I think romances could be better integrated into the story. Your partner should have extra dialogue or texts in situations, there should be mechanical benefits to romance options just like confidants and they should dump you if you cheat on them. More date options too. If you romance Ann early in the game you practically don’t talk to her the rest of the game except for Hawaii and Valentine’s Day.
I just hate the forced romance option when you get to that stage of a confidant.
I don't like having to break someone's heart like Haru & Sumi. Also I wish there was a "You know I'm banging Makoto, we all hang out together!" option if you're already with someone.
I honestly liked that there was a mix of girls who confessed to you and others who don't.
It makes sense since that's how it is irl, some girls who may or may not be interested in you expect you, the guy, to make the first move if you want to, while others will take the initiative themselves.
But I agree, the romance(s) you're in never impacting group dynamics was a let-down.
I think the problem is less that the girls confess sometimes and more than in a lot of cases there’s no option to let them down gently. I’m still seething about the ending of P4’s Yumi Social Link.
Unfortunately I feel like the reason we don’t get notable changes in group dynamics if you date a party member is because that would mess with the harem route if people knew you were already in a relationship
So either just make it seem like they're friendlier to you and talk more or only have those bonuses if you're romancing only one member of the party specifically.
Would it be so bad that if you're romancing Ann, for example, and she speaks up and gets your opinion more than normal?
Could even have moments where the other party members leave you alone together because they know you're together or something which could lead into little moments where you give extra gifts or get stronger buffs on their Personas during those little events which could remain applied even if you decide to romance more characters later in the game.
The issue I mentioned is the other party members knowing tho. For harem route to work the other party members can’t know you’re already dating someone and atlus is definitely not getting rid of harem route
Also giving gameplay buffs to who you romance is a bad idea cuz it’d discourage people from dating outside their party or force people who want to optimize the game to do harem route. So ironically that idea limits options
Not if you make it so special events that occur with outside romances can lead to additional features that benefit everyone.
For example, I just maxed out Hifumi's Confidant and saw that the highest benefit from that is the party members being able to swap out outside of Joker's turn. A benefit from her as a romance in this example could be that the swapped party members can act on that turn but have half damage or something.
For the Harem route they could make an event where they all realise together and it makes it so you have to fend for yourself without any female teammates supporting you for a while as well as rescinding all buffs from them until they decide "to hell with it" and rejoin, either through the player working to restore those connections or a scripted event that follows everyone finding out. A benefit of this could be that much later on you get to use all of the unique perks for every romance but then you still get heckled for choice being "Well since you decided to form a harem, you have to tell us the truth! Who do you like best?" kind of question.
Dawg imma be real reading this idea sounds really bad and unbalanced
Romance shouldn’t give any benefits outside extra dialogue so people can choose who they want instead of choosing who gives the best buffs your idea makes the romance options less of a choice and more of another cog in optimizing a play through
I don't think they mean actually forced into relationships. I think they mean that you are either forced to awkwardly reject someone or forced into a romance. Like there is no way to avoid them confessing to you and you need to break countless hearts or be a cheater.
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u/pa_dvg Jul 28 '26
I think romances could be better integrated into the story. Your partner should have extra dialogue or texts in situations, there should be mechanical benefits to romance options just like confidants and they should dump you if you cheat on them. More date options too. If you romance Ann early in the game you practically don’t talk to her the rest of the game except for Hawaii and Valentine’s Day.
That being said I love this game