Game:

Final Fantasy X (2001)

Duration: 43:42

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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.

After the first four Dark Aeons, things ramp up quite a bit. The Magus Sisters might be the hardest fight in the entire game, maybe even harder than Penance, but there's a mini-game to them to make them way easier. If you run away at the beginning of the encounter, you can isolate them into three solo battles. These aren't much harder than the Aeons you've already faced, with a few caveats.

The first caveat comes with Sandy. Without Luck farming she is impossible to hit. That's not hyperbole, it's an actual 0% chance. Depending on your Accuracy you first gain a 1% chance of hitting her around 50-60 Luck, and don't begin hitting her consistently until 110+ Luck, so that's too much trouble. Instead I've brought Wakka out and leveled him to catch up with my other characters, getting over 170 Agility and ~160 Strength.

The next caveat also comes in the Sandy fight. Her physical attack adds Petrify and instant Shatter, like Shinryu's Eraser. Unlike Eraser, however, Stoneproof works here, making it mandatory for all of your characters' armors. This isn't a huge waste as Dark Yojimbo, Bahamut, and Anima also have instant Shatter effects, so we'll be getting a lot of mileage out of Stoneproof.

The good news about Sandy is that both of her attacks trigger Guard/Sentinel, which means you can have a dedicated punching bag. I use Auron since he's done so much of the work carrying us this far. This keeps Wakka and Yuna free to spam Attack Reels and Auto-Life respectively.

When isolated, the Magus Sisters use Mega-Graviton as their Overdrive. If you keep your characters at the 25% health mark that Auto-Life restores, this move will kill you, which is actually less of a nuisance than dealing with Sleep, Doom, and Silence. This can be tricky, though, since Razzia dispels Auto-Life, resulting in being revived at 50% from a Phoenix Down. You need at least one character with Auto-Life to die from Mega-Graviton, since with Razzia Sandy can wipe a sleeping party out before anyone recovers.

Sandy may be impossible to hit, but Mindy is the most unhittable enemy in the game. You'll need over 200 Luck to hit Mindy consistently, so that's right out for any reasonable run. Fortunately her defense and HP are lower than Sandy's, so you'll only need to land 12 Attack Reels at around 160 Strength to kill her. Neither of her moves trigger Sentinel, so Auron doesn't serve much use here.

Calamity needs to be countered by using a Remedy and Holy Water, or Dispel. Items are a bit faster with Quick Pockets and won't cancel Auto-Life, but they're a finite resource. Both are purchasable from Rin on the Airship, so they're not a big deal since you have two mostly idle characters. Passado is an instant death attack, but as a multi-hit attack it deals damage before it triggers its instant death effect on the last hit, so it's allowed to fill your Overdrive bars unlike Heavenly Strike. Mega-Graviton is the same as usual, so overall this is still an easy fight, though probably the hardest of the three since you can't reliably protect Wakka.

Cindy is a bit more of a "traditional" fight at this point. Her Evasion and Luck are both quite low, about the same level as Ixion's. Wakka takes over Sentinel duties while Auron uses Quick Hit at low HP. This results in much higher damage output, making her the shortest battle even though she has the highest HP. Like with Sandy, Guard/Sentinel will catch both of her attacks.

As a final note, you may wish to go ahead and raise Wakka's Strength to 255 before this fight. I wound up doing it for the remainder of the Dark Aeons anyway because the battles were taking so long, but the three fights here cumulatively have nearly as many HP as Dark Anima, so milking extra damage out of each Attack Reels would speed things along substantially. I show how to raise Strength quickly in my Dark Bahamut video here: https://youtu.be/TLsmpsLWcCk

0:00 Intro
1:05 The Chase
3:26 Sandy (The Tall One)
18:26 Interlude
18:36 Mindy (The Child)
33:18 Interlude
33:51 Cindy (Fatty Fat)
42:59 Stats check

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