The more source-tables needs to be included the more important is to merge (vertically as well as horizontally) all tables as much as possible to end ideally by a star-scheme with one fact-table and n surrounding dimension-tables.
Of course it could mean a lot of work to clean and prepare all data-structures including filling + populating data and harmonizing all field-names and data-structure - but thinking you could avoid it by applying link-tables and saving efforts it's an illusion because the opposite will happens by doing all the needed work within a much more complex data-structure. Further link-table models could decrease the performance very significantly and the the UI experiences are also bad. In short: just getting disadvantages without any benefit - therefore why doing it?
