FFX pbirdman mod thoughts

I've been playing through pbirdman's mod of Final Fantasy X recently, and I wanted to document my thoughts on the process. There's definitely some rough edges and what I find to be questionable decisions, but on the whole this is a pretty well scaled mod that requires you to use everything at your disposal to succeed. I would probably recommend giving it a try if you think vanilla FFX is too easy, or like a challenge. In my case, I've only played through FFX once before this, though I've been following the challenge scene (especially voidling0's excellent commentated uploads) for quite a few years, so I know some of the tricks that can be used, as well as important equipment.
A download/setup link can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfIo-8-GjBU

Summary at the bottom. Overall I'm lukewarm on the mod as a whole, there's a lot to like and a lot to dislike, and if you're not intending to do the postgame I don't think I'd recommend the playthrough. If you are, and like the grind, go for it, you'll have a great time. Me? I'm just going to move to the remaster to experience the expanded postgame for the first time. It'll probably take me a month to get there, but I'm going to.

As always, Dream Zanarkand has nothing notable. Baaj and the salvage ship, on the other hand, had a bit more edge but nothing too out of the ordinary. At this point from the way it was advertized (probably won't notice much difference until Oblitzerator) I went with my normal gil hoarding ways and didn't stock up on too many items before leaving Besaid. I figured I could just buy some in Kilika if I needed them and any veterans of the game will immediately see the problem with that statement. Anyway, Klikk and Tros both showed two critical mod changes. The first steal is no longer 100% guaranteed, which I strongly dislike. It doesn't make getting items harder, just more tedious. And unfortunately, the other change also tends more towards tedium- overdrives take twice as long to charge. Later, I would find out Aeon overdrives take four times longer! I think making these slower (to reduce spammability in bosses) is probably a good thing, but this is overkill. 1.5x and 2x would be fine.

Anyway, with my woefully underprepared item stock, I went and took on Kimahri by laying down 5 Cheers, then attacking and healing. Cheer being accessible immediately definitely meant that it was expected to be used constantly. I get why this was done- it's a powerful tool, especially early-game. It would be impossible to have it be unneeded for a fair, challenging fight without 5x Cheer making that same fight too easy, and placing it at the start of Tidus's grid means that pbirdman knows every player will have it in nearly every fight. More on that much, much later. So I boarded the S.S. Liki with 8 Potions and 1 Phoenix Down, and saved. Over the same file. Again, challenge veterans are shaking their heads at me for this one, but the random encounters on Besaid were as easy as always.

Sin's Fin was a very very rude awakening. Pulling the boat becoming a percentage based attack WITH A CHANCE OF CONFUSION is kind of dumb, and I basically needed to confusion during my fight. Valefor couldn't survive the buffed sinscales for long, or outpace the healing. So after a couple tries and nearly quitting the mod right there, I managed to lay down 5 Cheers on Wakka, Tidus and Lulu and remove two sinscales. A long, tense battle followed with a lot of juggling characters to let Yuna handle healing as much as possible, and I eventually prevailed using only 4 Potions. Then, of course, Sinspawn Euchillies. Again, I opened by laying down 5 Cheers and trying to Dark Attack (WHICH MISSED!!!!) and just attacked. I needed good luck with the targetting and to hold my one Phoenix Down until after Blender, so Wakka would dodge its damage, but I did manage to win with no items remaining. None going into Kilika. Which doesn't have an item shop.

Before getting into Kilika, however, I want to briefly touch on a consistent problem I've had with the mod. Every boss is immune to Scan and Sensor. At first, I didn't mind this too much since all it meant was I don't know how much HP I'm fighting through, but the deeper into the game I've gotten the worse this problem has become. It feels like some bosses intend you to use certain statuses on them, and others are basically immune to all statuses (it seemed). Without the ability to Scan, to the player THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. Being expected to use Power Break to manage physicals is indistinguishable from the boss being immune to Power Break and you just have to deal with it until you try, but trying costs MP (a much more valuable resource- a good change!) and can easily waste turns. So you'd think an exploratory attempt to find out what sticks might work, but some bosses have multiple phases that change things up and of course, the battles you really want to know this information for are behind multiple minute unskippable cutscenes. That's not a fault of the mod, that's a fault of FFX itself, but the mod really needs to keep in mind the limitations to be fun. And as mentioned, arriving in Kilika to buy items and then finding none was a very, very rude shock.

So was barely escaping Dark Ochu. And I was looking forward to seeing how Lord Ochu was changed...

The Ragoras weren't really a problem, just a longer battle than normal, and ultimately Kilika was a very reasonable area that I could pick up a couple loose items in. Then, Sinspawn Geneaux. I immediately dropped 5 Cheers on Tidus, Wakka and Kimahri, took out the tentacles, and swapped Wakka for Lulu when I needed magic. Overall, an easy fight only made hard by the fact that I lacked any way to revive. Then a bunch of story (and Kimahri's Red Armlet was nerfed, sad) and it's off to Luca, where I could FINALLY buy items again, just in time for the Workers and Oblitzerator.

First up: why do the Workers give 0 AP????? This could create another softlock situation where there's no way from the save to gain enough power to defeat the boss. I spent a bit of time farming SOS Nul equipment here and got NulBlaze and NulShock for Kimahri, and NulTide for Tidus. Kimahri also got every elemental strike here which was funny. There were two more that I don't recall as well. Oblitzerator was another round of dying horribly, then laying down 5x Cheer on the refight and being more aggressive with healing. I recall barely winning this and I definitely felt underleveled here. Then I ended up winning the Blitzball game 3-2 and being very excited for the Strength Sphere that was changed to something I don't remember. Notably, I was somehow winning 2-0 after the first half, then lost both second half blitz-offs and got scored on without a single thing I could have done differently. That's again not a mod problem, that's a "Blitzball sucks" problem. The forced encounters after the game weren't too bad since Wakka was lucky enough to have a Lightningstrike weapon and again, 5x Cheer. The Garuda? Power Break, Dark Attack, 5x Cheer, no threat.

