Game:

Final Fantasy X (2001)

Duration: 1:02:41

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Defeating Braska's Final Aeon with an extremely cautious approach in the pbirdman mod of Final Fantasy X, played on version 2.6d of the mod instead of 2.6e because it's where I still had my savestate before the fight (while my save files are now leveled up quite a bit further) but as far as I know the fight was not changed from 2.6d to 2.6e.

My level here is fairly reasonable I think - I fought every single encounter in every single area throughout the entire storyline without escaping while ensuring that every character takes a turn in almost every single fight, and took a little bit of time capturing all fiends in every area at least once, mainly to stock up on items, gaining at most maybe 1 or 2 levels in the process. So if you frequently Flee from battles you might be lower level than me, but I didn't take any extra time to grind, so it shouldn't be anything too far.

As for the actual fight itself, Braska's Final Aeon was always a battle of momentum and it's no different in this mod. I play as cautious as I do because a few bad rolls of RNG - Petrify, Berserk, Sleep, Provoke, a potential instant kill on Jecht Shot Mk 2 (if it crits) - can swing the battle around 180° at any time. It might seem overkill what I do, setting up literally EVERYBODY with 5x Cheer/Focus and Haste as well as lots of double HP, but when push comes to shove I might have to swap them in and having them at double HP with Haste and extra defenses is just infinitely preferable to swapping in someone who's slow and is gonna die in one hit. Triumphant Grasp obviously is impossible to survive for player characters and you could have Yuna's aeons absorb them, but I decided to just keep my most important characters off the field and take the hit on whoever randomness decides will take it. Rikku remains on the field since Triumphant Grasp is a nice overdrive charger if she gets hit, although I underestimated just how much less so when you have double HP and all the Cheer and Focus. In any case, I take a solid 40 minutes for the first phase of the fight (1/3 of the health bar) and then feel comfortably set up enough to do the second phase in about half that time. You could definitely cut down the time a lot by being more aggressive, and of course nothing stops you from taking a lot less time to set up; you could probably do with using just Auron/Lulu/Rikku on the frontline, but in the end I opted for keeping Lulu mostly off the frontline and bringing her in when she needed to kill a Yu Pagoda.

The Yu Pagodas are massive trolls. If they're together, they charge BFA's overdrive, if only one is alive, it will use Osmose or Curse, both of which generally require using an item to recover from. Fortunately, they're vulnerable to Slow, which helps a lot, but, if you want to deny BFA overdrives you're gonna want to keep at least one of them dead. Very unfortunately, the time for the Pagodas to come back is completely random and at times is basically instant, as happened to me a couple times in this video. They also return with the amount of HP you dealt to them in damage to kill them, so you need to keep your damage on them under control and ideally generally kill them with a damage capped attack, as I do with Flare. Holy wouldn't have done the necessary amount of damage to one-shot them so it's off the table, as you absolutely don't want them to get five digit HP.

I used a lot of Megalixirs, I'm actually rather surprised how many I ended up with, but I didn't use a lot in the storyline before here and there's no need to hold back on them in this fight. For the most part Healing Waters on Rikku who has Alchemy fulfill the exact same purpose, it just also keeps my MP topped off in the process. Probably would've gotten by fairly well just using Healing Waters and Elixirs or Turbo Ethers.

Equipment:
Tidus - First Strike / Confuse Ward, Berserk Ward, Sleep Ward
Wakka - Strength +3%, Strength +5% / Stoneproof, Poisonproof, Darkproof, Defense +5%
Rikku - Alchemy, Strength +10%, Sensor / HP +10%, Stoneproof, Auto-Potion
Auron - Piercing, Counter-Attack / Stoneproof, Poisonproof
Lulu - Magic Booster, Magic +10%, Magic +5% / Rune Veil, Break MP Limit, MP Stroll
Yuna - Half MP Cost / Stoneproof, MP Stroll
Kimahri - Magic +3%, Magic +5%, Magic +10% / Silenceproof, Rune Veil

Yuna knows Hastega because that's what I used the White Magic Sphere from the Tower for, Wakka knows Use because that's what I used the Special Sphere from the Sea of Sorrows for, and I activated an extra Strength +4 for Auron using the Attribute Sphere, pushing it to 65. Not much more to say than that.

0:00 - Intro
0:40 - Phase 1
40:03 - Phase 2
49:22 - Final Phase
1:02:02 - Victory

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