Goliath

Order of Ecclesia
Goliath (ゴリアテ) appears in Giant's Dwelling as the game's 6th boss.

Goliath has a wide variety of attacks in his arsenal:


 * He will swing his arms backward and then punch the ground. Spikes made out of rock will erupt out of the ground.  Stay far distance, around a whole screen away, to completely avoid it.  Inflicts a lot of damage.
 * Sometimes, he will jump up and slam the ground, causing a giant shockwave to erupt around him. Do not try to retreat and expect to jump over the shockwaves; such tactic is very hard to dodge and inflicts a lot of lightning-based damage.  Go under him once he does this.
 * He will also punch the ceiling, causing easily destroyable debris to fall and hit you. Though the debris damage is the least damaging of his arsenal, dodging them is difficult.  You can use upwards attacks to get rid of them or dodge them if you can. You may also summon a Zombie and then duck : the Zombie will break what's falling and you'll be not harmed.
 * He will take long strides to back you into a corner. Do NOT try backing up expecting he'll stop his momentum because he will not and if you get cornered, he will repeatedly punch you until you die.  Crouch under his strides to avoid dealing this.
 * When he gets around the halfway point, he will crouch down for a while. He may grab you if you get too close while you are attacking, so be careful.  He may also do another jump and slam the ground.  There is no specific time on what he'll do next, making this position pretty hard to predict.

The most effective way to beat him is to spam Axe glyphs at medium distance. That way, all of his moves give you enough time to predict what moveset he will do, even when he decides to crouch down for a while. You can use the more closer and conservative slash weapons, but the short range can keep you off guard.

Although he resembles The Creature, as do several other monsters in this game, Goliath is obviously meant to be the Biblical Goliath, telling from his "blasphemies" mentioned in his description, as well as his medal calling him a "soldier." Another referrence to the Biblical Goliath is that when he dies, he is shown in a superhero flight pose as light envelops him and he disintegrates into heaven (if possible). His appearance, multi-hit punch, and death pose also appear to be a mild reference to Raoh from Fist of the North Star in the same way that Zephyr is a reference to Dio Brando from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.