An enemy is an AI-controlled opponent appearing in a battle that a player often must face and defeat. The term enemy is often used synonymously with monster, though not every enemy fought is one especially in later Final Fantasy titles where humans (or human-like races) and mechanical enemies become more common.

In games where enemies do not spawn in the field, enemies appear in formations, either alone or alongside other enemies.

Some enemies are considered bosses. They are generally more difficult to defeat and require strategy, and either play a role in the story, prevent progression, or hold or protect items of importance.

Enemy types

Enemies may be associated with one or more types that describe an aspect of them. For example, common types are undead and flying. These types automatically add various attributes to the enemy that modify how elements, statuses, and types of damage affect the enemy. Common examples are flying types becoming immune to ground/earth damage, and undead types becoming weak to holy and taking damage from restorative.

Enemy family

Enemies usually belong to no more than one family. Enemy families often do not dictate anything about the enemy besides their appearance. However, enemy families will frequently share common ability types, or be "themed" in some way, such as the elemental flan found in some installments. For example, members of the behemoth family often use Meteor abilities, and members of the goblin family often use Goblin Punch.

In 2D games, enemy families are generally differentiated by simply applying different color schemes to the same enemy graphic. While this technique does remain in use in the 3D installments, other differentiating details, such as different sizes and textures, are also utilized, allowing greater aesthetic variety within an enemy family. Due to 3D games using animations, ability commonalities are more common in 3D games, as families usually share the same underlying model skeleton.

Appearances

Final Fantasy

Enemies are typically encountered on the field in random encounters. Up to nine enemies may be faced in a single battle. For each unique location, a specific subset of enemies are encountered, set into specific formations.

In the original release, enemies had the statistics of HP, Attack (not to be confused with Strength), Accuracy, Number of Hits, Defense, Evasion (not to be confused with Agility), Critical Rate (not to be confused with Luck), Magic Defense, and Courage/Morale. Enemies have a set amount of experience and gil to award upon their defeat. Later versions would add Agility, Luck and Intellect statistics, remove the critical rate statistic, and add item drops as a possible additional reward.

Enemies can have any combination of enemy types, as well as weaknesses and/or resistances to any combination of elements. An enemy's regular attack can have an element associated to it along with an affliction. If a player character resists the element of the enemy's physical attack, they also resist having the status effect inflicted upon them.

Enemies can wield magic and/or use enemy-exclusive skills. They can have up to 8 unique spells and 4 unique skills. These are placed in spell list and an independent skill list. When an enemy determines to use a spell, it chooses spells in the list sequentially and loops back to the first spell by the end. The process for skills is identical and separate from the spell selection.

The AI enemies use is simple. It determines if it attempts to escape through a calculation involving its courage or morale level against the lead party member's level. If the enemy does not try to escape, it checks if it casts a spell, at a rate of chance unique to each individual monster. If it chooses to cast, it uses the spell it is currently on while moving the pointer forward to the next entry in its spell list. Otherwise, the enemy determines if it uses a skill, using an identical process to magic. If it chooses to do none of these the enemy will attack physically.

For the Anniversary Edition and the versions based on it, Chronodia breaks this AI convention. While she works the same as every other enemy in terms of selecting spells, skills or attacks, Chronodia always casts Seal every five turns.

In Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, there are no spell or skill cycles. Enemies can cast any spell or use any skill in any order, and can choose to use the same spell or skills consecutively. In this case, each of the enemy's actions have a given probability for it to use them, with the chance determining how often that action gets used in battle.

Final Fantasy II

Enemies are typically encountered on the field in random encounters. Up to eight enemies may be faced in a single battle. For each unique location, a specific subset of enemies are encountered, set into specific formations.

Enemies have the statistics of HP, MP, Attack, Accuracy (broken down into Number of Hits and a percentage Hit Chance), Defense, Evasion (broken down into Number of Hits and percentage Dodge Chance), Magic Defense (broken down into Number of Hits and Dodge Chance) and a Fear value. Unique to Final Fantasy II, enemies are also given a Rank that determines how easy it is to level a character's stats, skills, and magic when facing that enemy in battle.

Enemies have 8 slots of battle rewards. This can be multiple different gil amounts and/or specific items. Which reward the party gets after battle is chosen randomly among the 8 slots for each individual enemy. The chance of each reward slot always follows these probabilities:

20%, 20%, 20%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 5%, 5%

While the player has no way of knowing entirely which reward corresponds to what slot, the bestiary entry for the monster will order the item rewards in the same order as they would be in the reward slots (so items higher up in the list are more common while the items lower down occur less frequently).

Enemies can have any combination of enemy types, as well as weaknesses, resistances and/or absorptions to any combination of elements. An enemy's regular attack can also inflict one or multiple status effects.

Enemies can use skills in battle. If an enemy can use skills, their AI is controlled by a list of up to 8 skills. Each of their skill slots has a percentage chance associated with it, which determines how often that skill is used in battle. The slots will always have these chances associated:

20%, 20%, 20%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 5%, 5%

Selecting an empty slot will have the enemy use a normal physical attack. Enemies can still use skills so long as they have MP, even if it is not enough for the selected skill (though their MP is reduced to 0). However, if an enemy has 0 MP and selects to use a skill, it will instead use a normal physical attack. If an enemy selects to use a skill, but loses all their MP before their action within the turn (via Sap or Osmose), they will instead fail the cast.

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy V

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VIII

Enemies are typically encountered on the field in random encounters, or in specific locations as boss battles. Up to four enemies may be faced simultaneously in a single battle. For each unique location, a specific subset of enemies are randomly encountered, unless the party is protected against this with Enc-None. Enemies are set into specific formations.