The Miihen Highroad and Mushroom Rock Road were both very tough areas to survive, Yuna's MP was a precious resource between NulBlaze, NulFrost, and Cure. I managed on the first attempt in both areas, but only just, and one bad ambush could have been it for me until I picked up the Sentry and T.K.O. Stonetouch, I would later find, was nerfed to 25% infliction rate, and many enemies have resistance now, so it's virtually useless. Why even have the ability at all if it's been nerfed into the ground to the point of uselessness? I also disliked Funguars- the Pollen counter is only avoidable on a OHKO, which required an Auron crit or 5x Focus Lulu into the elemental weakness. Not exactly fun. Sonic Wall from a Garuda was also the first sign of potentially party wiping attacks, dealing 500 to everyone. So many attacks that Darkness doesn't seem to work against, again nerfing the status infliction into the ground to the point of it not being worth trying. Fortunately, Silence Attack worked sometimes and would really help when it did, especially against the all-party casting Element enemies. What about Chocobo Eater? I got pushed off a cliff. Gave the fight a few tries, wasn't in much danger of dying but also didn't seem to have the attack power to keep up with the increased pace of the fight, even if Tidus landed Slowtouch.

I fought Belgemine here and lost to the upgraded Aeon. Kind of annoying that this served to reset Aeon Overdrives, but whatever you still get the reward.

Sinspawn Gui was a fantastic fight though. Being forced to deal with the head was an interesting challenge, and the fight felt like I could always make a good set of decisions to survive it. 5x Cheer and Focus on Auron and Kimahri, careful switching and a well timed Mega-Potion carried the day. For the rematch I didn't play around and just spammed Fira into the body. Yuna was out of MP from the first battle (by the way, Ethers felt extremely rare and couldn't be used out of battle, so I've tended towards not using them unless absolutely necessary. I think I've used 4 or 5 and 1 Elixir in the entire game up to Gagazet). The Djose Highroad wasn't too bad either, since Yuna still gets Stoneproof. Lulu picked up the second tier spells partway through this area and the power increase was extremely noticeable. Random encounters became much more manageable on the whole at this point, and the Moonflow was no exception. I even beat Belgemine without issue. Extractor is barely worth a mention- Lightningstrike + 5x Cheer + Haste + Tidus having Slowtouch = an easy battle. Finally, Rikku joined the party, and I did some stealing before advancing the story. I also picked up the Fatal Cait Sith and Sonic Steel for Deathtouch (niche uses) and First Strike (literally every battle) going forward.

The Thunder Plains were advertized as a difficulty spike and... yeah. They were. The Gold Element casts DISPEL bfeore Thundara, which is kind of absurd, the dragon enemy needs to be killed ASAP or it's unkillable... I fought my way to one Qactuar stone (those are also absurd when first arriving, Provoke and Cura + Aim or bust) and the travel agency to get the Lightningproof Shield. Haha it's Lightning Ward now. I also pulled out FFXED for the second time here to set my dodges to 200- I've done it before, I didn't want to do it again here. What was the first time I used FFXED? Inside the Mushroom Rock Road command center, I gave myself 6 Ability Spheres since I didn't know there was no source there and no way to backtrack, and knew I could have farmed Dual Horns earlier. (later, I even took away 6 Ability Spheres) The second half of the Thunder Plains was easier, I thought, since Larva could be shut down with NulShock (I got some mileage out of Wakka's Danger Armguard here) and the Iron Giant fell to Power Break and some attacks. Even the eyeballs weren't a problem between Sleep Attack, Tidus and Lulu.

Macalania was more of the same, through with NulTide instead of NulShock. I tended to run from the 2x Blue Element encounter as I needed to rely on silence hitting to avoid using too many resources, which was rare. The Chimeras stealing all MP from one character was also obnoxious. Spherimorph got a buff to level 2 spells instead of level 1, which just served to make the fight annoying. I eventually tried keeping up a slate of Nuls on Yuna, Lulu and Auron which sort of worked, alongside 5x Focus. Not really an interesting battle. A short while later (in reality much later as I backtracked all the way to Besaid for the Jecht Sphere, stealing the whole way) I took on Crawler. 5x Cheer and Reflex on Tidus, Auron and Lulu led to a slow but fairly easy fight. Seymour and Anima felt like it should have been a massively challenging encounter, but I probably got a bit lucky. You see, the guardians can't be removed so confuse became a problem, but 5x Cheer and 5x Focus carried the day again. Anima served to reset buffs (and Ifrit died to Oblivion, but could have survived it if I didn't overestimate the damage!) and the second phase wasn't too bad either. It wasn't easy and I constantly had to make interesting decisions, granted, but at this point I felt firmly ahead of the power curve. Wendigo I left berserked and just guarded through. Barely worth mentioning. Far more worth mentioning is the fact that Tidus got a Silencestrike weapon from Seymour, which I haven't used once, and a Counter weapon from Wendigo, which I sold since Tidus gets one naturally. Oh well.

Bikanel provided some nice steals, and Home was nerfed in its treasures. Then it was time for Evrae, which I reset after giving a command to Pull Back, then getting Poison Breathed, pulling back, and getting Photon Winged. I won easily enough on the second attempt (first real attempt), even fighting through the Haste phase. It was a fun battle. I made a savestate before the 5 Bevelle battles just in case though, since it was a long fight- I ended up not needing it. Isaaru fell easily enough (I charged overdrives by the save sphere, and only used two against Bahamut before it would Mega Flare) and I looted the Via Purifico for the first time. Underwater, the encounters being armored was honestly a huge pain, and I bought a ton of Softs for Stone Ward against Altana. The battle was interesting enough but ultimately easy after, say it with me everyone, Haste, 5x Cheer, Haste.

