How much should I "stress" myself with social stats and confidants?

[Buurt]

I am on my first playthrough and I don't know if I will ever do something like ng+ in a big game like this.

The whole social stats and confidants have me a little bit stressed. I don't wanna get everyone to 10 and just play how I wanna play, but right now I always feel like I maybe doing the wrong activities and stuff like that, like should I rather have read a book instead of doing this or that !? Like it feels stressful.

Like I try doing all the stuff for them and with them but I don't wanna destroy my playthroughs with like guides to show everything because I feel then I can just watch a playthrough and stop playing.

If you are not that "dumb" and just play and do most confidant stuff, will I be fine and get "most" content out of it ?

Or is it like you really need to do stressfull min max stuff to even get closely most of them to max ?

I don't wanna 100% the game or anything but I also don't wanna have the feeling I missed 90% of the game because I need to min max with a guide.

[Mistie]

Do whatever you want on your first playthrough, after finishing try to do what you might miss in NG+ it's okay for persona games. Because Persona is some kinda like ng+ game necessarily to get some extra content like fighting with conpendim keeper. And you have free time in NG+ because you don't need to spend to raise your social stats if you complete it on your first playtrough.

[Arifufu]

if you wanna save some NG+ stuff:
1. Do batting cage on NG+, if you know the mechanic, you only to do batting cage once per new machine available
2. Do fishing on NG+, getting 100k point is hard and need a lot of rain weather
3. Focus with whoever you wanna spend with, the most important ones: Councillor (must be level 9 during November), Faith (Rank 5 during December, and rank 6-10 will be available during January), and Justice (must be level 8 during November) because they really tied with story especially Councillor. Another confidant that will locked are Temperance and Sun up to November
4. you can ignore jazz club for maximizing your time, i did jazz club visit each sunday night it's grant a unique skills for party members (such as charge/cocentrate/ali dance/spell master/arm master/debilitate)

This game is really forgiving in time management, so you can focus on social stats while spend with whoever you care, i managed to rank up all rank 10 confidant with all level 5 social stats on my first playthrough, but yea i sacrificed fishing and batting cage because i was noob back then, now i can maximize my time to do batting cage and fishing for 100k points each playthrough

ohh right, i also look up a guide, "But only to get best answer that give most note points during advance a confidant rank". Only sun and moon you can pick whatever choice you like since they always level up regardless of your choice

[Dopey Shepard]

There are videos on YT that thoroughly explain how many social stat points you obtain by doing X activity versus Y. Yes, there are plenty of instances where doing certain things like eating at Big Bang Burger or w/e its called is ill-advised

If you absolutely want it - go check out those things and follow a guide. There's a very esteemed guide here on steam that you can follow step by step to get everything maxxed out

Please note that P5R is probably the EASIEST game to have everything maxxed out. I remember playing Persona 4 vanilla and how tough it may have been to max out your stats and social links/confidants in a Fresh New Game playthrough. With the release of Golden that might have become easier as G provides more free days for you to do this stuff

Likewise in Royal you get a LOT more free time compared to original P5 even with new Confidant thingies, in fact, you get so much free time that if you were to do everything "right" - you can have everything maxxed out way before New Year's eve