Personagames have a way of drawing players in and making them feel intimately connected to the setting that many other games struggle to match. That’s in large part due tothe Social Link system. The player isn’t just encouraged to make friends with their teammates and other NPCs; mechanically, it’s imperative that they do. Sometimes, the bonds between the protagonist and anotherPersonacharacter will literally decide a life or death situation in the player’s favor.Persona 5converted Social Links into the highly similar Confidant system, andPersona 5 Royalcarried on the tradition. It even introduced a couple new Confidants and updated most Confidants' mechanics.
There’s more than twenty Confidants inPersona 5 Royal,so it’s a little hard to rank them all. It’s nearly impossible to rank them based on their storylines, for one. Atlus channels magnificent subplots through all of these characters that help Joker’s Tokyo feel more like a real, living place with all kinds of stories going on in it. However, some Confidants inPersona 5 Royalhave very clear benefits over others. Each Confidant offers a very unique set of benefits and abilities, but some of them outshine the rest in terms of potency, efficiency, and convenience. Here is a tier list ofPersona 5 Royal’s Confidants fromweakest to strongest.
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Ichiko Ohya
Ohya is unfortunately rather easy to choose asPersona 5 Royal’s worst Confidant. Her abilities sound useful on paper—she can lower the Security level on Palaces. Unfortunately for her, players already have so much agency over lowering Security levels while exploring Palaces that befriending her is never useful.Many ofPersona 5 Royal’s Palacescan be cleared fast enough that players won’t even get opportunities to use her abilities, and she serves no purpose between Palaces. She might help new players struggling to stealth through Palaces, but by the time she’s high level, most players really won’t need her anymore. Overall, she’s just a time sink.
Sae Niijima
Sae is a strong character who plays a persistent role as a contact of Joker’s. Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of her usefulness as a Confidant. One might expect that she would provide some abilitiesonce players get past Joker’s flashbackand reunite with Sae in current time, but nothing happens. That means that Joker’s Confidant rank with her is nearly meaningless. At the very least, Sae is a plot-based Confidant that Joker progresses with automatically. She might not do anything, but at least she doesn’t take up the player’s precious free time.
Chihaya Mifune
The Shinjuku fortune teller Chihaya unfortunately doesn’t do as much for Joker as one might hope. Chihaya was slightly more helpful in the originalPersona 5,since she could be used to enhance the player’s Social Stat gains. Now that Joker has a lotmore free time inRoyal,this side of Chihaya isn’t nearly as useful. Other abilities that show upcoming Confidant abilities and conversational responses they like are also largely useless, since lots of players just look up this information online. With a hundred thousand yen fee up front as well, Chihaya isn’t a huge help.
Yusuke Kitagawa
The Phantom Thieves are allmostly identical as Confidants, but they all come with two or three unique abilities that set them apart from each other. Yusuke’s is probably the least useful. His unique skills revolve around making extra copies of Skill Cards for Joker. While Skill Cards are great for highly tactical players, they’re in no way essential for success. Between that and the detour necessary to ask Yusuke to make copies, this aspect of him is largely forgettable. Yusuke is much better at carrying the team with his high damage output than with extra Skill Cards.
Caroline and Justine
The Twin Wardens are uniquely difficult to rank up. Instead of just hanging out with them like normal Confidants, Joker has to show them Personas that know a specific skill. Their early skill Lockdown is great and a prettyefficient way to strengthen Personas, but many of their other skills don’t do much for Joker. What’s more, leveling them up gets extremely obtuse at high ranks. As they demand obscure and increasingly rare Personas, players can’t be blamed for giving up in frustration and focusing their play time on other Confidants.
Ryuji Sakamoto
As one of thefounding members of the Phantom Thieves, it’s natural that many players make good progress with Ryuji early on. Availability and ease of leveling up is definitely one of Ryuji’s strengths. However, his Confidant abilities don’t necessarily shine. Players may forget they have the Stealth Dash ability since dashing in Palaces is so heavily discouraged. His Insta-kill ability is significantly more useful as a time saver in Mementos. However, some players may intentionally avoid using it, since it clutters up Joker’s Persona stock and wastes chances at earning money.
Sojiro Sakura
The proprietor of coffee shop Leblanc is another early game Confidant that lots of players probably got levels in out of convenience. Sojiro’s special coffee and curry recipes are nothing to sneeze at in the early game, providing SP restoratives, Social Stats, andsomething to do with Joker’s eveningsin. Although coffee and curry are convenient, other Confidants and certain items ultimately outshine Sojiro’s recipes in power. What’s more, a high Kindness requirement at a late level makes him hard to max out just when he’s starting to fall off in efficiency.
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Goro Akechi
Arguably one of the biggest changes made toPersona 5 Royalwas the player’s newfound ability to befriend the Detective Prince on their own time. Akechi provides a decent pair of sleuthing skills that let Joker occasionally spot an enemy’s elemental affinities. It’s great to learn an enemy’s weakness and immediately gain the upper hand. The problem with these skills is that they don’t trigger particularly often, and if they don’t trigger immediately, they often don’t matter much when they trigger on a second or thirdencounter with a new Shadow.
Haru Okumura
Haru is one of the aforementioned Confidants that eventually outclasses Sojiro’s SP restoratives in terms of potency. Her vegetables, grown lovingly on the Shujin Academy rooftop, can restore huge amounts of SP. The trouble is that Haru can’t actually be befriended until the end of October, when the game is nearly over. What’s more, Haru has an extremely high Proficiency requirement to gain any more than a rank 1 friendship with her. Althoughshe’s a strong Confidant, scrambling to rank her up at the end of the game can be a hassle.
Ann Takamaki
Ann is a pretty easy Confidant to rank up,and as a Phantom Thief, she provides two unique abilities. Crocodile Tears is, unfortunately, highly forgettable and almost never comes up. Sexy Technique, however, can be a total lifesaver now and again. Once she gains this skill, Ann has a random chance of distracting Shadows in combat, forcing them to waste their turn. A completely free ability that can turn the tide of battle this way is nothing to sneeze at. Unfortunately, since it’s random, it’s not always reliable.
