Best Xenogears Characters & Gears Guide

If you’re thinking about playing Xenogears, one of the best jRPGs on PS1, you might be wondering which characters and gears are worthwhile to have in your party.

Not all Xenogears characters are created equal and some are objectively better than others. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about your options for party members in Xenogears.

Fei

Gear: Weltall / Weltall 2 / Xenogears

Fei is the main character and you’re required to have him in your party throughout the game except for the portions where he freaks out and mysteriously bails.

That said, you’ll want him in your party because he tends to be the best or second best character at any given point in the game.

His spells aren’t very good, you probably won’t ever use them, but in terms of physical attacks he’s strong and he’s fast and, because you have him in your party all the time, he’s likely ahead of your other party members in terms of unlocking his combos.

When it comes to gears, much of what I wrote above holds true. Weltall is a strong and fast gear. Weltall 2 is very powerful once you receive it, and Xenogears is bar none the best gear in the game.

Elly

Gear: Vierge / El Regrs

Elly is a decently strong party member on foot. She’s physically weak but her spells are decently powerful. Unfortunately, she’s only available sporadically throughout the game so she’s not very worthwhile to invest in.

Her gear, Vierge, is very powerful due to its special ability Aerods which will wreck the opposition, especially if you equip Elly with an Ether Doubler and Power Magic accessories. It’s one of the most broken things you can do in the game. Too bad you never have the opportunity to use El Regrs in battle.

Citan

Gear: Heimdal / Fenrir

Citan tends to be the best character in the game at every point where Fei’s not the best character in the game. On foot he has absolutely ridiculous HP and keeps pace with Fei in terms of damage output.

At a certain point he unlocks a sword and pulls ahead of everybody in terms of damage until the end of the game. He also is practically required for much of the game because he’s the only available character with healing magic until you recruit Billy.

His gear is not quite as ridiculous as Citan is on foot, but it’s still incredibly strong, especially once it’s upgraded from Heimdal to the sword-using Fenrir model.

In a game where physical attacks and combos rule, Citan has the best physical attacks and the best combos, not to mention very high speed and extremely high health.

Bart

Gear: Brigandier / Andvari

Bart is relatively mediocre in terms of the best Xenogears characters. His spells are not very useful, he tends to not be as strong or fast as Fei and Citan and overall he’s just OK. He fulfills the same sort of niche for your party as Fei, but as I mentioned, he’s not as strong or fast.

Once you recruit more characters you’ll be hard-pressed to think of a reason to choose Bart over other, more useful characters, like Billy and Emeralda.

The same holds true for Bart’s gears except for a brief period when you first unlock Bart’s Omnigear Andvari. The reason being that Bart is the first one to get his Omnigear so there’s a brief portion of the game where he’s significantly stronger than every other character while riding a gear.

Rico

Gear: Stier / El Stier

Rico, as you might expect from looking at him, is the strong, slow character of the group. In battle, he tends to not be that great because although he’s strong, he’s still not as strong as Citan is with a sword and he’s significantly slower than everyone.

In Gear form, he’s not much different, although El Stier is significantly better than Rico on foot, mostly because you can equip it with an engine that favors speed. A lot of people think El Stier is among the strongest gears in the game.

There’s not really much to say about Rico overall: he’s slow and strong, but only about as strong as Fei, Citan and Billy at the cost of an enormous amount of speed.

Billy

Gear: Renmazuo / El Renmazuo

Billy is amazing on foot. He does a huge amount of damage with his guns and has the best healing spells in the game.

On foot, Billy is easily one of the top tier Xenogears characters, even rivaling Citan in terms of his usefulness. Among the best Xenogears characters on foot.

His power in a gear, however, tapers off, since healing spells don’t work on gears. He doesn’t really have much that sets him apart while riding a gear except that he has a few gear-specific spells that can be boosted with an Ether Doubler. In a gear, Billy falls somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Maria

Gear: Seibzehn

Maria is an interesting addition to the Xenogears characters because she’s completely useless on foot. She has terrible stats and all she can do is cast a few spells. Definitely not worthy of a spot in the party on foot. She doesn’t even have any combos.

In a gear, however, she’s incredibly strong. When you first get her, she’s sure to be the strongest character in the party while riding a gear.

She remains at the top of the pack in gear battles as the game goes on, but the gap starts to narrow toward the end of the game, where she performs about as well as other top-tier gear options, except without any utility as a character on foot.

Chu-Chu

Gear: None

In terms of the best Xenogears characters, Chu-Chu is a useless mascot character. She’s useless both on foot and in her ‘gear’ form where she grows to be gigantic. She has some interesting mechanics, namely that her ‘gear’ form simply multiplies her base form stats, so you can power her up with stat drives.

Unfortunately, even at full power, Chu-Chu is pretty useless as a fighter even in ‘gear’ form. She misses a lot of her attacks and even when she lands them, they tend to be fairly weak.

She has the unique ability to heal gears, which is somewhat useful, but not useful enough to make her a compelling option to include in your party. Definitely not among the best Xenogears characters.

Emeralda

Gear: Crescens

There are two versions of Emeralda on foot. The first is a little girl, and the second is her adult form, which is acquired by completing an optional sidequest toward the end of the game.

Adult Emeralda is easily top tier among the best Xenogears characters on foot; she has the highest starts of any character in all areas, most importantly speed and strength. She stands alongside Fei, Citan and Billy as being over-the-top powerful.

On top of that, she also has all of Elly’s elemental spells and is capable of outputting decent damage when equipped with an Ether Doubler, though it’s not typically necessary since her physical attacks are quite strong on their own.

In her gear, she’s also decently strong as Crescens is very fast and very powerful. It’s not quite on the same level as Xenogears, but much better than the mid-tier gears (El Renmazuo and Andvari), so it’s a decent pick to take along with you.

Best Party in the Game – Best Xenogears Characters

Best Xenogears Characters On Foot

On foot the best party is almost indisputably some combination of Fei, Citan, Emeralda and Billy. They are lightyears ahead of every other party member in every conceivable category.

Attack power, speed, utility, you name it; the other half of the cast can’t match any of them in even a single area.

Best Xenogears Characters In Gears:

This is a little tougher.

Certainly, Xenogears is the best.

After that, El Stier, Seibzehn and Crescens are probably the next best, followed somewhat closely by Fenrir.

Andvari and El-Renmazuo come in fourth place, but they’re still fairly usable.

That about covers it when it comes to the best Xenogears characters. Be sure to check out the Games Section for more articles like this.