Seymour Natus was a very hard battle. Stone Ward did NOTHING against the petrification, and the other statuses wasted multiple turns every time. I feel like luck with the targetting was essential in the first phase, and the later phases were less luck based but also kind of unfair. Meteor hitting everyone for 2k damage every turn is actually cheap- I had to use a lot of Mega-Potions to keep up, and also used a Stamina Tablet on Tidus to be able to tank two while attacking. This worked, but it wasn't clean at all. This finally led to the Calm Lands, and my first big random encounter complaint: 2x Anaconduar. Breath petrifies the entire party and Stone Ward doesn't block it. Sonic Tail can be used freely and hits the whole party for 2k damage. Did I mention Auron hasn't hit 4k yet? Yeah, this fight is blatantly unfair. Defender X was a long and boring fight with a lot of guarding, re-cheering, re-hasting, etc. At this point, the mod has started to cross into the standard difficulty trope of "give things more health and defense so they take longer and that's it" though Defender X has never been that hard.

Before that, though, I fought Belgemine (and lost, because you're supposed to lose this- I was honestly kind of pissed that this just served to 0 all Aeon overdrives!), I trained a chocobo (got less than 0.0), went to Remiem, got everything from there, tried the first Valefor fight, got wiped (when am I supposed to attempt optional content? There's clearly a sweet spot for the intended challenge level, but this isn't communicated at all), captured everything I could access, tried a battle, had my overdrives reset and died instantly (what the hell????), and finally picked up the rusty sword. Then it was time for the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth.

Magic Urns have been made worse. Attack the center, it berserks and spams Sigh which 2HKOs everyone. Dispel the Berserk, and it deaths Yuna. Any other target has a long animation that either deals 1200 damage, 2200 damage, or gives a single item. The rest of the encounters are... fine I guess. The Yojimbo battle was interesting in that Ginnem would ocassionally unleash Holy for 9999 on a single target, keeping buffs down, but the bigger issue was Kozuka inflicting Slow. This hit Yuna at the wrong time after a heal once and she couldn't get another turn before 2 more Yojimbo turns, so I lost to Zanmato. I'm really not sure what I could have done differently there, I feel like I just lost to bad luck, something that unfortunately seemed to be becoming a trend, as I'd previously wiped to 2 Anaconduars... and before you say "just use Stoneproof" that was changed to require 99 Petrify Grenades. And remembering, stealing is nerfed so they're harder to come by. Also Al Bhed Potions are a limited resource only accessible from Bikanel, so that's fun when they're the best source of healing.

Biran and Yenke is the first point in the game that I found absolutely stupid and unjustifiably so. Hitting Yenke when he's on his own was fine, juggling Haste, 5x Cheer and healing was fine, the problem came when it was just Biran later. Cycling (physical for 800 damage, 1600 on a crit!) and (spell I can't reduce for about 250-300) every turn, while being base faster, with a 700 damage counterattack, and something like a 1 in 3 chance Kimahri actually connects on an attack attempt EVEN AFTER 5x JINX? Super dumb. I actually refought the battle after using 50 Hi-Potions and 3 X-Potions, and got wiped after going for an attack with about 2300 HP. Gotta love cheap crits. Second refight, I won using 45 Hi-Potions and no other items. When Lancet for 80 is my only reliable source of damage, and it costs 7 MP, you know the fight is stupid. There were only two choices I feel I could have made to make this fight fair. First, I could have grinded out the Loner overdrive mode and relied on defending to reduce item turns, and only attack with Jump (which dodges counters). I shouldn't have to do that. Second, I could have decided ALL THE WAY BACK IN KILIKA to take Kimahri around the Sphere Grid the other direction and eventually enter Lulu's grid, and use second level elemental spells. But I chose Tidus's grid so that I could have a character with Flee, because that was locked away, so... yeah. The sum of a few design decisions resulted in the balance of the battle being completely broken in a very unfun way. And unfortunately, this shattered any trust I had that things were going to stay mostly fair. Not a good sign before Seymour Flux and later, Yunalesca.

Before continuing on with the area by area comments, I want to take a moment to address general balance. There's a lot of points in the mod where it feels like there's one right choice and everything else is wrong. Up through this point, there's usually been a clever solution and a grindy solution. Biran and Yenke had only two grindy solutions with nothing clever I could do. But even clever solutions like the Stamina Tablet on Natus required a level of preparation that can't be expected for someone coming in blind. Is this mod meant to be played with constantly referencing the changelog for stats? Is it meant to be played with just what's given in game? You're discouraged from grinding, and yet it's required in some form or another everywhere. You're given so many possible tools, but some of them arbitrarily don't work in some situations where they'd be useful and do work in others. Altogether it can create a very frustrating package where expectations aren't just unclear, they're completely uncommunicated. I already knew I was going to tap out of the mod before the postgame, since an environment where everything is available means everything is expected, but this just confirmed it. My goal was now to capture 1 of everything + obtain all Celestial weapons (possibly except Yuna's, given Belgemine changes, and abusing FFXED to skip playing Blitzball for Wakka's) and defeat BFA. Ultima Weapon is a maybe depending on how the fight looks, Omega Weapon is probably a no due to the extreme postgame nature of it. I also don't have interest in the preparation required for any of the monster arena stuff here, and though the battles might be interesting, there's a slippery slope with FFXED where if I use it to give myself the prep I could have done, why not go all the way and assume I grinded to max? How far does it need to go? And honestly, depending on how the rest of the game shakes out I might even tap out before then if something turns out completely and utterly BS. Also, I started writing these thoughts at this point in the game. I actually don't know what Flux, Yunalesca and BFA have in store.

