The social links in persona 3 reload are like, a really rudimentary take on that mechanic. pretty much all of the romanceable characters have, like, exactly the same story beat where they confess their love to the protagonist (who can then choose to reciprocate or keep the relationship platonic), placed on exactly the same spot in their relationship track. but what turns it from a very jarringly straightforward rendition of a romantic subplot to being actively very funny is that they all do it in the same place? like all these girls, specifically, confess on the roof of the school. so all the romances in P3R are bottlenecked into the same scene just with a different love interest on the other end. And of course because of how the game is structured it's very plausible to be doing all these scenes in quick succession so it turns into this sitcom where the hapless protagonist just has every possible ship drag him to the same spot. this even though all of these characters' plots are otherwise nothing like one another and are about different things.
The other funny thing about the social link system is that once you max out your social link with someone you have gotten all the mechanical benefits from it and thus you are DONE, you have no reason whatsoever to ever talk to this character again. Some social links conclusively end the relevant character's story anyway, but several don't; they allow you to keep spending time with those characters but doing so wastes a precious day you could use to advance another relationship instead.
This combines with how the three main romance s-links in the game all require a maxed out 'social stat' to even start, which means you will be mopping them up in the late game. Creating a dynamic where, in the late game, you are sequentially making these girls catch feelings for you, breaking their hearts, agreeing to stay friends, and then never hanging out with them again as you have other s-links to finish.
It's really funny to me how the Persona games are designed around what we'd think of as a 'less transactional' relationship model than a lot of RPGs (relationships are built by spending time with someone more so than helping them materially or being agreeable to them) but the game structures are really brutally instrumentalizing to the NPCs you're befriending or dating.
