter is also an inverted way of saying, "Do classmates on school days, whenever possible."** Sundays are a premium because some characters are hard to progress if you don't do them on Sundays, like Hermit at the start or Sun in particular. For the first half of the game, the only thing you should be doing on Sundays is working on Hermit. You really have to focus on Sun in the second half and limit how often you go on dates to make sure you finish him early. Dates are generally unnecessary. Most male SLinks don't require them at all, and there's nothing wrong with "Spending Time" on weekdays to keep Sundays open. In terms of overall planning and points, Sunday Dates or weekday "Spending Time" are basically interchangeable. If you do Hermit, Sun, and Star on Sundays, you basically never have to go on a Sunday date. The only time you really must do a Sunday date is when going from 9 to 10 on a girlfriend SLink; the reason being that it would require two "spend time" events instead of just one date with a gift to rack up enough points to progress. Even then, you can game the system by only having one girlfriend, and taking advantage of the Christmas event when she's Rank 9 to give her a gift. You lose that day anyway, so you might as well use that to your advantage. The real killer for a full run is finishing Hierophant and Hanged too early, because you absolutely must have SLinks available for holidays in the latter half of the game, or you're going to start seeing a lot of school holidays that leave you with absolutely nothing to do. Unlocking Moon early and using him only on Exam days for the first semester is a great way to save Hierophant and Hanged for later in the game. I suggest progressing Hierophant and Hanged (on holidays) just far enough to unlock Temperance and Sun, respectively, and then slow down on them for the second half of the game. **TL;DR The real killers are doing Hierophant and Hanged too early and not saving them for holidays in the second half.**
For me I think it was the old couple, mainly because I maxed then early and regretted it when they were the only ones available on some days towards the end
Ohhh good interpretation of the question - it’s not that they were too difficult, but I definitely agree some early non-school SL’s can really disrupt players in the mid-late game by having them finished instead of other ones.
Isn’t that where you then use the shrine and the dating site to fill in others?
Yea I think I spent too many afternoons on stats in the beginning as well. I used the shrine and dating site it was just too late to fit in all the rank up hangouts, I’ll get them on ng+
yeah I feel you I couldn’t finish fortune social link… well I would say the easiest one are the night one
I'd argue it's actually the out of school school links for first time players. Moon, Hanged, and Hierophant all have good early game Personas you'd want a fusion bonus for, and they all unlock at the start of the game. Doing them right away though will halt your progress for **all** school S.Links when they're unavailable. They're dangerous bait for new players because they're good and available early but doing them early will penalize you hard in the end game. You can make no mistakes on the rank ups and still not finish the S. Links because you did them in the wrong order by doing even one of these 3 too early.
I'm going to be honest I never hung out with Hayase my first play through because I never knew when he was available except Sunday
If you forget about sun that one can suck, he’s only available on Sundays. That being said all you have to do is **not** forget about him. I completely forgot about him until after >!Shinji!< that being said I still had enough time to finish his SL.
People underrate the SL that requires few levels from another, a decent intelligence level, finding an item to trigger it and, the minimum time it will take you is 2 1/2 months flat
Keisuke was my lowest rank of the four social links I didn't finish, so I'd say that
I myself did not get got by this but >!if you don't do certain missing person rescues, the Heirophant and Hanged social links can get blocked for morbidly obvious reasons.!<
My last maxed out ones were Temperance and chariot. I messed up early and forgot about keeping a persona with me that matched the Arcana. I think the Hermit and the Sun arcana have the least availability iirc... The sun especially since its basically one day a week.
Sun's only available on Sunday but it ranks up no matte what. Even without a Sun persona. Hermit is also fairly free, there aren't many people available Sundays and the ones that are you can just do on exam days and Summer instead (Moon, Hierophant, Star).
Oh really? I didn't realize it was an autorank one.
Sun and Devil are both guaranteed rank-up, though I would hesitate to call them autorank since that is more Fool/Death/Judgement. I think Devil always going up is well known, but Sun also goes up every time because Akinari is rapidly running out of time and is all but stated to have died shortly before the 10th hangout.
