Social Links are an essential game mechanic inPersona 3 Reload. While they don’t give you special abilities like in otherPersonagames, Social Links will give you more powerful Personas. Their cutscenes also contain about half the game’s story.
However,only a couple ofPersona 3 Reload’s Social Links rank up automatically. For the rest, you need to earn relationship points with that character. If you don’t earn enough, you may see the message “I don’t think our bond will grow any stronger even if I spend more time with them.” This message is a little misleading, and seeing it is a normal part of anyPersona 3 Reloadplaythrough.
Why Won’t a Bond Grow Stronger?
When you see the message “I don’t think our bond will grow any stronger,” it doesn’t mean you need a special requirement like a key item or a social stat to continue the Social Link. The game is just telling you that you don’t yet have enough relationship points to see the next ranking event.
InPersona 3 Reload, relationship points are a mostly hidden stat. During ranking events and hangouts, you can see how many points you get from a specific dialog choice because one to three notes will fly out of the Social Link character’s head when they like what you have to say. However, you also gain points by spending time with them in the first place, and by holding a Persona that matches their Arcana when you spend time with them.
Once you have enough points with a specific character, you’ll trigger their next ranking event the next time you hang out with them on a regular day. This means you can never trigger a ranking event when you hang out with them on a Sunday or a day off.Relationship points are an absolute number, although the number of points needed for each rank can change between ranks and between characters.
For instance, imagine you getBebe’s Temperance Social Link up to rank 5. After that, you stop hanging out with him at school, but you hang out with him on Sundays, use the shrine to improve your relationship, and use several Dating Site Notes to do the same thing at night. Once you start hanging out with Bebe again, you’ll rocket through the next several Social Link events even if you choose a few wrong answers, because you’ll have enough relationship points to unlock each rank.
How to Strengthen a Bond (Aside from Regular Hangouts)
The most obvious way to gain relationship points is to hang out with a Social Link character during their regular hangout times. you may tell when these are because a Tarot card will float over their head or point to the room they’re in. Even if you don’t see a ranking event, you’ll always get plenty of relationship points for spending time with them.
However, spending time this way can be wasteful. You only have so many days in the school yearto bring every Social Link up to 10, and there are other ways to boost relationships that let you skip straight to the ranking events. If your goal is a clean sweep, you should spend every school day on school Social Link events and use your more plentiful evenings and days off on activities like the following:
Day-off Hangouts
On any given Sunday, holiday, or break day, two or three school Social Link characters will invite the protagonist to spend the day with them. Whether they make this offer and what they talk about on the outing depends on their current rank, but you can count on seeing a dialog option pop up. Typically, two of the options give you three relationship points while one gives you none.
If the character is a possible romance,you’re able to also give them a gift for more points. However, you usually won’t get this option if you already have enough relationship points to see the next ranking event.
Relationship Fortunes
At the shrine,you may duplicate skill cards, improve Academics, and boost your relationship points with an active Social Link. The relationship fortunes are in the rows of boxes to the right of the main shrine.
Choosing a relationship fortune gives you two points in the Social Link you choose, but it costs 100 yen and causes time to pass. you’re able to also gain or lose extra yen based on the random fortune result you get. You should always try to spend your school days on Social Link hangouts, and these hangouts always give you more relationship points than the shrine fortunes, so you should only spend time here on days off when you have nothing else you can do.
Dating Site Notes
Dating Site Notes are an item you can get from the Suspicious Man in Club Escapade. These notes cost 3,000 yen each, but (unlike the rest of his inventory) you can buy as many of them as you want. You can then use these noteson the Shared Computer in the dormto boost any Social Link by two points, though they do cause time to pass.
The biggest benefit of Dating Site Notes is that you can use them during evenings.Persona 3 Reloadonly has two evening Social Links, and the shrine is unavailable after dark. The biggest downside is that the Suspicious Man only starts selling these notes on 11/10, making them only available during the last three months of a ten-month game.
Dorm Hangouts
There are four Social Link characters who are also members of SEES. After you start their Social Links, you’ll get one relationship point each time youhang out with them in the dorm. You’ll still get the items and social stats you normally would from the hangout, but Dating Site Notes are a better way to gain points with them after they unlock.
One last thing to note is that, unlike in otherPersonagames,you don’t get relationship points from main story cutscenes or from exam results. Good midterms and finals numbers give you Charm instead, and nothing you say during the main story is worth a relationship point. If you want to max out every Social Link, spend your days off drawing relationship fortunes and choose the best responses during ranking events.
