Bartz Klauser

Bartz Klauser, also known as Butz Klauser, is the main protagonist of Final Fantasy V. He is the son of Dorgann, one of the original Warriors of Dawn, and a woman named Stella. His mother died when he was young, and his father died three years before the game begins. On advice from his father, Bartz decided to wander the world.

Story
He was born in the little town of Lix, with his mother Stella and his father Dorgann. Bartz's mother died while he was still young, and his father fell ill and died three years prior to the game's storyline. Bartz has a fear of heights, which dates back to when he was playing "Hide-and-go-seek" as a child and almost fell down from the roof of a two-story house.

On advice from his late father, Bartz decided to go out and travel the world. Along the way, he found a chocobo named Boco separated from the rest of its flock. Boco became Bartz's steadfast companion, and they continued to travel together. Three years after Dorgann's death, Bartz was in the Tycoon area when a meteorite fell from the sky, so he and Boko decide to take a look, then he found a young woman, Lenna, being attacked by goblins. He helped her out, and they found an old man with amnesia in the wreckage of a meteor. Lenna explains to Bartz that she must go to the Wind Shrine, and so Galuf realizes that he was heading there. Initially, Bartz chose to continue his wanderings, but Boco convinced him to help Galuf and Lenna, when following them an earthquake starts and Bartz rescues Lenna and Galuf crossing through the goblin-infested area in the process. He joins the party permanently at that point, deciding that his father would have wanted him to find out what was happening to the Crystals, quote that Galuf refuses stating it's just an excuse for Bartz to join Lenna for her good looks. On their way the party finds a cave opened by the earthquake, as they venture though the cave they see a ship sailing without wind, and eventually reach a pirate hideout here (on Galuf's advice) Bartz tried to commandeer the Pirate ship, owned by the pirates leader Faris. Although they were caught in the act and captured, she let them take the ship to the Wind Crystal anyway. When they got to the Wind Shrine, they saw King Tycoon, just before the Crystal shattered into pieces. Tycoon entrusted the four of them with a quest to save the Crystals from an unknown evil. Tycoon named Bartz, Lenna, Galuf, and Faris the Warriors of Light and they began their journey.

From here on Bartz and party reach the town of Tule, and meet Zokk, an old friend of Lenna, and asks for the key to the Torna Canal, however Zokk claims to have lost the key. That night Bartz awakens wondering if his father would have wanted him on such quest, then Zokk talks to him and entrusts him the key beliving that Lenna would be safe with him.

On the Torna Canal the ship crashes with a monster and Hydra (Faris' "pet") is left for dead, then they leaves from the Ship Cemetery, not before Bartz and Galuf discover that Faris is a woman in disguise. When reaching coast Bartz is hypnotized by Siren with the figure of his mother but is saved by Galuf due to his memory lost and not realizing who Krile really is. Eventually the they reach the North Mountain and save Hiryu, Lenna's wind drake, and here Bartz reveals his fear of heights but is forced to hop on the wind drake anyway.

When Bartz and the party arrives to Waltz and advise to the King of the destruction of the Crystal, just at this time another meteorite falls and a soldier warns the King of the monster Garula who is gone insane. The party leaves for the Waltz Tower, defeat Garula, and find the Kinf of Tycoon at the time the Crystal shatters and the tower is submerged in the ocean. Bartz, Lenna, Galuf and Faris are rescued by Hydra who uses her last bit of strength to save them. Later they teleport themselves on a meteorite and arrive to Karnak only to be imprisoned by the guards of the town, Bartz and company meet Cid who intends to escape from the cell next to the heroes and find himself trapped on another cell, then the Chancellor of Karnak releases the party on a request to save the queen who is trapped on the Fire Powered Ship (the holder of the Fire Crystal). The party arrive and save the queen but the Crystal is destroyed.

Cid is frustrated by his mistakes and is unable to help Bartz and his friends, so they look for Mid, Cid's grandson, who resides in the Library of Ancients. The party looks for him deep within the library filled with mosnters and explains everything to him, and immediately he leaves to talk to his grandfather. So with Mid and Cid together they rebuild the Fire Powered Ship and Bartz leaves to search for the last Crystal, here is when Galuf explains that he reagained his memory due to Mid and Cid similar relationship between him and Krile, as well as the real reason why the Crystals are being destroyed, because of Exdeath, a 1000 year old warlock who was sealed by the later Warriors of Dawn.

After the party searches for the Earth Crystal on Crescent Island, and the Fire Powered Ship sank. So when the party explores the nearby woods, Bartz and Faris find a black chocobo and return to the Library of Ancients to explore the Ronka Ruins. There they encounter a possessed King Tycoon and reach a hidden facility under Crescent Island, at the same time the Ronka Ruins turns into a gigantic floating battle station. Within the station, the party finds King Tycoon under control of Exdeath and as he attacks Bartz and Galuf, he also destroys the last Crystal and leaves for Galuf's world.

Galuf leaves in a meteorite with Krile and Bartz, Lenna and Faris are left behind, but Bartz's strong sense of justice makes the two princesses realize the true importance of their fight and so they reunite the remains of Adamantite in other meteorites to teleport themselves to Galuf's world.

