How bad is time management?

[Phen]

I didn't really like Persona 4/5 because of the extremely tight time management, where you have to ultra-optimize every single action to not miss out on half of the game's content. Shin Megami Tensei was so much better without time constraints. So how bad is it in Metaphor ReFantazio?

[JCKLNTRN]

It's more lenient here, the time limits are very generous.

[N/A]

You spend entire days on the road, sometimes in multiples where your only option is to raise your social stats with teammates and occasionally raise your social rank with said teammates.

Once you are high enough level you will instantly kill weaker enemies making exploration much easier and clearing something in one day much more achievable than it has been in other games.

At the moment I have everyone sitting at rank 4, 5, or 6 with Strohl at rank 8 which I am assuming is max and I did this all in less than 20 days in game.

You shouldn't need a guide. You can probably even comfortably ignore the time limit.

[HarkeN]

Follower rank ups are all automatic, the only thing answers affects is a small amount of MAG bonus you get after each one (that if you really wanted you could grind for anyway). So no stress about matching Personas or perfect answers or anything like that.

Social stat activities are pretty standard, you just do them. Maybe you get a small bonus if you pick a perfect answer but from what I am told the schedule is very forgiving.

The only exception is that there will be 'debates' on certain days and you have to pick the correct answers to win, which gives you a bit of money and bonus stats. You have to win them all to get a trophy. The game never told me it was a thing so on my first blind playthrough I've already missed some of them, which I am not worrying about right now, I can always NG+ it if I really want to.

tl;dr much more forgiving than a mainline Persona game. If anything it feels like "Persona-lite" in that sense. I don't feel that I am being disadvantaged just playing via intuition without a guide.

[SilverMERK]

follower ranks are automatic to a certain extent. some you need to have a certain rank in your social skills to to rank them up. but honestly time management isnt a huge issue.