Garuda (Final Fantasy III)

Garuda is a boss in Final Fantasy III. He is the monstrous form taken by Gigameth, the malicious advisor to King Gorn of Saronia. He is quite strong, as his Lightning attack can hit up to 800, usually killing most of the party in one shot.

The game hints heavily to form a party with four Dragoons, providing multiple spears as treasure in the Saronian area. By using Jump and Wind Lances, Garuda will fall quite easily. If you cannot afford to purchase Wind Lances for all your party members, then you should invest in Thunder Spears. They do not do as much damage, but will get the job done, especially if each Dragoon wields two of them. Another strategy would be using Raven's Yawn with the Scholar Job class, providing double damage, which will, along with its weakness, cause heavy damage or instant kill.

In the Nintendo DS version, Garuda attacks twice per turn and also has a fairly powerful physical attack that deals several hundred HP of damage. The actual upshot of this however is that Garuda often uses two physical attacks per turn instead of Lightning, which makes the battle somewhat easier. Still, there is the rare (but very real) possibility that Garuda will fire off two Lightning attacks in succession, which can easily result in the entire party being destroyed in a single turn.