When the party traveled to the second world, Bartz, Lenna, and Faris arrive on a deserted island, and during the night the princesses are taken by a monster. Bartz fights but is unable to win and so the three are taken to Exdeath Castle. Bartz fights Exdeath but is unable to match the warlock, later Galuf saves the heroes from the castle and the four battle Gilgamesh. After the battle in the Big Bridge the force field of the castle takes the party on a far away land, but they manage to reach Galuf's Castle and Bartz realizes that he is a king, along with the bad news that Krile's Wind drake is dying, so Bartz and friends chooses to look for Dragon grass to save the Wind drake.

Searching for Dragongrass the party crosses the town of Kelg and meet Kelger Vlondett who tests Bartz, forcing him to repel his Lupine Attack. Bartz succeeded, thanks to his further training, and Kelger informed Bartz that none had been able to beat his attack, when Bartz explains that his father trained him, Kelger asks his father's name, to which Bartz replies Dorgann. Here it is revealed that Dorgann was, along with Galuf, Kelger, and Xezat, the old Warriors of Dawn, who were the ones who previously defeated and sealed Exdeath. However Dorgann had made Stella promise not to tell Bartz what Dorgann had done to protect the Crystals, but due to her imminent death Dorgann choose to stay to watch over the seal, and although he never told Bartz of his roots or his own doing, Bartz followed in his footsteps anyway as would his direct decendant Linaly in Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals.

On the trip to Lix, Bartz visits his mother's grave for a long time and finally engraves his father's name on the stone explaining to his friend Faris his Dorgann would have wanted to be buried with his wife. During the takeover of the void around the world led by Exdeath, the town of Lix is devoured by it, bringing great deal of frustration to Bartz, which makes him drive the Airship violently through the world, feeling powerless for losing all that ever had emotional meaning for him.

Taking Leadership
During the absense and after the death of Galuf in the Forest of Moore, Bartz takes the role of Galuf as a leader or defender of the group more than once. He confronts Exdeath directly during their stay in the prison of Exdeath's Castle, takes the voice for the party and gets punished for that, at the time Galuf sees his friends suffering and jumps into action. Also, after the battle in Exdeath's Castle in the Third World, he, Krile, and Faris talk to Ghido in his cave and Exdeath emerges from Krile's splinter, disables Faris, Krile, and Ghido, so Bartz fights him before Ghido surfaces again and makes him go away.

Dissidia Final Fantasy
Chaos has summoned a combined force of Final Fantasy's ultimate masters of evil. Cosmos, in an attempt to protect the Crystals, has summoned warriors to thwart their plans. Bartz is one of these warriors. He stands as the hero opposing Exdeath. While his outfit is identical to that seen in many of Amano's drawings of the character, his hair takes on the brown color from his in-game sprite, rather than Amano's white depiction. His alternate costume renders him with white hair and gives him Amano's alternate outfit, complete with a zebra-striped shirt. His personal weapon is the Brave Blade, a weapon in Final Fantasy V that grows weaker as players flee from battle, although he spends most of his story mode fleeing from the various agents of Chaos, so this weapon choice is rather odd.

Bartz is seen allied with Zidane Tribal in the TGS trailer, and in-game Exdeath and Kuja are allied as well, both of them being nihilists for different reasons. In the CG opening, he is seen running and attacking Jecht head on, but later, he is having problems when Golbez traps him by summoning meteors in an attempt to crush him. He is also seen battling Exdeath at the Dimension Castle. In his story, he and Zidane decide to see who can find the Crystals first, but Bartz ends up getting captured by the villains. He manages to escape and find the Crystals, but another challenge awaits him on the path ahead. Bartz has the ability to use the moves of the other heroes, making him somewhat of a Mime, a job that made its debut in Final Fantasy V. He mixes the fighting styles of the other heroes into combos of his own and thus, creating long Brave attacks. Among his HP attacks are Terra's water spell and Onion Knight's tornado attack. His EX Mode consists of a Mastered Mime appearance: three yellow stars appear above his head, and he also gains the red cape from the Mime job class from his original game. In his EX Burst, "Rapid Fire Dual-Wield Spell Blades", the player needs to input two directional buttons for each time he attacks. He will attack four times with two weapons each. At the end, he will combine eight weapons of his allies into the Brave Blade for one powerful slash attack. The attack name is a reference to one of the most popular strategies of Final Fantasy V - using Spellblade with Rapid Fire and Dual Wield to launch eight extra-strong attacks.

Bartz's voice is provided by Soichiro Hoshi in the Japanese version.

Trivia

 * Though originally envisioned to be romanized as Butz, his name has never been romanized as such in any official localization of Final Fantasy V. This is probably because Butz is a homophone of "butts" (not to mention his birthplace is Lix, a homophone of "licks"); it was changed to Bartz to avoid this issue and make the game more marketable to its anglophone target demographics.
 * Bartz is the only party member who is not royalty.
 * Bartz's last name Klauser is a common German family name of Bavarian origin.