Gagazet encounters range from "a bit long, but fair" (anything with Grats) to "this is nonsense" (anything with the mech that has Sentinel and Auron hits for 200 damage- having to deal with a Bandersnatch and Nidhogg until Lulu gets 2 Thundagas off is honestly unfair, and woe to anyone who doesn't have -agas yet). I fought the first half of the encounters and ran from the rest, no shame. Seymour Flux was another questionable battle. The change to how Shell works made Total Annihilation basically unsurvivable if it ran out at the wrong time, and in a really unfair and cheap way. The rest of the attack cycle is basically built in order to prevent rebuilding the party after a bad cycle- very cheap stuff. I lost the first attempt, and won on the second because I got luckier. Luck is not difficulty :/ This kind of carried into the Gagazet caverns, where the Grendel's fire breath (3500 to everyone!!!) or the Behemoth's auto ambush + negating First Strike (what the hell?) with random targeting and move selection for 1k (Thundara), 2.5k (attack) or 5-6k (Heave). Did I mention that Auron hit the end of his grid and only has 4830 HP? Yeah, this is pretty nonsensical at this point, but at least I managed the capturing. Dark Flan required Armor Break, which can miss, and the underwater encounters were a mess of random targeting. At this point, my plan was simple: beat up Sanctuary Keeper, then backtrack to the Calm Lands to stock up on everything I expended, then make the push to Zanarkand, Spectral Keeper and Yunalesca.

Sanctuary Keeper was a fun fight, except for the part where Mana Breath was basically "lose a character". The AI was fairly easy though, with the back to back Cura turns afterwards giving plenty of time to prep for Photon Wings. Backtracking went well and I customized Break MP Limit + MP Stroll for Lulu and Yuna- no more MP woes while travelling for me! I also noted that Attack Reels was the tournament prize and won that, though I really do not like Blitzball very much and the game against the Psyches went into overtime. Ugh. I've gotta say, when I get around to playing the remaster (and thus, have to win Wakka's Sigil again) I will almost definitely be waiting until I can get Brother and Wakka- Datto sucks, and Brother's insane speed makes passing to Tidus for free goals a breeze. With 30 of each curtain, restocked Chocobo Feathers and Hi-Potions, as well as 26 Mega Potions, Zanarkand should be easy, right? I took the time to check the changelog for the mod a bit here, and see that the Cloudy Mirror is, uh, basically unobtainable. I also noted that Spectral Keeper drops a level 3 key sphere (perfect for Wakka and Auron!) unless I get the rare drop... I didn't look farther for what changes I still had in store, but it was enough to change my plans from "BFA + Capturing + Celestials" to "BFA + Capturing everything once" but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if the Omega Ruins are just... not worth my time. And even BFA might be if I'm expected to do those first.

Before Zanarkand, however, Rikku reached the end of her sphere grid and hit Bribe. Yuna also had some spare sphere levels and I saw Auto-Life behind two level 4 locks, so I considered going for it with my two level 4 key spheres- but Nab Gil was tempting and also behind one. While deciding, I checked FFXindex and the changelog to try to find out when my next level 4 key sphere would be (too far off) and ultimately decided that Auto-Life was the best use. However, I also recalled an extremely rare item - the Attribute Sphere - from when I had briefly looked into recommended stats for vanilla Dark Aeons. Only accessible by bribing (which I just got!) a Maelspike (which I captured in Gagazet!) for about 100,000 per sphere, this lets you activate any stat node activated by an ally. ANY. This combined with a Return Sphere (Dark Element bribe for about 30,000 for 2, also winnable from Blitzball) means that I actually found a way to break out of the grids slightly before level 3 key spheres. (2x Friend Spheres from a Coeurl for 120,000 work too) That forced me to reconsider my entire sphere grid strategy, as I was no longer limited by those spheres and instead by money. Tidus is going to the beginning of Rikku and Kimahri is definitely staying with Tidus, Yuna is definitely getting Auto-Life and then going to Lulu's grid BACKWARDS, and Lulu, instead of hitting Kimahri's grid because it's available, can go to Yuna's. Rikku can teleport straight into Tidus's Luck +4 node, Wakka can go to the start of Auron and Auron to the end of Wakka. To minimize costs, the plan is to get 2 Friend Spheres (Lulu to Yuna and Tidus to Rikku), 3 Attribute Spheres (Wakka to Auron, Rikku to Tidus, Yuna to Lulu) and use the level 3 Key Sphere for Auron to get into Wakka. Kimahri needs no extra spheres until a Return Sphere at Quick Hit to start on Lulu's grid, but I probably won't get that far.

Zanarkand was an interesting experience. The road having 100% ambushes (through Initiative, which I think is nonsense still but whatever) definitely made each battle a bit more tactical, especially since every fight was a repeat of something from Gagazet that I already knew how to handle. Inside the dome, I suffered a party wipe right next to the save sphere to a Defender Z that only had 1500 or so HP left in the most absolute nonsense sequence of turns imaginable. First, Auron missed. Then, it countered Auron's miss despite not countering anything else in the fight. Auron had been under Protect, so it must have just run out. Then, it used Haymaker and killed Yuna from full HP through Protect. Then, Sigh to kill Lulu before she gets a turn. This encounter is honestly disproportionate to the rest of the area in a really jarring way, though it'd be fine without Sigh for 3k on the whole party. Seriously, that's some crap. Spectral Keeper was mostly easy and drawn out, but always tactically interesting. Auron got blown up at one point by a mine that got its turn before he got the chance to move, but other times I could summon to block or just move out of the way. The most annoying thing was needing to use a bunch of Remedies for Confuse/Berserk- my stock dipped to 14, and I knew I'd want more.

