Persona 5 Royal confidant guide: Who is missable & who to focus

Confidants take over for social links in Persona 5 Royal and new players may want a guide on how to unlock them all and who to focus on building up.

Persona 3 introduced a visual novel element to the RPG series where players could befriend NPCs who offered benefits during their playthrough. The ever-popular Persona 5 Royal continues this, but with its own twists. Here’s everything there is to know about confidants in Persona 5 Royal.

How many confidants are there in Persona 5 Royal?

Persona 5 Royal functionally has 23 different confidants, with a 24th appearing in the game’s final moments.

For the most part, things work the same way they did in Persona 3 and Persona 4. Persona 5 Royal combines visual novel and JRPG elements, tasking players with befriending and building relationships with NPCs who offer abilities and perks that translate to greater strength in combat.

Building relationships is primarily done by spending time with them. Relationships “rank up” after meeting certain requirements, with relationships being maxed out after reaching rank 10.

How to unlock every confidant in Persona 5 Royal, and when you can unlock each one

Persona 5 Royal utilizes the series’ signature calendar-based progression system, which assigns certain events to certain dates. This applies to both mandatory story elements as well as unlocking side content. Most confidants are available to unlock on specific dates, though some are unlocked automatically during the story.

Similar to Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 Golden, there are two new confidants added in the “Royal” expansion. These are Kasumi and Maruki, the faith and councillor arcanas. These characters didn’t appear in the original version of Persona 5, and are central to the extra content added in Persona 5 Royal.

Here is the full list of confidants in Persona 5 Royal, when they become available, and the prerequisites they require: 

Unlike Persona 3’s social links that were largely gated behind the game’s social stats, Persona 5 Royal’s confidants don’t have social stat requirements in most cases. Instead, Persona 5’s social stats are used as gates for improving relationships with confidants.

That isn’t to say that every confidant can be unlocked instantly, though. Several force the player to jump through other kinds of hoops. 

How to unlock Makoto as a confidant

Players can unlock Makoto as a confidant by talking with her with level three knowledge after a certain point in the story.

Makoto doesn’t automatically become a confidant, but she’s not too far off. After Kaneshiro’s change of heart takes place, talk to Makoto after school. With knowledge level three, she’ll become a confidant.

How to unlock Chihaya in Persona 5 Royal

Chihaya is unlocked as a confidant in Persona 5 Royal by completing her mementos mission. Players have to do some legwork and pay some cash in order to get the mission, though.

Starting on June 22, Chihaya can be spoken to in Shinjuku during nighttime hours. Players will have to speak with her three times on different nights and pay 100,000 to receive the “Ending the Boyfriend’s Abuse” mission in Mementos. Completing this mission lets players officially unlock Chihaya as a confidant, which is an enormous boon.

How to unlock Kawakami

After discovering Kawakami’s side gig, players can unlock her as a confidant by hitting level three on their guts stat.

Once Operation Maid Watch is completed, the visiting maid service can be called on some nights. The one catch? Ren is too chicken to call until reaching guts level three. With guts level three, just use the phone found at the end of the bar counter in LeBlanc. It’s worth focusing on raising the guts stat early in a new Persona 5 Royal playthrough just to unlock Kawakami as a confidant.

How to unlock Oda

Oda is unlocked as a confidant in Persona 5 Royal by completing the Winners Don’t Use Cheats quest in Mementos, then speaking with him.

Unlocking Oda requires two visits to Mementos. The Winners Don’t Use Cheats mission becomes available on September 4. After encountering Shadow Nejima, the party is forced back due to his 100% evasion. After returning from Mementos, Futaba sends a text message recommending that the party enlist help from an expert in light gun games.

In the following days, visit the arcade. A cutscene will introduce Oda and he’ll agree to teach Ren tricks for playing. From there, talk with Futaba outside LeBlanc, then return to the arcade to talk with Oda. This unlocks him as a confidant, and lets players defeat Shadow Nejima on their next trip to Mementos.

How to unlock Hifumi

Unlocking Hifumi requires reaching rank two with Yusuke and having level three charm.

For some reason, befriending Hifumi works on Persona 3 logic. While hanging out with Yusuke, he’ll mention a shogi prodigy in his class. After, she’ll start appearing in the church in Kanda but will only talk to Ren once he has level three charm. After reaching this mark, she becomes a confidant.

How to unlock Yoshida

Players need to work in the beef bowl shop twice after meeting Yoshida to unlock him as a confidant.

On May 6, Yoshida starts appearing near the entrance to Shibuya Station. From there, look at the magazine racks inside Shibuya Station to find job listings for the beef bowl shop. After taking the job, work there a few times. Yoshida will eventually appear as a customer and from there, talking with him while he’s doing his stump speech will unlock him as a confidant. While this is a simple process, tying Yoshida to the beef bowl shop makes him the most missable confidant in Persona 5 Royal.

