Considering what I read about Hifumi being planned for playable I'd gladly switch Makoto for Hifumi. Makoto is residentsleeper.jpg and I think a chuunibyou main character who serves as your tactical advisor in combat would have been amazing. Instead we yukiko x chie but with none of the quirks that made either of them enjoyable characters.
Now i must know how you find Yukiko or Chie enjoyable characters. Not that i get how you get Makoto from those two.
I wonder if you found any of the hidden interactions with Makoto prior to her joining.
To be honest I'm not a big fan of chie, but she at least had believeable interests and quirks and had a consistent character where I could accurately predict how she'd react during various scenes. Chie and Yukiko also have their friendship with each other and Yosuke from before Yu arrives which helps to inform those characters and they get great development with each other in Yukiko's palace. Any issues I had with any individual member of the p4 cast is covered up by the strength and bond of that games cast where I'd watch an infinite number of scenes with them. I was pretty far into p4 when I got a vita and p4g and I enjoyed replaying everything I'd previously done. If p5 golden came out tomorrow for vita/switch/ps4 I'd probably just stick with finishing p5 and wait to get p5g until it was cheap. Makoto feels so disconnected from the rest of the team and her slink is so bad it doesn't lead to her having much of a connection to Joker either.
And I only saw Makoto spying on me once, 90% of the time I just quick travel everywhere since walking around the maps in p5 isn't fun.