Enemies have the statistics of HP, Strength, Vitality, Magic, Spirit, Speed, Evasion, Hit, and Luck. Most enemies have roughly the same level as the average of active party members' levels, but some have a maximum or a fixed level. Level determines their stats, the spells that the player may draw from them, and the abilities they are able to use. The player may choose to increase or decrease an enemy's level during battle, this can be repeated until its level reaches 1 or 100 (requiring at most 7 uses), but will not work on enemies that are immune.

Enemies can have any combination of enemy types, as well as elemental weaknesses, resistances and/or absorptions to any combination of elements and status effects. They can also be immune to fractional damage. No enemies are immune to Vit 0 and only the undead/zombies are immune to The End, using the latter is almost guaranteed to instantly defeat all enemies. An enemy's regular attack can also inflict one or multiple status effects. Some bosses have an unique animation and fixed amount of hits when Squall uses his limit break, Renzokuken.

Enemies can wield magic and/or use enemy-exclusive skills. They are unable to summon Guardian Forces, but some can summon additional enemies that will fight alongside them. Enemies have up to 4 unique spells or GFs to be drawn, with a minimum of 1 spell and a maximum of 1 GF. They are typically, though not necessarily, able to cast those spells. Enemies have an item that can be mugged from them, one or more items that they may drop, one or more Triple Triad cards that they may drop, and the amount of AP that the GFs junctioned to the party will obtain upon defeating it. They also have a detailed description that is shown when the magic Scan is used on them. Many enemies can be instantly defeated by successfully turning them into a card. Some enemies may draw one spell from the player and immediately cast it, and the final bosses may remove an entire stock of magic from a character or instantly kill any GFs that are in the process of being summoned.

Obtainable GFs always have their default name when drawing or battling them, but can be renamed immediately after victory regardless. Two enemies are named according to the player's prior name selection in the save file, one of them being a temporarily incapacitated ally and the other being among the final bosses. Depleting the HP of the ally on the enemy side results in a Game Over, but defeating both enemies simultaneously with The End results in a victory.

Final Fantasy IX

Final Fantasy X

Enemies are typically encountered during exploration in random encounters, or in specific locations as boss battles. Up to eight enemies may be faced simultaneously in a single battle. For each unique location, a specific subset of enemies are randomly encountered, unless the party is protected against this with the No Encounters auto-ability. Enemies are set into specific formations. They are referred to as fiends who are the spirits of the dead turned into monsters from negative emotions.

Enemies have the statistics of HP, MP, Strength, Defense, Magic, Magic Defense, Agility, Evasion, Accuracy, and Luck. These statistics are fixed barring a few bosses. Much like playable characters and aeons, they lack a level, and some of them have a visible overdrive gauge. However, they never consume MP, which only serves the purpose of the player draining it. Many enemies have an innate Armored property, or gain it temporarily, though it may be bypassed or suppressed. They do not have an innate Break Damage Limit property, rather, this depends exclusively on which skill they use. Enemies susceptible to Poison have a percentage of their maximum HP they will lose during their turns (1%–25%), while those susceptible to Doom have an amount of turns that they need to take (but not necessarily act) before Doom takes effect (1–255).

Enemies can have any combination of elemental weaknesses, resistances and/or absorptions to any combination of elements and status effects. They can also be immune to fractional damage, having their turn delayed, physical damage, magical damage and/or revivification. No enemies are immune to Zanmato, which is almost guaranteed to instantly defeat all enemies. An enemy's regular attack can also inflict one or multiple status effects. A few enemies always have one or more positive status effects, which cannot be removed. Only three unique enemies are under permanent zombie status (identical to undead). Stealing/mugging from some machina enemies will instantly defeat them, but others are immune to this. Most enemies other than bosses and machina can be captured and later fought in the Monster Arena. Some aeon overdrives have an alternate animation when used on certain enemies.

Enemies can use magic, and/or enemy-exclusive skills. In addition, a Guado Guardian can use Eye Drops, Anima can use Boost, Biran and Yenke can use Kimahri's overdrives (rather than enemy-exclusive skills that mimic them). Some enemy aeons can only be fought by Yuna's own aeons, these battles will be lost if the player cannot summon any aeon, which may result in a Game Over. Some enemies can respawn or summon additional enemies that will fight alongside them. Enemies have a common stolen/mugged item, a rare stolen/mugged item, a common item drop, a rare item drop, an item that can be bribed and the amount of gil that must be paid (unless immune), auto-abilities and amount of slots for the weapon and armor it can drop when defeated, the amount of AP provided when defeated and the amount of gil provided when defeated. Most of them also have a detailed description that is shown when the magic Scan is used on them, and a brief description that may appear on the Help bar while selecting them as a target.

Enemies that respawn will either do so after a specific amount of "ticks" have passed, or as soon as a specific condition is met. Those will replace the previous enemy that was defeated, thus never exceeding the limit of eight simultaneous enemies. In the battle against a group of seventeen Sahagin Chief, new ones will not appear until the previous batch was defeated, and they will replace defeated ones to stay within the limit. The game reserves memory for eleven simultaneous enemies, but the last three slots are unused.

There are several non-targetable units programmed as enemies: Cid (a non-controllable invisible ally), Belgemine, Isaaru, Ginnem, Kimahri's Spear, Yojimbo/Dark Yojimbo's Daigoro, Warrior Monk/Fallen Monk's Rifle, and Warrior Monk/Fallen Monk's Flamethrower. All of them have valid but unused enemy data, except for Cid, whose Agility and AI are used (everything else being unused as well). Due to a development oversight, when defeating Warrior Monk or Fallen Monk, its corresponding Rifle or Flamethrower enemy's defeat will be separately counted for the purposes of Slayer Overdrive Mode and Karma's damage.

Final Fantasy X-2

Final Fantasy XII