Before Yunalesca, I stole a ton more items and spent some time thinking about what to customize, and my strategy- referencing dansg08's videos for what to expect. I also ended up picking up Auto-Life on Yuna and Lulu (in case of emergency!) and Steal/Use on Tidus with my Attribute Sphere/Return Sphere shenanigans. I didn't feel ready, but I had to go for it. I checked my equipment and only Yuna, Auron, Lulu and Wakka had any armor with 3 open slots, and there were 4 critical statuses to defend against (Zombie, Confuse, Poison and Slow). Of those, Confuse was definitely the most valuable to block, followed by Zombie. I had a single digit count of Musks (16 for Ward), 28 Candles of Life (10 for Proof) and 21 Poison Fangs (12 for Proof). Unfortunately for me, all 3 of my Haste characters (Tidus/Kimahri/Rikku) couldn't get all 3 to easily handle slow. I also needed to figure out what equipment would be important to have in the early stages, and so took stock of everything I had. Auto-Med could also be useful (20 Remedies!) to cover Poison/Zombie/**SLOW**.
Auron - (Dark Ward + 1) (SOS Shell + 3) (customize Zombieproof/Auto-Med/Confuse Ward)
Wakka - (Dark Ward + 1) (Def +5% + 3) (customize Zombieproof/Auto-Med/Confuse Ward)
Yuna - (Break MP Limit + MP Stroll + MP +10%) (Silence Ward + Confuse Ward + Poison Ward) (Empty + 3) (customize Zombieproof/Auto-Med/Confuse Ward)
Lulu - (Break MP Limit + MP Stroll + MP +10%) (Silenceproof + Stoneproof) (HP +10% + 3) (customize Zombieproof/Auto-Med/Confuse Ward)
Tidus - (Dark Ward + 1) (Silence Ward + 2) (customize Poisonproof/Slow Ward)
Kimahri - (Dark Ward + Berserk Ward) (Water Ward + 2) (customize Poisonproof/Slow Ward)
Rikku - (Confuse Ward) (Auto-Med) (unfortunately separate armor)
The resource requirements for this were pretty high, being 40 Candles of Life (+12), 64 Musks (+48 from this plan, ouch), 24 Poison Fangs (+3) and 80 Remedies (+22, but I also need a hefty stock afterwards). I had plenty of Silver Hourglasses for Slow Ward, so that wasn't a concern. Strategy-wise, everyone should start with that first armor for phase 1 and buffing (Cheer x5 on AWYL, which would also give 5x Cheer to TK, and 5x Luck on AW, plus 5x Focus on YLW) and switch to the second for phase 2 and beyond. Ultimately, I think this should be winnable if I can maintain focus. But first, it was back to the Monster Arena to get the requisite Musks, Poison Fangs and Remedies (up to 65, 35, 110), then Gagazet to get more Remedies from encounters (+Mega Phoenixes from mechs) and the Zanarkand Dome for Candles of Life from monks. And of course, if Rikku gets Confuse Ward + open slot, then 20 more Remedies for customizing on it. I didn't get anything for Rikku, but I did get a Blessed Armlet (Zombie Ward + 2 for Kimahri) which is a better extra ability than Water Ward! I split my save, did the customizing, and approached.

The fight was a bit of a struggle, with Mega-Death still in play even though I didn't think it would be! Fortunately I'd had Auto-Life available and was able to rebuild, and summon an Aeon to block every 5th turn / have Tidus around as a Zombie. Other unfair events during the battle included Flare MISSING YUNALESCA in the third phase, but overall the fight was fairly smooth sailing given the somewhat excessive preparations I made beforehand. I think I would have been extremely frustrated if I didn't aim to rely on Auto-Med. Had I known about Mega-Death still being in this version, I would have customized at least one Deathproof (available from Bribing Ahrimans) and that would have been quite tedious. Yunalesca also dropped an additional Level 3 Key Sphere, which I would need to think about where to use it. Probably linking Rikku's grid to Yuna's? Then I captured everything outside the last two areas (and picked up the rewards), grabbed the last Al Bhed Primer (nerve wracking given Master Tonberries can't be escaped from and were a guaranteed wipe) and picked up the available cloister treasures (lol Dark Valefor is UNFAIR but that's a vanilla issue), and it was time for Sin.

Before talking about the endgame areas, I want to take a moment to talk about the way Steal was handled in this mod. It costs 3 MP and the MP limit is 200, which I actually did burn through while Simurgh hunting. That really led me to question- why? Why does Steal cost anything? Why is it affected by Darkness? Why are so many initial steal rates below 100%? None of that serves to make items impossible to get, just take longer. As noted with my Yunalesca preparation, I gained a lot of levels while collecting items in a way that I wouldn't have had to if steals were more reasonable. Additionally, I know that in the postgame you can get 99 of basically anything, like Healing Waters, and so the mod expects you to have them. At which point I have to ask... why do you still have to get them 1 at a time? Shouldn't the mod take the time to change these steals (or some bribes, even!) so that in the endgame/postgame, resources are much more plentily available? Ultimately, this artificial scarcity doesn't add any difficulty (except, perhaps, to stealing from bosses) and just adds tedium.

