the big question is, what is a low-key fighter ? Example: Is it Lloyd a low-key pick? His games didn’t sell well comparing to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Nowdays, Tales of mainline games struggles to sell at least 1 million copies worldwide while Dragon Quest sells more than 5 million easily. The series isn’ extreme popular in the west, I think Persona 5 has sold more than previous Tales of games.
The definition probably going to be pretty nebulous, and/or change depending on who you'd ask. I guess we could start by listing the characters we'd generally accept to go under this definition, though I'm sure me naming them will get some disapproval. Regardless, my guess would be Joker, Banjo & Kazooie, Byleth, and Min Min for these reasons:
- Persona 5 might be a smash hit, but I don't think the Persona series as a whole is a cultural phenomenon like the likes of Dragon Quest, SNK fighting games, Final Fantasy, and Minecraft.
- Banjo & Kazooie are pretty much just riding off of nostalgia and rereleases to sell an online service, but their series is otherwise dead, and their target audience is mostly just Smash fans and older folk at this point.
- Byleth is from a smaller Nintendo series. It's becoming one of their main bread and butter franchises, but only becoming at this point.
- Min Min is from a flash in the pan game that debuted a few years back. She's very clearly the smallest of the bunch.
So I guess the definition of low-key would be in terms of their cultural impact. Sales are indicative of this, but not necessarily the biggest factor. I'd also imagine relevancy matters quite a bit here, so while characters like Ryu and Crash have
had a lot of cultural impact, they doesn't really nowadays, though I'm sure someone is going to yell at me for saying so.
EDIT: I will add that Crash certainly isn't anything to scoff at either, but I'd personally put him more at Joker's level than Steve, Terry, or Sephiroth's.