A popularity survey was conducted in Southeast Asia to determine which characters in Persona 5 Royal were fans' favorites. With a lot of memorable playable party members, it's not hard to see why they get a lot of love from the gaming community.
Persona 5 Royal is an Atlus-developed role-playing game that sees players traverse modern-day Tokyo and use their party's new-found powers to become vigilantes known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. Over the course of the game, players will be able to shuffle between 10 unique party members who have their own different skills, personalities, and looks much to the endearment of the gaming community.
In an official poll conducted by SEGA/Atlus, it's not much of a surprise to see the main protagonist, Joker, as the number one ranked individual. With Joker being a playable guest in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as well as being the main star of the spin-off Persona 5 Strikers, he has been all over the place with his appearances. Perhaps, one may consider him the most famous from the available roster.
A string of female characters follows soon after with Makoto Nijima, Kasumi Yoshizawa, and Futaba Sakura coming in second, third, and fourth respectively. It's actually not too surprising to see these rankings as well, with Makoto making the top spot in other people's top Persona 5 Royal characters lists. Goro Akechi claims the fifth spot from the list, which is, again, not too surprising since he also has a huge role in-game, oftentimes serving as the counterpoint to the main protagonist.
With multiple romance options available in Persona 5, seeing the female characters dominate the top 5 is not too far-fetched. Those who've played the game can easily grow attached to the aforementioned females as they sift through their backstories and interactions. This is also probably the reason why Hero/Joker landed the top spot. Having control of the story through his perspective enables gamers to live his life and forge relationships with the other characters as well.
It's always great to see games wherein relationships between party members are forged. It really builds appreciation and connection to the available roster that fans end up getting attached to the characters. With Persona 3 and Persona 4 also seeing a renewed life via upcoming ports to other systems, expect to see more of these fan-favorite surveys and lists to come up as both games had a great selection of in-game party members that fans had gotten attached to as well.
Persona 5 Royal is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Nintendo Soup