Sin's first fin was easy, though Tidus and Wakka being useless was kind of annoying. Sin's second fin was also easy, aside from the time I made a savestate to see what would happen if Wakka used Drain (250 damage, lol) and if pulling back dodged Gravija (it doesn't, but it weakens it) and if Rikku could mix Elixir on Yuna for MP recovery (I couldn't). But then before I could move back in Sin used "Galazy Quake" for 5k-6k damage on the entire party and that was it, game over. Total BS right there, so I reloaded the savestate to avoid all the testing what happens and continued with the fight the way I had been fighting it up to that point. I also noted that Rikku could mix a Super Elixir from an X-Potion and Farplane Wind, both of which I can acquire in bulk with some effort. I also found out that Attack Reels is garbage now lol. Genais and the Core were pretty easy- Genais went down in 2 Holy casts and an Auron attack, but the Core completely shutting down magic without warning while still consuming turns was really frustrating to find out. Likewise, the magic casts as counters were a pain too as it seemed like they were tied to the "charging" phase, but then Kimahri died to one outside of that. I don't know, man. This fight felt like there was only one valid strategy and it was Auron attacks and Rikku heals, since Tidus and Wakka lacked Piercing and Yuna and Lulu couldn't cast, summons have been nerfed against all bosses, use items have been nerfed against all bosses... and that left Kimahri for supplementary damage. Overdrive Sin instantly wiped me with Ah Choo which was, uh, very rude. It hit everyone for max health with MP damage, so I checked the changelog and what do you know, it is out of max HP. I tried again, making sure to fully heal and... yeah exactly max HP. What the hell are you supposed to do to a guaranteed TPK!?!?!? It turns out that Protect or Shell blocks half the damage, if not the MP damage, so... congrats I have to spend time buffing? Even though Sin has systematically removed any buffs I put down in each prior battle? Yeah, that's fair. This design is legitimately kind of upsetting, though at least the cutscene is short. I won (barely, Sin's Overdrive was full) on the next attempt by just spamming Hastega on Tidus, Auron attacks, and Holy on Yuna. Again, I felt like there was no real option for this battle and it was luck based whether or not I got enough turns in with having to recover. I then used the Purifying Salts I got from some of the capturing to put No Encounters on Wakka's MP Stroll armor and looted Inside Sin. The plan was to get the capturing reward (turns out Barbatos is only available in the second half) from there before fighting Omnis if possible, since at this point it could be very unfair. At least Lulu and Rikku have insanely good armors for this fight...

Except Omnis has three dirty tricks in store. First is that the Mortiorchis can't be targeted during the fight. This was actually a good change, since Seymour would randomly toggle these around! Second is that equipment can't be changed in battle (and later, I read that X Eater abilities are turned off so Lulu would have been useless!) but fortunately Rikku was set. Third, and by far cheapest, is that Omnis pulls out Zanmato. Without warning. I have no shame in admitting that I pulled back to a savestate I made to test Holy damage (9999) and summoned an Aeon to block after Seymour started talking. Really, this sort of TPK is the thing that I'd love to see in Scan text, which would also make Scan a useful ability! The capturing Inside Sin went pretty smoothly, and I got reminded just how strong the power curve is at this point in the game- encounters that were a struggle at first (Great Malboro, surviving Behemoth King's dying Meteor) suddenly became much easier. Auron, Lulu and Yuna were reliably hitting for the damage cap in most situations and it was a real question who I should customize BDL for.

I decided that Auron would be the best person to put BDL on, using a Piercing + Strength +10% weapon he already had. For the fourth slot I customized Strength +20%- it's not like I'll need anything else from here. Before this, however, I dipped into the Omega Ruins to loot all its treasures and accidentally ran into Ultima Weapon. No escape, no recent save, so I just did the fight. It took a decent amount of healing resources (some Healing Water, 2 Megalixirs, a Mega Phoenix) but nothing irreplacable and I still have plenty of Megalixirs for BFA if necessary. The dying Ultima was almost a party wipe but Tidus still had Shell and a lot of HP- the damage values here were pretty high, ranging from 5k on everyone to 8k+ on a single target. Definitely a rough fight that went on for quite a while, as apparently it has 250,000 HP (up from 70k / 100k vanilla). One thing I dislike about the mod, from reading the changelog for the battle, is just how little is communicated about important mechanics. Haste/Protect/Shell lasting a set number of turns is critical information that you can almost keep track of... except for all the unspoken attacks that reduce how long it lasts silently. Apparently most of Ultima Weapons' attacks did this! The result was just having to continually check if there were buffs and re-buff if necessary. I don't think that's interesting, personally, but this is definitely a postgame boss that I wasn't intending on doing. But here we are. I also grabbed 9 treasures from the chest game (savestates to avoid mimics rather than repeatedly re-running it) and got a Break DAMAGE Limit / Break MP Limit ARMOR for Lulu- it lacks MP Stroll, but I can switch between battles and this neatly solving my BDL woes. Before the Omega Ruins capturing I went and picked up Anima (behind Geosagneo, a fairly easy boss since I had a Piercing weapon on Wakka- just had to keep on top of the statuses and use a Mega Phoenix when Wakka didn't get a turn to struggle) and Yojimbo (since I had a ton of money). Then it was time to give Remiem another shot, do the Cactuar sidequest, finish the capturing, and then defeat BFA and Yu Yevon to put this mod to rest.

Well, the Monster Arena and Dark Aeons would still be out there, and a couple of stray optional things, but I've seen enough. Besides, I've been getting antsy to play the remaster to actually experience the Dark Aeons properly.

Auron hit a random encounter for 17k. It was glorious. Remiem was complete nonsense. It was not glorious. I basically had to rely on overdrives or evades to survive, and buffing aeon stats is... unreasonable. Valefor died to Oblivion. Ifrit to Anima attacking, dying, and then Yojimbo triple Wakizashi + double evade. Ixion just kept trying to evade while Anima bounded it with Waterga after Oblivion (and Haste + Shell). Shiva died to Anima attacking twice, lol. Bahamut fell to Anima with Haste, Protect, 5x Cheer and Curaga. Yojimbo took a couple attempts to get enough damage in with Anima and Yuna to not get instantly wiped (wasted turn on Cure lol) to summon another aeon for the finishing OD. Anima took teaching Bahamut Reflect to dodge Holy and then getting lucky with few physical attacks + Anima going for Demi on aeon kills (happened twice). I then realized I could get the Magus Sisters when they weren't an option, so I did, and fought them once just to see how absurd they were. Anima's attack did 20k, good damage, but unfortunately for me she immediately got Razzia'd and then Yuna got hit with Passado- high single target damage then a many hit attack. This did refill Yuna's Overdrive, and Anima already had an empty gauge, so this fight was actually a net gain. The Cactuar sidequest was uneventful, other than Rikku tanking a Holy- that was a nice tweak.

