I thought people were exaggerating, but... DAMN if the time-management isn't WAY TOO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TIGHT in this game!

[BlackDragon]

It genuinely seems like there is ZERO chance of 100%ing this game without following a day-by-day guide. ZERO. Nada, nil, not a prayer. I did that, in both 4 and 5 (and 5R) without too much difficulty, just by making the most of the game's mechanics and following basic rules like prioritizing links that have fewer 'available' days, always making sure to have the right Persona equipped, etc. But in this one? It genuinely seems like if you pass ONE SINGLE SOLITARY SCHOOL-DAY without raising one of the school-only Social Links, you've lost. No margin for error WHATSOEVER.

I'm at the start of December, with a GENEROUS estimate of 29 school-days left to work with... and 35 levels worth of school-only Social Links left to raise. That's a shortfall of six, but it's probably gonna be closer to ten since there's bound to be more of those 'Team-mate episodes' or whatever they're called that fall on school-days. I don't even know how I lost that many days - I can think of maybe four or five, TOPS, that I misspent.

To make matters worse, it doesn't even seem like it'll make all that much difference, doing it in NG+. I mean, the main difference there is that you keep your Social Stats, but raising THOSE is absolutely zero issue, since there's only two Social Links accessible in the evenings - ensuring that you've got a TON of leeway on how you spend your evenings, providing plenty of room to get your Social Stats maxed out early. Nor does it matter in the slightest whether or not you can clear each level of Tartarus in one night or take multiple trips. Towards the end, there's just genuinely *nothing to do* in the evenings, other than maybe look after your rooftop garden or cook with the team, to get some moderately useful healing-items and such. So, nothing that carries over into a new game will really change the fact that you cannot afford to make a SINGLE MISTAKE in how you spend your school-days. NOT. ONE.

...I know this is a great game overall, a classic and all that, but I'm sorry - that is a FLAW. Not a fatal one, still, but it IS bad design. You need to leave SOME kind of wiggle-room, SOME margin for error - it's unreasonable to expect absolute perfection of players from start to finish, across a game that can easily take more than a hundred hours to finish... and even worse to make it so that such perfection is only possible if you follow a detailed guide, killing any kind of discovery or self-expression.

But, just so there's some kind of point in this frustrated rant... you can go into NG+ with the 'bad ending' at the end of December, right? 'cuz, hey, if I can't actually finish the game properly anyway, I might as well save myself some time and go back to the start sooner rather than later. I mean, it's only 80 hours or so of my life I'll never get back...

[Ichinose Kyo]

Yes, you can get ng+ with bad ending. As for the social links, it is adviced that you reach the top of the Tartarus block in one day and spend the rest of the days doing social links. During those days that has missing people on the Tartarus, it is best to access Tartarus during the final day before full moon to sweep the missing persons in one go without getting worried of going to Tartarus everytime a missing poster is up.

This will be easier in ng+ since you will have your social stats raised by then and you won't be side tracked much. Male teammate bonds are usually happening around nighttime so finishing night social links as soon as you can would also be great.

Just focus on social links that have less days of access like the perhaps bebe, Chihiro and yuko as they will be a bit harder to access in the later dates due to their schedule overlapping on a scripted event and it is also recommended to use the fortune telling booth on the shrine during your free days that has no activities to raise enough points for your desired social link, preferably those social links you have less points so that the next meeting of that link will rank up.

[Dodmar]

You are 100% correct . I got 100% SL on first playthrough . I have only 1 day left before final boss. I needed to look up the best answer for each SL . But I didn't strict follow day to day guide . Only focus on school SL > outside school . If these is one thing I wish to know it sooner is if the school link did not progress in 1 day ( with the best answers) , reload and wait for weekend date or wait until you get access to do online prayer at night in last 3 months.

[HRHV87]

It is very tight on the schedule even when you do everything right you'll only have like 2 or 3 days to spare at the end of the run if you are doing all the linked episodes.

