The Feathered Fiend: Garuda

Garuda is a bird monster that threatens Saronia. He initially appears under the guise of the king's advisor, Gigameth. It as after Gigameth entered this position that the King Gorn of Saronia started going mad; Forcing his army to do battle with itself and executing anyone who disagrees. It's only one soldier, who believes that he saw Garuda's shadow coming from Gigameth, who has any inkling to what is really going on. It all comes to a head when King Gorn attacks his son, Alus in the middle of the night. Gigameth appears and tries to egg the king on, but Gorn refuses and stabs himself. This causes Gigameth to abandon his disguise and attack the Warriors of Light with his true form.

There's some minor indications that Garuda has been around before in the past. The soldier in question has dialogue mentioning Garuda by name and another mentions a dragoon defeating Garuda in the past. Both an old guidebook and unused text in the remake suggests that Garuda did indeed attack Saronia in the past, only to be defeated by a dragoon and it's implied that his return was part of a bid to take control of the kingdom once more. The only question is how did he return? It doesn't seem like Xande had a hand in his revival.

But, in discussing Garuda, we must discuss his fight.

Garuda is infamous for being a major roadblock of a fight in FF3. For context: The party is locked into Saronia until Garuda is defeated. There is an inn and somebody who summons the Fat chocobo for free, but it's still a bit jarring. Garuda's primary weakness is Dragoons which, if you're playing the original, has little equipment available prior to arrival in Saronia. Thus, the party will probably have little experience as Dragoons and require leveling up. And then you actually fight Garuda.

Garuda's favorite tactics is to use Lightning to hit the entire party. Thus, the tried and true method is to make the entire party dragoons and take to the sky. Even this is not perfect: the game rerolls the turn order each turn. Thus, while Garuda may go last on the first turn and first on the second, he may also go first on the first turn and last on the second. Additionally, one may overlook the fact that Garuda is weak to Wind and forego equipping Wind Spears on all of their Dragoons, making the fight a smidge tougher.

The remake sidegrades the fight, as the Warriors of Light have some new tricks up their sleeves while Garuda's 2 actions per turn makes him even more dangerous than before. In terms of options, there are at least three. First, the old reliable "Dragoon Jump" is still an option. Another, however, is to use a Scholar: Scholars get twice the effectiveness on attack items. Thus, if a Scholar can get a Raven's Yawn and use it on Garuda, it should heavily damage the bird, if not one-shot it outright. Finally there is the possibility of using arrows: Arrows count as stab-type weapons - the one weapon type Garuda is not immune to. Therefore, a Ranger should be able to deal respectable damage to Garuda.