The Pirate, also known as the PIRATE, is an enemy in Final Fantasy. It is encountered in Pravoka, where the pirate Bikke challenges the player's party to a fight over the freedom of the city, summoning nine of his fellow pirates. When defeated, Bikke will give the player's party his ship, which can then be used to travel to Elfheim and continue their journey.
The Pirates come in great numbers, but have low HP and should fall quickly to standard attacks. The Sleep spell can be used for advantage if the number of Pirates is overwhelming.
Stats[]
Behind the scenes[]
It is possible to make the Pirates flee in the Famicom, NES, and MSX releases with enough applications of the Fear spell, but the spell can't be learned until after they are defeated without mods. Subsequent releases prevent them from making the morale check to flee.
Etymology[]
A pirate is a person who commits warlike acts at sea without the authorization of any nation.
In Japanese, this enemy is called 海賊, kaizoku, meaning "sea bandit", and is the primary Japanese term for "pirate" in that sense. The similar palette-swapped enemy Buccaneer is called パイレーツ, pairētsu, which is taken from the English word "pirate", and is used as a more exotic-sounding synonym of the same concept. This has posed issues in translating these two enemy terms into English. The 1990 NES version addressed this by swapping the terms in translation, with kaizoku becoming "Pirate" and pairētsu becoming "Kyzoku" (a phonetic spelling of kaizoku). Later translations have continued translating kaizoku as "Pirate", but pairētsu is since become "Buccaneer" or "Privateer", which are more flowery terms for "pirate" in English, and this keeps with the spirit of the Japanese naming pattern.