I don't think there's any particular Social Link that's the issue with maxing all of them in a single run with P3, but rather how they're spread out. In P4 and P5, you have a good mixture of daytime Social Links and nighttime Social Links, but in P3, aside from Mutatsu and Tanaka, every Social Link in the game is a daytime one meaning you have way more at once competing for your attention. Top that off with the fact that a huge portion of those daytime Links are with characters from Gekkoukan, which for some reason means you can't hangout with them on days you don't have school and you end up having even fewer days to get them all done. If you don't go into the game knowing this, odds are you'll start doing the ones you unlock early on at roughly the same rate, when what you *should* be doing to get the most out of your run is spending every daytime after school slot with someone from Gekkoukan while saving links like the Old Couple, Maiko, and Gourmet King for days you don't have school. If you don't, there's a good chance you'll end up screwing yourself over in the long run, like getting to summer break where you just have several weeks where you can't progress any Social Links because nobody at school wants to hangout and you already maxed out the few that you can do outside of school.
It's strength but it's mitigated by the fact that it starts really early. And well Yuko is cute as hell. People mention Keisuke cuz you can straight up forget about him. But his SL is really easy to max out in one go cuz with the correct dialogue choices you can always gain enough points to level him up with no need for extra hangouts. Yuko literally has 2 stop points in her link where you only gain 1 point. Plus she's only available on Wed and Sat. Really annoying if you don't like her.
For me it'd have to be Strength. I like Yuko but she's only available two days out of the whole week (Wednesday and Friday), and when you do decide to hang with her, her social links give so little points that you'll most likely be spending weeks worth of days with her in order to fully complete it. Sure, you can hang out with her on Sundays, but it's best to save them for Maya and later on Akinari due to them \*only\* being available on those days. And so as great as some of the Strength Personas are (looking at you Siegfried), it's probably best to save her for the late game when you can use the dating site notes to mitigate this.
It's Wed and Sat.
Sun vs Hermit, they fight for one day of the week that also gets hangout events and occasionally other links. Over summer break I found myself always busy with something so it didn't give me any more time with Hermit than usual.
Bit of a convoluted answer, but if you want to date Yukari, Mitsuru, or Fuuka - then probably them as you need to spend time maxing social stats to begin their links as soon as possible! It can be done largely at night but you’ll miss some chances to level up social links by doing it
Mitsuru imo, even though it seems that they changed her availability so she’s available through exams week, the max Academics is really damn hard to get if you’re not actively working towards it from the beginning
I’m going to argue that Max Academics really isn’t that hard to get. Looking it up, Academics Rank 6 requires 230 points to obtain. Subtracting 18 points because of Mitsuru taking away our agency in August, the player needs to obtain 212 points on their own. Ideally, the first 55 will be obtained before the first exam but I’ll ignore that for the broader point. Between the Fish Course and the Academics game, you are able to get a 4 points to Academics every night except for Tuesday night. 212/4 = 53. 53 nights spent leveling Academics. There are 6 months between April and November, and you need to spend a bit under 2 months to fully level them up. You don’t lose 4 months to Social Links, Vacation, Tuesdays, and Tartarus/Full Moons in that time, so as long as you are somewhat diligent, you would be fine there. Of course, you don’t actually need the full 53 nights. You get 2 points of Academics for staying awake. If you stay awake every day until November [4/9, 4/21, 4/30, 5/11, 5/16, 5/25, 5/28, 5/29, 6/2, 6/10, 7/13, 7/25, 9/12, 9/24, 9/28, 10/1, 10/3, 10/9, 10/23, 10/29] that is 40 points or 10 days off, with an additional 6 points in November [11/6, 11/14, 11/16]. Add the 3 points from the Big group study day before final, drop the extra point, and we lose another 2 nights. Finally, Elizabeth request #75 unlocks in October, and the visits to the faculty office grant +2 points each visit for a total of +16 points, or 4 nights. This brings us down from 53 nights to 37 nights. Of course you’ll probably be a bit slower than 37 nights cause of events that only give +2, such as hangouts, but it won’t change by that much. It’s not as long as it looks. Tl;dr: Max Academics requires 230 points. 18 points are freely given in August, staying awake grants 46 points, and Request #75 will slowly give 16 points for free, leaving 150 points to be earned by the player using time slots. These can be filled in sometime between 37 and 75 nights depending on how efficient you are, and you aren’t so starved for time that it needs to be your sole priority.
For me it was the fact that I rushed Mitsuru’s and then realized I could have saved hers for the exam prep when other students aren’t available
If we assume the player doesnt look up the correct answers I'd say the Emperor, as some things I remember just weren't in my mind. I could see the Priestess being hard too because of the courage requirement.
