FINAL FANTASY IX

Ozma is Final Fantasy IX's hidden superboss. Ozma is very dangerous and is probably the most difficult fight in the game. Ozma can wipe out your party easily if you challenge it unprepared.

Ozma can be challenged at any time after you have reached the Chocobo's Air Garden. However, if you complete the friendly enemy sidequest (see Mister Nice Guy for more information) before facing Ozma, you will gain two advantages: The ability to attack it with physical attacks and it will become weak to Shadow damage. This makes the fight significantly easier and is highly recommended.

You can challenge Ozma by examining the cave on the small island in the back of the garden. Mene will warn you that there is a dangerous presence in the cave before facing Ozma and this is your last chance to open your menu to make your final preparations.

Defensively Ozma can restore its health with Curaga, which it sometimes uses as a counter when attacked. The lower Ozma's HP is, the higher the chance it will counter by casting Curaga on itself.

Offensively Ozma uses a variety of nasty status attacks on your party. Its Curse ability can cause damage and acts like a Marlboro's Bad Breath by inflicting Confuse, Slow, Poison, Mini and Darkness. On top of that it can cast Berserk and Mini.

Damage-wise Ozma can cast Doomsday, Meteor, Flare Star (which causes damage based on a character's level multiplied by 50) Holy, Flare, Death, Level 4 Holy and Level 5 Death. These are all high damage spells but what makes Ozma really dangerous is that Ozma is smarter than other enemies. It will not use an attack if a character can absorb or evade it. For example: It will not use Holy on a character that can absorb Holy damage and won't use Level 5 Death on a party with no members whose level are divisible by five. However the real problem is that limiting Ozma's offensive options will cause it to use Meteor more frequently. It will also not use status ailments that the whole party is immune to so consider only equipping your physical attackers with the Bright Eyes ability but your whole party should have the Clear Headed ability equipped to avoid getting confused.

A party that contains Vivi, Quina and Amarant (all equipped with the Auto-Life and Auto-Regen abilities) is a safe choice because Berserk can only be guarded against but equipping Auto-Reflect to prevent it is also a very good idea.

Vivi will be able to cause serious damage to Ozma with Doomsday if it is weak against shadow damage. The problem with Doomsday is it also damages your party. However if you have equipment that absorbs shadow damage you can get the best of both worlds. Equip party members with one of the following pieces ion order to do so; Egoist Armlet, Ninja Gear, Demon's Mail or Pumice Piece. This way their HP will be restored by the spell while damage is caused to Ozma. On top of this, Ozma will also harm himself and heal your party when it uses Doomsday.

Quina is a great support character in this battle, because she can cast Auto-Life on your whole party to revive them whenever they are knocked out and use Angel's Snack to remove status ailments from your entire party. When no support is needed, she can use Frog Drop to cause some extra damage.

Amarant can use the Aura Chakra to also provide the party with Auto-Life. Additionally, throwing Wing Edges will deal a lot of damage to Ozma. Amarant and Vivi can also learn the Return Magic ability which, when equipped, will re-cast the spell used against them. This will give you two free Doomsday casts when Ozma uses it against your party.

Ozma's ATB gauge will always fill up when attacked and it will always act next, even if you have other characters' commands queued. This can be avoided by selecting your whole party's attacks during Ozma's attack animations.

If you want to cheat to defeat Ozma you can turn on the 9,999 damage and Battle Assistance boosters which makes the battle almost trivial. Whichever way you do it, you will obtain this trophy when Ozma is defeated.