Legend of Dragoon:
Kongol: 3/10. You can use Kongol (Legend Casque is broke, y'see). there's just no compelling reason to. It seems they systematically made him be the exact opposite of Meru (high attack stat with no mults behind it, shit speed, def vs mdef) then forgot to design the game in a balanced way so that both builds had use.
Rose: 6/10. Gets the job done. Astral Drain is a nice niche in the early going, and the game goes out of its way to compensate her poor growths in the late game to ensure she never drops off.
Meru: 8/10. Best character in the game. The fact that she's quite usable initially, when she has no dragoon form, no good additions, and no way to cover her fraility says much.
Haschel: 6/10. He's alright. Not really bad at anything.
Albert Serdio: 5/10. He starts off pretty good (super early access to high end additions, his second spell is nifty) but the game apparently doesn't like him so he just... doesn't have any damage later one, and defense isn't what you need.
Dart: 5/10. There's a strangely high number of enemies he nails weakness on, so he's actually always useful despite the statistical weakness.
Miranda: 7/10. Good stuff. The fact that she can't do anything physically, rather than just taking a while to get going, makes her feel worse than Meru to me.
Xenogears (Gears):
Welltall(-2)/Xenogears: 7/10. Never bad, smashtastic for disc 2. That said, while System Id really is a bit broken, Xenogears is more of a crutch; a good setup will kill Deus before it's special properties have a chance to kick in, but if you don't have good setups it'll smash more or less on its own. Waffling between a 7 and an 8 overall, aiming low for now.
Vierge: 8/10. Broke, but a pain in the butt to set up. You either have to not spend any money in the early game or go nearly an hour out of your way to get the critical piece of the puzzle. So sure, dock a point for that.
Heimdall/Fenrir: 6/10. Heimdall fails to impress, but less because it's useless than because it just doesn't do anything Weltall (1) can't, and you already have to use Weltall.
Brigandier/Andvari: 4/10. Wild Smile is an awesome skill and it's easy to forget how good it is (especially if you set up for evade), but that's all Bart's gears have. EVERYTHING else they do is worse than Weltall, our baseline.
(El-)Stier: 5/10. The shitty speed hurts less in gears (universal Haste skill and the enemies aren't any faster to compensate), and his power boost is a noticable boon over other folks (he likes to OHKO weaker enemies everyone else takes two turns with). At the least, he's always better than Brigandier and Heimdall.
(El-)Renmazuo: 8/10. When you first get Billy, there's this stretch of the game (lasting through Shevat stuff) where his square attack is the most damaging thing you have besides Aerods (I think enemy Edef is piss poor here). So he's actually pretty good even if you don't give him the Elly setup. He's not as good at it, obviously, but since he's functional without that we'll give them the same score.
Seibzehn: 7/10. #17 you could never ever upgrade and she'd still be a viable endgame unit. 8 speed is unfortunate, but yeah, smashes the fuck out of a portion of the game and is never truly bad.
Mega Chu-chu: 3/10. Point for crazy person twinking potential, I guess. She's actually a good healer type, but the actual healing is weaker than you might like. And of course she can't attack. Period. Even if you drug up her attack she won't hit anything (the speed IS salvagable, though never good; speed rings carry over for her)
Crescens: 7/10. 13 base speed means she's very flexible. Has the stats to use the ether setup if you want (not as well as Billy or Elly, due to not having any Special Option attacks), of you can just abuse her HASTED CITAN LEVEL SPEED and use her regular attacks. Either way really.
