I love the social link with Koromaru, it is really adorable.

Having the option to control your characters does greatly reduce the difficulty, but it is optional. I tend to let some characters like Shinjiro, Junpei and Aigis when she has Palladion go by the AI and others I manually control, like Mitsuru.

I also found the female main character to generally have easier social links with so many evening links but the fortune link is cruel if you are playing for the first time, as well as the moon to a lesser extent.