Yea, what i thought. Ive seen you post about other games in other threads and i dont mean this in a mean way but you have a real problem with building up what YOU think a game should be and then judging it negatively when it isnt what you wanted it to be. You state that very clearly above. no gaffer said social links were sim mini games but you assumed they should be. Why, i dont know, blitzball was one of the worst tedious parts in FFX, no one wants stupid minigames (well one).
My point is I really feel bad that you have a trend of doing this because you are sabotaging youre own enjoyment of games. You are not judging games by what the developer created but by some game you develop in your head that it is not. By doing this your expectations will rarely if ever be met and your disappoint in this will distract you from actually enjoying the good parts of a game.
For example you will not find one single glowing review for P4G proclaiming its sim like social link minigames. Why? Because there was none, you made that up. You will find many praises for its art, story. music and persona mechanic. All of which you didnt even comment on, only your disappointment in the lack of a made up gimmick you created in your head. And because of that you have barely scratched the surface of the game and have already wrote it off as you shouldnt have bought. At that point you will never give it a fair shake. You may just not like jrpgs, and thats fine, but to continually judge games on mechanics that were never present nor implied is silly and only harming your own enjoyment. If you cant break that habit for your own good then at least start looking at youtube clips of games and doing a bit more research before buying games.
just my two cents.