Omega Ruins capturing was actually a fun process, with my only gripe being Master Coeurls dropping BANISH of all abilities without warning on a fight that starts with an auto-ambush. I moved Wakka to the start of Rikku's grid, Auron to the end of Tidus's grid, and eventually would move both Yuna and Lulu to the start of Rikku's grid as well for the Agility boost. Tidus, Kimahri and Rikku were still busy completing each others grids, but afterwards Kimahri would go to the end of Lulu's, Tidus to the end of Auron's, and Rikku to the end of Yuna's. Meanwhile, Auron and Lulu could both hit for over 20k against targets with low defense now! The hardest encounter was probably the double Halma + Spirit encounter, just because the Spirit poisons the Halmas and then they use nothing but Damned Attack, which deals 100% Max HP as damage. Not sure if Protect would help here, but spending a turn to Esuna them was sufficient. Varunas were the easiest enemy, except for when thy randomly pulled out Mega-Death (from dispelling Haste, without warning apparently). I did a bunch of Strength +20% / BDL on Tidus / Alchemy customizing before going for endgame.

BFA IS FAST WHOA- but the extra Luck node I gave Tidus from an Attribute Sphere in the Nucleus meant I wasn't playing around, Tidus crit twice for 20k apiece into Meteor for 8k on the whole party at the form shift. TPK. Very fair stuff (not). Second attempt from a savestate after the Nucleus, I put a higher priority on getting Rikku in place of Yuna for Mega Mighty G + Healing Water duty. Except after Mega Mighty G + burning through my Fantasy Potions, the defensive buffs combined with launching other Overdrives actually made it so Rikku had nothing better to do than attack- and she had to be in the party as she received the buffs! And Rikku actually dealt the finishing blow on what I think was a "probably too hard" fight that I was definitely a bit overprepared for. Really, though, the reason why I made sure I was definitely prepared was because of how many cutscenes there are before the battle + the whole Nucleus sequence taking a while. I didn't want to go through it any more times than I had to, which is an FFX problem, not a mod problem. But on the mod side, I had no idea what to expect for what was expected of me- was I supposed to have done the Omega Ruins? Any capturing? I couldn't know, so I erred on the side of sidequests, which had the added benefit of experiencing everything outside the Monster Arena and Dark Aeons this mod had to offer. Before some closing thoughts, there was still Yu Yevon, usually a formality, but I expected something different here.

As a pleasant surprise, the aeon portion of the battle maintained permanent Auto-Life! Thanks for not creating a potential wipe and redo point here! As with Biran and Yenke, the evasion seemed to be cranked up really high here which isn't super fun, but at least aeons can be hit with magic from having the whole party. Seriously though, even Wakka was missing without Aim. Also, Use items randomly worked here despite being largely useless for damage for the rest of the bosses up to this point. Kind of arbitrary, but the aeons are a formality anyway. I found this out whene I decided to just chuck a Dark Matter to see if it would work, and it did, so that solved the Magus Sisters problem before it started. Yu Yevon also kept the Auto-Life, and had been hinted to have 1 billion HP. There was also a Nemesis and Yojimbo recolor in the fight (??? and Mysterious Assassin?), and Yu Yevon applied... 7 digit Regen turn one. Yikes. Rikku stole a "Book of Legends" which appeared to be an auto-99999 item, then Yu Yevon Ultima'd the party for 99999 in return. Fun stuff, especially since Yu Yevon is now Zombie immune and the untargettable extra enemies are also attacking for 99999, forcing me to sit through more auto-life animations. I'm not sure what the intention of this fight was? Especially when suddenly I got triple attacked with a petrification + shatter, eject, and 99999 + max MP + dispel attack that actually gave a game over. This... left a really bad taste in my mouth honestly. I beat the game. I got all the way to the end, and then there's just an unwinnable encounter locking the credits away. That's really, really, really unsatisfying. It appears that the intention is to defeat PENANCE to get one specific item that casts Zanmato specifically to complete this battl, but screw that. I've seen the dark aeons and Penance in this mod. I'm not fighting them, but I'm also not accepting defeat. Naturally, this is where FFXED comes in. I got this far legitimately (plus or minus a few savestate reloads to take advantage of battle design knowledge and extremely minor save edits to correct my own mistakes, like not getting Ability Spheres before locking myself into a place where I couldn't get more). I'm seeing the end- as far as I'm concerned, the mod cheated me out of the win. It's only fair that I cheat back.

So I used a combination of FFXED (99 of everything on a file) and Cheat Engine (to copy that inventory over to my pre-aeon savestate) to act like I had a Book of Vengeance to use. I found that I couldn't, so I tried using a Book of Legends first and that allowed it (because they were stealable from Yu Yevon). So I did, and the fiends on the side then wiped everyone but Wakka who barely lived, and then 13k Ultimaja. So I tried again, this time using Yuna and Lulu's Lightning Eater equipment and getting Protect and Shell on the party. That didn't work either- Lulu hung on with about 4000 HP, but Ultimaja still did 12k. So I cheated even harder and froze Rikku's HP at 40,000 to see it through. Yu Yevon then triplecast Ultima for 10k (yes, damage limit breaking!) with a congratulatory message onscreen, and finally a "FINISH HIM". So I did.

Honestly, this is the sort of thing that should have been added to the end of Penance. Having it at the true endgame is just so deflating after spending so long getting there. Genuinely, it's enough for me to reconsider if it was all worth it- my file had 120 hours on it at endgame, but I played a large amount of that at 2x speed in the emulator and had a couple wipes that weren't in that time. Probably 70-80 hours in total between playing, checking the changelog, and planning. After that much time, robbing a cathartic conclusion from a player and instead punching it another 100+ hours of mostly grinding for materials (and grinding through massive amounts of HP) down the line is... just cruel. Some players might get motivated by knowing that they need to go for the postgame to even beat the mod. Me? I didn't want to do the monster arena stuff in the first place, I just wanted to see this through to the end. I reconsidered several times if I was actually going to, or if I was going to quit. But I didn't quit- I pushed through all the nonsense that was thrown in to force game overs without knowing specific interactions in advance. I pushed through several absurd situations (mostly of my own making) to see it through to the end. And with that final sequence, everything past BFA... it really sours the whole experience.