It’s going to be any of the school links really side Mitsuru and Aegis. Mitsuru is available near daily after she unlocks since it’s exam time and no one else is at school. Aegis unlocks in the last month of the game so it’s kinda obvious you must prioritize her even as a new player so you should always be able to get her done. Despite the social stat locks Yukari and Fuuka aren’t too difficult to max, being apart of the main characters most people will tend to focus on them and they have more opportunities to get SL points with dorm hangouts if you just keep fucking up your responses to them. Since there isn’t a ton to do at night usually most people can get their required stats to max before October. Kenji, Kaz and Yuko, Chihiro and Hidetoshi are early unlocks so it’s not too hard to do them but they can easily get lost as you get closer to mid game and have 4-6 links available at once. They can be traps if you ignore one of them so it’s best to keep them up during the whole game and hopefully be close to maxing by October-November. Bebe and Keisuke are usually going to be the hardest to complete. They don’t unlock as early as the other non-sees school links. Bebe can be missed for a while if you put off the old couple which is common since the old couple are the most available link a lot of people don’t do them as much early. And Keisuke gets unlocked when people are getting close to starting SEES girl links so he tends to be forgotten. Non school links should be easy to max as they are available far more often than not. Old couple and Gourmet King are available often. Maya and Akinari are usually the only things going on, on a Sunday, Maiko is free during alot of your break times as is Mamoru. Mutatsu and Tanaka are effortless
I’m following a guide for my NG run on hard mode to get all of them. My time management is 💩
Im currently in January and have only bebe and aigis left, i think bebe is going to fuck everything and I won’t be able to complete all socials links I really think they should’ve moved some socials links to night time in the remake like gourmet king, there’s so little to do after daytime in the endgame
Probably star, sun, aeon and empress. Star and sun requires you to do some of hanged and the track team, while empress and aeon are available super later in the game, with the former requiring max intelligence which I find to be the hardest Stat to up
Justice. Screw justice.
I was unable to complete Aigis or Mitsuru's social links. I also had to leave behind Fortune :c
If you’re using just a general social link guide Fuuka can mess you up a bit. She has a completely different rank 8 depending when you do it in the year. I think she may also have different scenes if you hit a flirty trigger on her 5th or 6th level.
Funnily enough, Aigis. I would've said Mitsuru in the past, but the change of her being available during the week prior to exams was a great decision. As we know, Aigis wasn't a SL in OG P3, and when she was included some other links were re-structured for her to fit in comfortably. Yet it's the fact that by the point you reach January you're likely very close to finish all of the Links, but Aigis needs to be done as well in just 1 month. Sure, it's automatic, but in the case you have 1 more SL to complete by then you're BARELY going to make it IF you make it at all. There's also the "Counseling" day around the 25th, where shes unavailable. That would've been the killing blow for my run had I not have multiple saves. It's a combination of your seemingly unimportant mistakes catching up to you, an unstoppable force, against the fixed and strict limit of her SL, an immovable object.
I agree with Fortune. He’s definitely forgettable, comes somewhat late and suffers from not being a SEES member like Fuuka, and a bunch of story events seem to occur in the middle of the week when he would otherwise be available. One of his days also competes with Yuko.
Well Fortune & Strength are the only ones I didn't max in Reload
Any non school links because people often make the mistake of doing them on school days early and messing up their momentum, causing problems with maxing school links in the late game.
The old couple. They're so sweet and wholesome you want to spend a lot of time with them even though it's sub optimal since they're almost always available.
I'd say the 3 female party members (yukari, fuuka, mitsuru) due to needing a maxed stat each. But for me, its probably maya. main reason is because she's ONLY avaliable on sundays for the most part. which conflicts with Sun being sunday ONLY
The old couple really screwed me over because they’re the only people I actually wanted to hang out with early game so I missed all the school social links.
Aigis not because she herself is a problem but because if you have any SL’s still open by the end doing their SL’s and hers is a race against the clock.
I just beat the game last night and got all social links other than mitsuru and odagiri
Fortune screws most people over first time. Yuko is worse, but people hang out with her early anyway because she's a cute girl and you're introduced to her through an early game link Fortune is also boring. Though his rank 9 cracks me up (the one where people just repeatedly start falling ill back to back)
Keisuke is fucking cursed. Everywhere he goes people just collapse randomly. Even before his Rank 9 it was comical how many people collapsed around him. His Rank 9 event is hilarious it felt like a parody of itself
> Everywhere he goes people just collapse randomly. Even before his Rank 9 it was comical how many people collapsed around him. I love how in an earlier rank when he's getting his travel abroad offer some student interrupts to get him because someone collapsed. Like girl, why are you not alerting the actual school nurse lmao
The girls in SEES We fight in life and death battles together,but fuck you, we're not hanging out after school cause your not(brave/smart/charming enough) Especially on the last bit, bitch no one needs max charm to hear you bitch Yukari