Farah Oersted

Farah Oersted is one of the main characters from Tales of Eternia game.

Reid's childhood friend and a farmer girl from Rasheans, she is intensely driven almost immediately to help Meredy, and drags Reid along for the ride. The reason for her drive to help others is eventually revealed to be guilt from her childhood. She's a Martial Artist, and also has some ability to heal others, making her something of a secondary Melee fighter.

In the AWA fics, Farah is a student at the AWA Academy.

Appearance
Farah has a short, turquoise green hair and has brown eyes. She wears a red cropped-vest with stitches and a wing design over a long-sleeve knee-length dress with a tulip symbol and a large ribbon tied behind her back and another white calf-length skirt, pink high socks and white shoes.

Personality
Farah is a cheerful, optimistic woman with great physical prowess. She is a very talkative person who is quick to befriend others, trying to get them to open up and reveal their inner thoughts to her. In contrast, however, she would always hide her own feelings through her deceptively cheerful demeanor so that others would not worry about her. Over the course of their journey, Farah is the one who keeps the party united and focused toward their goal, smoothing over any of the frequent arguments that arise between Keele and Reid.

When she sees others in need, she will always rush in and aid the weaker party, but she never thinks through her actions until after they occur, which at times have caused her to side with the wrong people without knowing all of the facts. Still, her intentions are always positive, and she wishes to do what she can to help everyone she meets, which causes Reid to follow her at all times to ensure that she stays out of trouble and to clean up after her antics, much to his frustration.

Abilities
Due to Farah's training at the Regulus Dojo, she learned how to channel her inert chi to fight with perfect balance and achieve miraculous healing techniques. Her melee abilities are a mix of punches and kicks that can be chained together easily, and she uses a very unique arte chaining system in which several of her attacks can be linked together based on their attack type. All of her strike artes are separated into different categories: Ground, Anti-Air, Air, and Power. Ground artes are attacks in which Farah stays rooted to the ground, allowing her to strike the targets in front of her. Anti-Air artes enable Farah to rise into the air to assault airborne enemies or push grounded targets into the air. Air artes allow her to perform aerial attacks that end with her on the ground, dealing area damage upon landing. Power artes are ground-based attacks which are particularly damaging, and they are used to end her combos or provide the conditions necessary to activate her Divine Skills.

When chaining her artes together, she can start with any type of arte, and any subsequent artes must be part of a different category and should flow naturally based on positioning at the end of the attack to reduce delays between each arte. For instance, Ground artes can be followed by any other type of attack, but if an Air arte is used next, the jumping delay will cause her target to escape the combo. Likewise, Anti-air artes cannot be followed by Ground or Power artes because they require Farah to land on the ground before activation, breaking the combo. Only one arte of each type may be used in a given combo chain, with Power artes reserved for the end of the combo. This unique combo system has been implemented only twice throughout the whole series, used by Farah and another martial artist from Tales of Symphonia, Regal Bryant.

While Farah is a very potent melee fighter, her use of fists and feet cause her to engage enemies from a very close distance because she lacks range in most of her abilities, and she cannot wield any weapon that extends her reach. Her physical strength is potent but does not match Reid's unrefined fighting style during battle, a fact which she comments on when comparing his strength as a self-trained hunter to her weaker abilities in spite of her rigorous training. She also cannot use defensive implements such as shields and heavy armor, which limits her survivability. But she compensates for this with her healing artes, through which she draws upon her chi to aid herself and others. When focused in times of need, her chi is potent enough to revive her allies, and these healing abilities allow her magic-focused allies to rely more on offensive magic.

Trivia

 * Farah derives from the Arabic word for "joy", a nod to her upbeat personality.
 * Oersted, like many names in the game, derives from astronomy, specifically the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted.