Game:

Final Fantasy X (2001)

Duration: 43:37

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The Dark Aeons are regarded as requiring a ton of Sphere Grid work, specifically farming Luck and Fortune Spheres from Greater Sphere and Earth Eater respectively, which is a really annoying farm cycle. In this series I'm going to prove these guys are extremely over-hyped. With simple strategies and basic farms you can burn through them easily. Some of the fights will be longer, but I've saved at least as much time from traditional farms. I won't be using Mix or Aeons, but both of those make these fights easier. I'm still considering this a continuation of my "low-ish level" run, because none of my characters have completed the Sphere Grid, but I know some might not agree with that assessment.

This is the only Dark Aeon battle where Ribbon is almost crucial, as Mega-Graviton can be a nuisance. If Anima uses Mega-Graviton twice after Oblivion, there's almost no way to survive because of your drained MP. If you give a single dose of Ribbon to a character with Quick Pockets, Auto-Life, and One MP Cost, it makes recovering from Mega-Graviton much simpler and cuts at least 10 minutes off of the battle's length.

As against the Dark Magus Sisters, if you keep your HP at Auto-Life levels Mega-Graviton will kill your characters, which is easier to recover from. Unlike those battles, Dark Anima can use Mega-Graviton whenever she wants. She has an equal chance of using any of her three moves, so this is a very real threat.

Another difficulty is keeping your Overdrive bars full, as you need Anima to dose out a decent number of physical attacks. I meant to place Auron on Stoic instead of Comrade since he sometimes serves on Sentinel duty, but since this isn't consistent throughout the battle I'm not sure which is better.

Pain is essentially a wasted turn, for both parties. Its Instant Death Always effect cannot be prevented (even by Deathproof or Ribbon) so it will never give you Overdrive. This can be annoying if Anima sticks to this move stubbornly while letting her own Overdrive bar fill when yours are empty. An example of this can be seen at 25:06.

This fight is incredibly hard to reproduce under these run conditions, but this video is just a demonstration of what's possible. I do not recommend attempting this fight in this manner. If you simply incorporate the use of Aeon sacrifices to block Oblivion, you'll drastically reduce the difficulty because Anima won't drain your MP. If you give just one character Ribbon (you can either farm a Ribbon armor drop from Dark Yojimbo, or use the 99 Dark Matters you received for unlocking Nemesis), you can reliably recover from Mega-Graviton with Quick Pockets. Better yet, do both and you'll make this fight a breeze.

As an addendum, I want to point out that throughout all of the Monster Arena Creations and Dark Aeons I've only used a single set of armor, with Auto-Haste, Auto-Phoenix and then later adding Stoneproof. That set will have to be retired now as entirely custom gear will need to be crafted for Penance. Still, it proves that you can easily go through the entire game on any basic armor with three open slots all the way up to this point.

0:00 Intro
3:37 Anima
42:01 Penance reveal
43:08 Stats check

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