Amarant Coral - Arrogence - "The only dependable thing about the future is uncertainty."

Story Line: Your party first runs into Amarant in Maidan Sari when he tries to kidnap Eiko. Of course, a battle ensues and you come out the victor. You learn that Amarant is actually a bounty hunter who has been sent by Queen Bryne to stop your quest, but when he sees how powerful Zidane is, he agrees to come along and help you out. That doesn't mean he'll be cooperative and friendly, however. It acutally means that he'll be a jerk to everyone, but help you out in battle. In the end though, he realizes that everyone is his friend. Aw. Story Line Score: 7

Overall Battle Performance: The battle system in FFIX is much more traditional Final Fantasy in that each character gets the option to attack, do a special skill, or use an item. The main difference is that every character can use magic. Different skills, called abilities, are learned from weapons, armor, and accessories. Abilities can then be equipped to a character, giving a wide range of choice for each battle. Magic is learned in the same way, but doesn't need to be equipped. FFIX has the Trance mode, in which a character turns a glowing white, and aquires special hidden powers during this time. Amarant gets to use claws and knuckles as weapons, like Yang from FFIV. PlayOnline tells me that if you equip him just right, he can be the one to do the most damage. This is probably true, if you want to go through all that. Amarant has the throw ability as well. He can throw just about anything, which is a good way to get rid of old weapons if you're -sure- you don't need them anymore. I like how PlayOnline puts it best: "Amarant is a skilled assassin, but he can cast magic and perform skills to crush monsters and protect and revive his fellow party members. See, he’s not such a dark loner after all!" Overall Battle Performance Score: 8

Overall Contribution: Amarant added to the game because he was that sort of evil but sort of not guy that you could never really trust until the end. Gotta have one of those guys. Overall Contribution Score: 7

My Opinion: Amarant had that weird hair thing going on. I'm a big fan of bounty hunters in general though, so I did like Amarant. That doesn't mean I used him in battle though. I was nice near the end in that funky castle palce where you let him go in alone and then you save him. He's all like "You'd come to help me?" Duh, like we had a choice? My Opinion Score: 6

Amarant's Average Score: 7.0