Barbatos Goetia

Barbatos Goetia (バルバトス・ゲーティア) is one of the primary antagonists in Tales of Destiny 2. He is a ruthless warrior who would do anything to get what he wanted. He fights with a huge axe, but also has some magical spells at his disposal. Barbatos also personifies many of the evil traits shown by humans, such as betrayal, deceit and brutality, showing that he will resort to underhanded tactics to accomplish his goals.

First Death
Barbatos Goetia was actually alive during the period of Ae'ther Wars. It is unknown which side he was on, but he is known for his atrocity that he betrayed his friends for his own and only benefit. Eventually, it was Lieutenant Dymlos Tinbar who put an end to Barbatos' life, and due to his evil deeds, Barbatos' name would be written out in history, as if he did not exist at all.

Resurrection
After around a hundred years, Barbatos is resurrected by a holy woman named Elraine who enlists his help in her quest to alter history. More than eager to prove his existence, Barbatos accepts the proposal and becomes Elraine's personal assassin. His task is to eliminate the current heroes that saved the world from the resurrection of the Ae'therians.

Barbatos' first destination is Cresta, where two heroes Stahn Aileron and Rutee Katrea live. In front of Rutee's orphanage, Barbatos encounters two young boys, Kyle Dunamis and Loni Dunamis. Barbatos then asks of Stahn's presence, but Kyle is already suspicious on him and throws a stone to him, which is easily dodged. Barbatos then threatens to kill Kyle, but Loni shoves him out of danger, causing Barbatos to instead grab Loni as a hostage. As he expects, Stahn and Rutee come out and attempt to stop him. Barbatos then threatens to kill Loni if the two do not drop their weapons. They do as he tells them, and as Stahn asks if he wants money or Lens, Barbatos exclaims that he wants their lifes, and brutally assaults the couple. Although Rutee suffers from major wounds only, Stahn is killed. Barbatos mutters how weak the heroes are in front of him and vanishes.

It takes around ten years for Barbatos to appear again, this time attacking Philia Felice in Straylize Temple. He is interrupted with the grown up and more experienced Kyle and Loni, but they are still no match for him. It takes another interruption by a masked fencer named Judas to make him stop doing anything further. Barbatos bids his leave, but he warns Kyle that he will never forget him.

Shortly after, Barbatos appears again in Phandaria, his target being Garr Kelvin. Using a distraction in form of crashing the ship Draconis to the castle, Barbatos strucks to the throne room and wounds Garr severely. Kyle interrupts again, but he is still no match for Barbatos. The warrior vanishs again as the group heads to the future timeline.

Barbatos does not make any appearance again, but when Kyle enters the Alternate World created by Elraine, Barbatos is mentioned as a hero. This is, however, a mere fabrication of Elraine's ideal world and Barbatos' wish, thus history is not going as it is supposed to be.

When Kyle's group travels back to the period of Ae'ther Wars, Barbatos appears again when the group is in Dycroft along with the Legendary Swordians in their human guises. Barbatos is pleased to see Dymlos again and is on the verge to defeat him before Atwight interrupts and reminds him of his crimes. Barbatos then uses another plan and takes Atwight as his hostage, leaving with her to Spiral Cave where he issues a challenge to Dymlos to come at the place if he values Atwight's life.

To his surprise, it is Kyle and his groups that comes to Atwight's aid. However, they fall for Barbatos' trap, putting them in despair. Suddenly, Dymlos rushes into the scene and defeats Barbatos, although he manages to escape.

During the Swordian Team's final assault in Dycroft, Barbatos once again appears in front of Kyle and declares that his desire at that point is to defeat Kyle. He battles against his group but is defeated. He claims that he will be waiting in a more proper place for their battle to continue and vanishes.

Barbatos then appears in Stahn's timeline, interrupting and on the verge of defeating his team as they approached Dycroft. To his surprise, Kyle appears again and double teams with his father to drive Barbatos, who flees the scene afterwards. He resurfaces again just as Judas is about to stab his Swordian to the Eye of Atamoni. Barbatos fights and is defeated for the second time. Still proud of his strength, he claims that he was defeated by himself, not Kyle. Using his last ounce of strength, he plunged himself to the Eye of Atamoni, killing himself.

As Kyle succeeded defeating Elraine and Fortuna, history is repaired and all of Elraine's actions, including Barbatos' revival and feats, are annulled as if they never happened at all.