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SUMMARY HERE
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Sorting through my overall thoughts as the ending scenes play... I think I don't regret my time with the pbirdman mod. I really did enjoy several of the battles, and the resource management game through much of the mid-game. But I also really disliked some of the bosses, and the resource management completely went away once I realized I could get MP Stroll in bulk. The bad slightly outweighs the good, but when it was good, it was really good.

Some of my favorite battles and moments, in no particular order:
Sinspawn Euchillies (circumstances of my specific playthrough), Sinspawn Gui, Crawler, Seymour 1, Evrae, Spectral Keeper, crawling through the Mi'ihen Highroad, surviving Macalania without Flee or escaping on the first go
Some of my least favorite:
Sin's Fin (circumstances of my specific playthrough), having no source of Ability Spheres in the command center (this should have been fixed), Oblitzerator (fixed strategy + if you didn't grind, no way to get AP for the fight- I'm pretty sure it's impossible NSG), Seymour Natus (Meteor is nonsense), Biran having stupid evasion, Seymour Flux (Total Annihilation), the entire endgame, Belgemine wiping all aeon ODs several times, Zanarkand road being all ambushes regardless of equipment (if you don't want Initiative available, just don't make it available), the myriad of wipes to unforseeable counters/attacks throughout the game (Anaconduar Sonic Tail, Defender Z Sigh and Varuna Mega Death all come to mind, but that's not all of them), the amount of extremely narrow solutions to some fights (some random encounters came down to "Armor Break until it hits, then win" and Lulu was made useless half the time), Magic Urns being made dumber... there's a lot of small complaints.
Some other things that stuck out:
Hitting the Thunder Plains and getting hit with the double whammy of only getting a Lightning Ward shield, and Yellow Elements casting Dispel first to block the Nulelement strategy that I'd been spamming up to that point. My initial reaction was negative but this was actually fine, outside of the 2x Blue Element encounters in Macalania being a bit much.
Finding out that I couldn't use Ethers in the menu - the next fight was a bit tense trying to fit that in on Yuna.
Trying to Bribe a Coeurl only to see "Immune". Oops.
Realizing that Yuna's increasing MP costs to keep the party healed could be mitigated first by not always fully healing the party, and later solved completely by MP Stroll.

Some questionable decisions that I mostly dislike, but understand some of the rationale:
Overdrive charging rate - it does nothing to address preparing Overdrives for specific battles, it just makes it take longer. Which means that if you want to prepare Overdrives just in case, then it ALSO means you're going to be grinding more and end up ahead of the intended power curve. A better solution, I think, would have been to just embrace the Monster Arena thing and just have every boss fight reset your Overdrives. This wouldn't adversely affect Biran and Yenke as the Lancet gains are removed, and would make Overdrive gaining abilities more valuable on weapon slots as how quickly you can charge one then matters. Celestial Weapons all had their abilities changed, so Triple Overdrive isn't free. This is a huge change but one that I think is probably an improvement, as it would make things a bit clearer and also balance things a bit more. To address gtting multiple Overdrives in one fight... so what? If anything that solves the Biran and Yenke issue I had. And oh boy are Aeon Overdrives so tedious to prepare.
Haste, Protect and Shell - first up: I really like that they have a finite duration and not infinite, infinite is broken. However... this comes with the drawback that you can't see how much longer it will last, and some attacks decrease the duration of these statuses silently. You also can't "top up" the duration by recasting on someone who already has the status, which is the root of my issue with Seymour Flux. Total Annihilation demands Shell to reasonably survive, but reduces the Shell duration. So what do you do if you know Shell is about to run out on a character? You really don't have an option. It also weakens Hastega. Basically, if the status bar said "Shell (6)" or something, and the spells set the duration rather than missing if the target already has the status, then I would completely love this change. As it is, it's a bit more frustrating than fun.
Locking Weapon/Armor in encounters / no Flee encounters - Some random encounters lock these for some reason. No idea why, but it made capturing Bandersnatches a bit more of a pain. Likewise, monster hunting was a bit of a pain in areas with fleeproof enemies as you just want to run- Master Tonberries were the biggest offender here.
Moving the Cloudy Mirror to post-monster arena - This makes it so you have to customize good weapons as well as good armor for characters. However, this also makes it so BDL is scarce until late in the monster arena, while being nearly essential. Having to make such a consequential and irreversible decision is honestly really terrifying, not just for which character but also on which weapon- and with what else? I probably would have lowered the cost of BDL and left the first reward the same, just to ease that decision. It's not a huge power boost (especially since capturing 5 of everything is still 99) but it just makes things freer.
Decreasing the Steal rate - same as Overdrives. It doesn't make items harder to get, just more annoying and take longer, and probably give more EXP along the way. Vanilla had it right with the first steal being guaranteed something, and Master Thief to guarantee the rare steal if you wanted it.
Disabling Scan/Sensor from all bosses + some enemies - I strongly dislike this change, it does make things harder but it makes things harder in a way that doesn't feel satisfying. You don't know if statuses landed without seeing a result afterwards (Armor Break...), you don't know if statuses went away, you don't know how much health is left, you don't know immunities and resistances... all of this information is something that, with Sensor, you should just have. It's a weapon ability slot and taking away the utility where it really matters (+ capturing, but of boy were Black Elements a pain) devalues it. And Scan is virtually worthless.

Ultimately, the pbirdman mod falls cleanly into a category of experience for me. I don't regret my time with it on the whole, but I have no interest in returning to it later.