Persona games 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 to the 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 another Persona character will literally decide a life or death situation in the player's favor. Persona 5 converted Social Links into the highly similar Confidant system, and Persona 5 Royal carried on the tradition. It even introduced a couple new Confidants and updated most Confidants' mechanics.
There's more than twenty Confidants in Persona 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 in Persona 5 Royal have 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 of Persona 5 Royal's Confidants from weakest to strongest.
Ichiko Ohya
Ohya is unfortunately rather easy to choose as Persona 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 of Persona 5 Royal's Palaces can 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 abilities once players get past Joker's flashback and 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 original Persona 5, since she could be used to enhance the player's Social Stat gains. Now that Joker has a lot more free time in Royal, 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 all mostly 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 pretty efficient 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 the founding 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, and something to do with Joker's evenings in. 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.
Goro Akechi
Arguably one of the biggest changes made to Persona 5 Royal was 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 third encounter 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. Although she'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.
Toranosuke Yoshida
This disgraced politician has a fair few potent life skills to share with Joker. Some Persona 5 players might feel disappointed that negotiating with Shadows for money and items doesn't always turn a big profit. Yoshida flips that on its head. By befriending him, players can make huge windfalls of cash and consumables by negotiating with Shadows. However, Yoshida is bogged down as a Confidant by his inaccessibility. Meeting him through the beef bowl shop is cryptic enough that some players may never realize he was a Confidant.
Futaba Sakura
Futaba Sakura, the Hermit Confidant, has a lot of strong passive skills to offer Joker. By befriending Futaba more deeply, she can learn to restore SP to the party, give them stronger stat boosts, and find more treasure for the Thieves to steal. Futaba is waylaid slightly by a high Kindness requirement up front; since Kindness is a hard stat to earn, many players might pass her over because of this. She's also highly luck based, which makes many of her abilities unreliable.
Kasumi Yoshizawa
The new Phantom Thief introduced in Persona 5 Royal has a couple decent skills that make her worth befriending. Yoshizawa knows acrobatic tricks that really come in handy; she can teach Joker to escape from enemy ambushes and to ambush enemies at greater range in turn. She's a little difficult to max out, since players can only get 5 levels with her outside of the third semester. She's also only available at very specific times for most of the game. However, she makes up for this by also increasing Joker's HP every level.
Igor
The master of the Velvet Room is another automatic Confidant. Persona 5 Royal would certainly be a much harder game without some of Igor's gifts, like Third Eye, greater Persona stock, and stronger Persona fusions. Frankly, Igor's biggest flaws don't stem from his mechanics, but his plot integration. Players have no agency over leveling Igor up and just have to be patient for upgrades. Early levels come quickly, but later ones takes time.
Morgana
Morgana is another automatic Confidant, but he stands above Igor for being more engaging. Although players can't hang out with Morgana to become better friends, working with him to make infiltration tools feels pretty close to a Confidant hangout. His tools are crucial to exploring the Metaverse, and crafting them is a great source of Proficiency to boot. Although players might like to spend more quality time with their trusty cat, patience will be rewarded.
Munehisa Iwai
The biggest challenge players face when befriending Iwai is the high up-front Guts requirement. Once players get past that, though, Iwai is pretty easy to rank up and even provides some Guts to help players top off the stat. His gun modification skills were completely overhauled for Persona 5 Royal. Guns are much stronger in this version of Persona 5 thanks to ammo changes, and Iwai's highly flexible customization options make him worth a trigger happy player's while.
Yuuki Mishima
Mishima is largely indispensable as a Confidant. All of his skills revolve around increasing the amount of experience that the Phantom Thieves earn in battle. The better friends Joker and Mishima are, the faster the Thieves level up by a long shot. Mishima's biggest flaw as a Confidant is probably that he requires the player to do lots of sidequests to rank him up. However, this can be spun as a positive. Mishima's quests directly put his Confidant abilities to use and encourage players to explore Mementos while they make a friend.
Shinya Oda
Shinya is a little out of the way as far as Confidants go, appearing late in the game and only as part of a specific sidequest. However, players are strongly encouraged to befriend Shinya if they have the time. Even though guns were overhauled, Shinya was mostly unchanged in Royal, and remains powerful. He can help Joker knock down even the stubbornest Personas, show him how to deal tons of extra damage at the start of battle, and let Joker's guns pierce resistances. He'll even earn Joker a little bit of Kindness along the way.
Sadayo Kawakami
Kawakami is a bit of an ordeal to rank up, since she costs the player a lot of money to visit and is slow to progress through early levels. Even so, she's easily one of Persona 5 Royal's top Confidants because of how much free time she gives to Joker. Whether it's giving him the occasional extra activity slot at school or letting him roam the city after visiting the Metaverse, she's extremely efficient once players get a few levels with her.
Makoto Niijima
Makoto's unique Confidant ability stands well above her fellow Phantom Thieves in strength. From the get-go, she tells Joker what skills all kinds of Shadows know. This ability is a total game changer, helping the player strategize and defend from weaknesses. She can also tell players what Shadows are resistant to, saving previous turns that players might waste on useless elemental affinities. Even though she has a few steep Social Stat requirements, Makoto redefines Persona 5 Royal's combat.
Tae Takemi
The Phantom Thieves' medical supplier is extremely impactful. Joker meets her early on and can max her out pretty quickly, and the result is a wide range of purchasable consumables that will save the Thieves' lives over and over again. She also sells some really potent equipment, like the SP Adhesive. If players get their hands on the strongest SP Adhesive, they may never want for SP again. Takemi is an unbelievably good investment as a Confidant.
Hifumi Togo
Hifumi is another confidant that completely changes Persona 5's combat. She teaches Joker how to swap party members in and out of the team in the middle of battle, opening a huge field of tactics that wasn't even close to possible before. She can also help Joker make more money from combat and gives him Knowledge as they become closer friends. Although she has some noteworthy Social Stat requirements, she actively helps Joker reach the Knowledge requirement, and frankly, Knowledge is hardly a barrier in Persona 5 to begin with.
Takuto Maruki
One of Persona 5 Royal's new Confidants stands above all the rest at the end of the day. Maruki is an extremely easy Confidant to rank up; Royal gives away his first two levels and his last level for free, so long as players get him to level 9. Maruki has some amazing skills to teach Joker, including how to recover instantly from ailments and how to restore his own SP when it's low. He also increases Joker's total SP over time and gives him free items. On top of all that, maxing out Maruki is how players unlock Persona 5 Royal's third semester -- and really, what better Confidant gift could there be than ten more hours of Persona 5 Royal?
Persona 5 Royal is available now for PS4.