Garuda from FFXI
The Garuda is an enemy depicted as an avian humanoid in the . It first appeared in Final Fantasy III as a boss monster. As with other bird enemies like Zuu and Cockatrice, Garuda isn't always featured as a boss, but is more commonly a regular enemy, such as in Final Fantasy VII, IX, X and X-2. In most of the encounters against Garuda it is usually an easily defeated enemy. There is an exception in IX with a "friendly" version in addition to the standard hostile monster. The former is one of a number of "friendly" monsters that appear in Final Fantasy IX and which do not attack on encounter but instead ask to be "fed" various gemstone items for considerable AP (Ability points - see Final Fantasy IX gameplay for more details). The two look the same except for the colour: the regular Garuda is predominantly red and green, while the friendly version in rainbow-coloured. In X/X-2 it has a new attack called Sonic Boom, which it uses often, and is highly similar in appearance to a number of other bird monsters. In XI Garuda is a summonable avatar (summon) if the player completes certain quests and defeats her in battle. Garuda is the avatar of the element "wind", and as such all of her abilities are wind-based. In Final Fantasy XII it appears first as a boss and then later as a regular enemy, by the name of Garuda-Egi.