Everyone and their Mother Harlot knows thePersonagames as half-JRPGs, half-social simulators—but it wasn’t always that way. The first two entries in the series (technically the first three, sincePersona 2: Innocent SinandPersona 2: Eternal Punishmentare two halves of one plotline) feature incredible stories, characters, and music, yet free time is much less “free” than it would be in future games. You can walk around freely, but there’s only so much to do outside of shopping for new equipment and sniffing out rumors.
It wasn’t untilPersona 3—released a full 10 years after the first game—that the series allowed players to more or less schedule the protagonist’s everyday life, from study habits to club activities.Persona 4andPersona 5progressively worked out the kinks and added even more ways to fill in the gaps between battles, bolstering the franchise’s reputation and popularity worldwide. By the timePersona 6comes out, who knows? There may be a mechanic dedicated to controlling the protagonist’s breathing patterns.
All jokes aside, it’s an amazing system, as enjoyable as it is rewarding. The best thing about it, however, is the Social Link aspect. (It was renamed Confidant inP5, but we’ll stick to the former for consistency’s sake.) Simply put, it’s who you choose to hang out with, gradually forming relationships both platonic and romantic—and it’s been the series’s most important feature ever since it was introduced.
Some spoilers forPersona 3,Persona 4, andPersona 5ahead!
Personagames have their similarities, yet all explore vastly different themes. Not to overgeneralize, butP3places heavy emphasis on mortality and its implications,P4delves into the depths of the self and how we perceive others, andP5examines the personal and societal ramifications of social ills. The main throughlines of each game do a wonderful job of fleshing out those themes for the most part, but Social Links are what really make them come alive.
In life, the people around us mold who we were, who we are, and who we become—for better or worse. Maybe a friend from elementary school got you hooked on soccer and you’ve been playing ever since. Maybe your parents’ cooking subconsciously influences the food you typically pick off the menu when you go out to eat. Maybe the specific way a teacher or professor discussed history forever changed the way you view politics. Everything, no matter how large or how small, is affected by this web of connections we’re constantly weaving, mending, and altering.
In a similar way, Social Links affect your in-game worldview—sometimes blatantly, sometimes subtly. Having silent protagonists can make the conversations feel one-sided, but that aside, spending time and forming bonds with others helps ground the games’ larger-than-life themes in intimate contexts.
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Take Akinari Kamiki fromP3. Should you choose to speak with him, you’ll quickly learn that an incurable genetic disease is slowly but surely killing him. The inevitability of it all eats away at him, every word that comes out of his mouth laced with despair. As you sit with him, though, admiring the beauty of the changing seasons at Naganaki Shrine, he comes to realize that “the meaning of our lives is something that we make but don’t see.” It’s a perfect fit for the game’s focus on death, poignantly reminding us that though the grim reaper doesn’t discriminate, we still get to choose what to do with the time given us. It’s hard not to think of Akinari, along with many of the other Social Link characters, asP3’s end draws near.
Not every Social Link is so successful in turningPersona’s big ideas into personal stories, of course (lookin’ at you, Kenji Tomochika, Shu Nakajima, and Shinya Oda), but then, not everyone you meet in life affects you in profound or unexpected ways. That’s not an excuse for bad writing, as there are also a few Social Links that are just fun to do—nothing more, nothing less. Many of them, however, hammer home how individuals are affected by what’s happening around them.
Without that personal connection, it’s all too easy to slip into apathy—to believe that just because something isn’t happening to you, it isn’t happening at all. Even after you pass the “seeing is believing” threshold, it can be difficult to know what you can (or even should) do next. That sort of hopelessness often grows asPersonastories progress (theyareJRPGs, after all, which means there’s always going to be some god-like being to defeat), but seeing how smaller-scale problems can be overcome through Social Links is often what helps you push through.
That’s even true in a gameplay sense. By “maxing out” a Social Link, you gain new abilities and open up the door for stronger Personas. It’s very “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”—yet it’s more than that simple give and take. Unless you’re playingPersonapurely for the gameplay and don’t care who you hang out with so long as you get the best upgrades, Social Links rarely (if ever) feel transactional. If they did, they wouldn’t be nearly as impactful.
The impact isn’t always immediate, but sometimes that’s the point. Like real people, certain characters are harder to bond with than others—likeP4’s Ryotaro Dojima. He’s a difficult person to evenwantto hang out with, because not only is he the protagonist’s uncle (as opposed to other characters closer to the protagonist’s age), and not only do they just meet as the game begins, but because he’s kind of an asshole. Dojima’s a workaholic’s workaholic, often leaving his daughter Nanako at the drop of a hat to take care of everything—schoolwork, housework,herself—on her own. Did I mention Nanako’s, like, six or seven years old? No? Well, she is. Do Ryotaro and Nanako’s Social Links, however, and you’ll pry the cracks in the Dojima family wide open, exposing all the implicit and explicit wounds therein. The buildup is agonizing, but the payoff is worth it—and ties in beautifully toP4’s themes of self vs. self and self vs. other.
Choosing to spend time with a 40+ year-old cop and a grade schooler when you’re a high schooler trying to make friends and protect the world is quite an investment, but so are all relationships.Maintainingrelationships is a whole other story—oneP3mercilessly tackles with its reversal mechanic, which weakens Social Links if you leave the character alone for a while or say the wrong thing. Either way, investing in something—in someone—makes everything else feel a little fuller. Like without this crucial piece, the larger world ofPersonawouldn’t feel complete.
That, ultimately, is the majesty of Social Links: their ability to bring everything into perspective. Even Social Links that have little to no direct link with the main story, like Sadayo Kawakami fromP5, allow us to look outward by first looking inward—by listening and understanding. It’s a shame other games don’t have similar systems, but that’s part of what makesPersonaso special.
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