[Ann☆ﾟ.*･｡]

most of the days for social links were wasted on stuff like holidays (especially dec-jan, pretty sure lots of people don't have anything to do), so best way to approach it is to focus on link episode>students social link first, the outside school (bunkichi/hayase) can be done later

girls especially need a lot of social link points (some boys like miyamoto also need many points), so in some days you might need to forgo doing social link with sundays guy (maya/akinari) to hang out with girls

[Kaolan Enjoyer 27]

I heard the devs never tested to see if you could get every S.Link in one playthrough in the original Persona 3...and it shows.






It's very easy to see that this was their first attempt at the calendar system. It's so poorly polished compared to the later Persona games and even Metaphor.

[BlackDragon]

Originally posted by The Piper O5:

I disagree with your statement, P3FES is very well balanced and not too hard to complete.
The design philosophy was not to hand you everything in one playthrough.

Just not many variaty here, as you many SLs are locked to school or night time etc. Therefor easy to prioritze on the 2nd playthrough.

Reload: Characteristics (54 Events) = and Linked Episodes (30 manual events) - You got to squeeze 84 extra into the original schedule - which makes it more challenging.

So you could argue, that it was a "poorly polished" in Reload, but IMHO I welcome every kind of challenge. Gaming is going down the easy drain anyway these days.

So, having done some new calculations after finding out that you can work on the Empress-link during the week leading up to the December exams, I realized I wasn't as far from the goal as I'd thought - and though I still had to conclude that there was no way to actually make it, it suggests there's at least a FEW days worth of leeway in the system. So, not THAT bad.

Even so, I disagree with what you said. What makes this calendar badly balanced is that a 2nd playthought really DOESN'T help much at all. You've got AMPLE time for any activity that takes place at night - the addition of Characteristics-episodes just helps fill out time that otherwise goes to waste. Maxing out all your Social Stats early is dead easy, as is finishing the meager TWO Social Links that run at night. (Tower, Devil.) By the same token, it's also easy to finish all the Social Links that operate outside of school - Hierophant, Hanged Man, Star, Hermit, Sun, Moon. The various vacations, holidays, and exam-prep periods (outside of December) leave ample time for them all. For both those groups, you can absolutely spend extra days with them between Link Increases, and still finish with loads of time to spare. The problem's just that there are SO MANY School Day Only links - including several that only open up very late in the game, like Empress and Aeon - leaving painfully little leeway there. And, yes, several of the Linked Episodes unfortunately take place on School Days, eating up even more of that highly limited resource... though, fortunately, it isn't actually as many as all that. Even so, every day you have to put your Social Links on hold to hang out with friggin' JUNPEI is a day wasted! >_< I don't care how tragic his story is, he's still an immature, idiotic man-child, and the fact that he's in EVERY Persona-game, with only his name and hairstyle changing between them, continues to be my least favorite part of the series!

There's still SOME room in the School Day schedule, as I said at the start, but it's much, MUCH tighter than either of the other two categories. Later games strike a much better balance in terms of where your Social Links are found. The point is - the way this game is scheduled, it goes "Eh, take your time, don't worry 'bout it..." with how you spend your evenings, vacations and weekends, and then "I demand PERFECTION, and NOTHING LESS! What, you want hand-outs? Fine, take two days worth of extra time to work with, but you'd better be GRATEFUL for it!" with how you spend your School Days.

[Kochta]

It's a game, not a job, you don't have to 100% it and most people don't. Just because you have OCD or some other -ism doesn't mean the game is bad design.

[cyb3rc001]

why do you need to complete every social link? You surely want to max out some characters before others. It also adds some replay value.
the game also has ♥♥♥♥♥♥ of free time near the end, you definitely will have your social stats maxed and will be able to wrap up most social links you want to finish.

[BlackDragon]

Originally posted by cyb3rc001:

why do you need to complete every social link? You surely want to max out some characters before others. It also adds some replay value.
the game also has ♥♥♥♥♥♥ of free time near the end, you definitely will have your social stats maxed and will be able to wrap up most social links you want to finish.

Well, if you want to finish the Compendium, you HAVE to complete every social link, IN ONE RUN. That's how you get the mask that unlocks Orpheus Telemon, the protagonist's ultimate Persona. Simply wrapping up 'most' of your social links won't do you any good for that...