Social Links have been a prominent feature in the Persona games for the longest time, so when Persona 5 Strikers ended up being more similar to Persona 5 than many thought, we all hoped to see the feature in this spin-off game. You can’t blame fans for thinking this way since this is essentially the sequel to Persona 5 and they are hoping for as many callbacks to the classic JRPG as possible.
As many know, Social Links were renamed into Confidants in Persona 5. While the new name didn’t get a bad reaction, it was odd of them to rename a feature many had grown accustomed to. Still, fans grew to accept the term with both vanilla Persona 5 and its expanded follow-up Persona 5 Royal.
Read More: Does Persona 5 Strikers Have Confidants?
Does Persona 5 Strikers Have Social Links?
Unfortunately, Persona 5 Strikers does not have Social Links. The game does have the ‘Requests’ feature that has Joker take on various side missions, some of which come from his party members, but they don’t have the same satisfaction as Social Links. ‘Requests’ do give players some extra rewards and remixed boss battles, but those expecting heart-wrenching stories similar in tone to Persona 5 or Persona 4 are out of luck.
In the game’s defense, Strikers focuses on The Phantom Thieves traveling through different cities in Japan to prevent Shadows from overtaking them. Since the characters move from place-to-place rather quickly, it wouldn’t make much sense to bring back Social Links since this game doesn’t take place in one city that just happens to have multiple characters.
Since Strikers is a spin-off game, fans were probably hoping for too much when it came to how many features from the original title would stay on. Still, there’s a lot to sink your teeth into here, with a meaty story campaign, various side missions to complete, and difficulty levels to try out.
Persona 5 Strikers is coming out on February 23 for the PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.
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