All social stat requirements for Persona 5 Royal confidants

There’s a new wrinkle to social stats relative to previous games. Some confidants in Persona 5 Royal have social stat prerequisites to unlock them, but just as important is that a majority of them have some sort of social stat check during their questline. This requires players to have social stats leveled to a certain point to increase their ranks with those confidants.

This is a critical addition to the game, as it forces players into taking a balanced approach to developing social links and social stats. Here’s a quick look at which social links have these requirements and when they come up:

Which confidants should be focused on in Persona 5 Royal?

In the early game, players should quickly look to unlock Kawakami as a confidant. In the middle and later stages of the game, players should make sure to raise up Chihaya, Maruki, Kasumi, and Akechi.

Kawakami is one of the best confidants in the game, as she gives players extra blocks of time to read books, study, or craft items. This is an extremely valuable ability, which should be utilized as quickly as possible..

After the early stages of Persona 5 Royal, Chihaya, Maruki, Kasumi, and Akechi are the confidants that players should focus on ranking up.

Chihaya offers the ability to improve relationships with confidants without advancing time. This is another valuable time-saving mechanic that lets players experience more content in Persona 5 Royal.

As for Maruki, Kasumi, and Akechi, these confidants are key to some of Persona 5 Royal’s missable content. That makes it important to raise their ranks as quickly as possible.

Persona 5 Royal confidant calendar, availability by day of the week

Persona 5 Royal progresses based on the Gregorian calendar and just like real life, not everyone is available all the time. Confidants have their own schedules that they follow, meaning they’re only available on certain days. Here’s a breakdown of who is available on each day and night during the week: 

• Sunday
  • Day – Makoto, Haru, Yusuke, Sojiro, Ann, Ryuji, Futaba, Takemi, Kasumi
  • Night – Sojiro, Chihaya, Iwai, Ohya, Hifumi, Mishima, Yoshida
• Monday
  • Day – Haru, Yusuke, Ann, Ryuji, Takemi, Oda, Maruki
  • Night – Sojiro, Ohya, Hifumi, Mishima
• Tuesday
  • Day – Makoto, Haru, Yusuke, Ann, Ryuji, Takemi, Oda
  • Night – Sojiro, Chihaya, Ohya, Mishima, Yoshida
• Wednesday
  • Day – Haru, Yusuke, Ann, Ryuji, Futaba, Takemi, Kasumi
  • Night – Ohya, Hifumi, Mishima, Akechi
• Thursday
  • Day – Makoto, Haru, Yusuke, Ryuji, Futaba, Takemi, Oda, Kasumi
  • Night – Sojiro, Chihaya, Iwai, Ohya, Mishima, Yoshida
• Friday
  • Day – Haru, Yusuke, Ann, Ryuji, Takemi, Maruki
  • Night – Sojiro, Kawakami, Ohya, Mishima
• Saturday
  • Day – Makoto, Haru, Yusuke, Ryuji, Futaba, Takemi, Oda
  • Night – Sojiro, Chihaya, Iwai, Kawakami, Ohya, Hifumi, Mishima, Yoshida, Akechi

As veteran Persona fans would expect, there are plenty of caveats to this. Various factors can cause confidants to not appear when they normally would, or become available when they normally wouldn’t. Weather, exams, story events, and various other occurrences can impact who appears on a given day or night.

Alongside this, Akechi, Maruki, and Kasumi are not consistently available after unlocking them as social links. Both characters are only available for a comparatively short while during the game, and aren’t always available at their usual times.

Are any confidants missable in Persona 5 Royal?

Several confidants become unavailable in Persona 5 Royal starting in November. While most of the confidants can be unlocked deep into the game, the bigger concern is missable content if players don’t raise their ranks to a certain level by a certain date. Here are the key instances of this:

• Raise Kawakami to rank 10 before November 18
• Raise Yoshida to rank 10 before November 13
• Raise Maruki to rank nine before November 18
• Raise Akechi to rank eight before November 18
• Raise Kasumi to rank five before December 18

Note: Significant spoilers ahead for Persona 5 Royal.

Players need to raise their confidant ranks with Maruki and Akechi to certain points by certain dates, or else they will miss out on Persona 5 Royal’s extra chapter. This is similar to what was seen in Persona 4 Golden with Marie’s social link.

In order to avoid missing Persona 5 Royal’s extra chapter, players need to raise their relationship with Maruki to rank nine and with Akechi to rank eight by November 17. If these conditions aren’t fulfilled, players will miss out on playing the new chapter that comes after the base game’s story.