Battle Prowess
Barbatos is a fearsome foe to face in battle. Not only that he has a significant destructive power and magic, his most notable trait is that whenever a character casts a spell or uses an item, Barbatos will counter by casting a spell and during his chanting time, he will be invulnerable. He also possesses a dangerous move called Genocide Braver, where he fires a huge powerful blast towards his foe. He also possesses the move Cheap Eliminate, where he kills the party if the player battles him in "Simple" difficulty. In the Tales of Destiny remake, using an item will trigger him using the Mystic Arte No Items Ever!.

Tales of Destiny (PS2)
Due to his popularity, Barbatos is featured again in the remake of Tales of Destiny. He appears as a random encounter, with the purpose of punishing players that attempts to auto-level their characters. He has changed his fighting stance from a passive one to a very aggressive and fearsome pose. Reflectively, he attacks more than he did in Tales of Destiny 2, using a more ruthless arsenal of attacks. He still retains his Genocide Braver, which now requires charging, but his Cheap Elimination will always knock out all party members that receive damage from the attack. However, he only uses it within the Arcana Ruins on "Simple" difficulty.

Tales of Vesperia
Barbatos also makes an appearance as a cameo boss in Tales of Vesperia's 200-man coliseum battle along with three other Tales characters: Dhaos, Kratos Aurion, and Shizel. In this game, he is called Killer of Heroes. His mystic arte is No Items Ever!, and is activated when an item is used.

In the PlayStation 3 port, Barbatos can fight along side Dhaos, Kratos Aurion, and Shizel in the final rank of the team battle in the coliseum as a 4 on 4 battle in the 5th match. He also makes another appearance as one of the summons in Patty Fleur's Summon Friends mystic arte. When summoned, he uses his World Destroyer arte to inflict high damage to both allies and enemies alike, and forbids item use for the next ninety seconds.

Tales of VS.
Barbatos appears alongside Dhaos as one of the two major antagonists in Tales of VS. He appears most prominently during the storylines of Kyle Dunamis, Leon Magnus, and Stahn Aileron, taking a role similar to that in his original appearance. His fighting style makes use of large range charged attacks, including his Genocide Braver and World Destroyer, which are some of the largest attacks in the game. He also retains No Items Ever!, which unlike all other mystic artes in the game, cannot be manually activated - instead, it is triggered automatically when an opponent picks up an item while Barbatos is in Over Limit mode. Even after he uses it, his Over Limit gauge stays where it was before the mystic arte activated, continuing to drain from that point. He can use his mystic arte more than once, or not at all, depending on the activity of item appearance. He is generally one of the last characters to be unlocked by a player, only being available after completing the game's final story mode.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2
Barbatos appears in Radiant Mythology 2 as one of the boss in the storyline. In Radiant Mythology 2, he'll fight the player, Tear Grants, and Leon Magnus at the Mescal Mountains to prevent awakening Niata. After clearing the game, Barbatos is also the boss for the 2nd Radiant Set, he'll stand where Radiant was, and Kratos Aurion will be the client for the quests.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3
Barbatos appears again in Radiant Mythology 3 as one of the boss in the storyline. A scene where Harold uses a machine to find Vel Trop but it failed. Instead it opened a portal that Kyle, Reala, Loni, and Judas fell on the deck of Van Eltia. The player met the rest of the characters from Destiny 2 and now members of Ad Libitum, as the screen fades to black and shows a certain figure is at the core of the Brownie Mines.

One of the story missions where the player is force to party with Kyle and Sheena, and head to the lowest part of the Brownie Mines. As the party are only a few meters away, Kyle notices a familiar figure and it was Barbatos. Kyle was angry of what Barbatos did to his parents, Stahn and Rutee from the future, and insists of fighting him together with the player and Sheena. After the battle, Barbatos is interested in fighting again when they cross paths and make a suicidal jump on a pit and never heard of Barbatos again.

After clearing the game and finished Kanonno Earhart's second quest for the Sorcerer's Ring. There will be a side event where Kyle, Reala, and Judas discuss about Barbatos' return and confront him on the Ring Spot Area of Sacred Mountain of Absol. It's the last fight against Barbatos, after that Barbatos accepted defeated and stabbed himself with his axe and disappeared from existence.

Trivia

 * Barbatos is surprisingly popular within the Tales fans. In the third popularity contest of Tales characters, he ranked the 19th place, making him the second most popular antagonist, behind Asch from Tales of the Abyss.