Aeon Rant

[Maschbot]

This thread assumes that you know about the plot in Final Fantasy X, and that there will therefore be no spoilers for you herein.

I recently started playing Final Fantasy X again, to help me with "He who is with Sin," and I realized something. Why is it, that with their nice little 'four element, opposing pairs' magic system, there is no water aeon? We have fire held down by Ifrit, with my favorite ever look for him; I liked the more canine look he took in this installment. Opposing him is Shiva with ice, looking radiant as ever. For lightning, we have Ixion for some reason. What unicorns have to do with lightning, I may never know. Actually, that brings up another question; would Yuna be unable to summon Ixion anymore if she wasn't a virgin? (The previous question was not a serious one.) Lording over them all is the non-elemental Bahamut, who aside from the weird ring on his back was awesome. And then... Valefor.

What the fuck do we need another non-elemental aeon for? I mean, besides Bahamut, we've already got the three "hidden aeons," all of whom kick ass. What purpose does the bird have? Why is there not some kind of mini-Leviathan to round out the elements? Even if you go with the, "They needed a flier for the dramatic scene at Yuna's wedding," they could have just ditched Ixion and re-used Quezacotl from FF8 for lightning, thereby leaving room for a water aeon to oppose him. The closest thing to a water aeon is Sin, and that sure as hell doesn't count. Even then, he doesn't use water to attack, he just swims around in it.

Given that the world seems to be mostly covered in water, that the central part of Spira's culture (Sin) lives in water, and that the freaking national pastime is played underwater, you'd think that it wouldn't be left out.

Phew! Just had to get that out.

 

[sigfried27]

Why have Valefor? Simple, the same reason as every other Aeon...a bullet shield...

aside from the Magus sisters, Aeons become essentially useless for prolonged battle as time goes on. They are meant to take a hit for you and release one, maybe two overdrives if you are lucky. Don't place so much emphasis on elemntal aspects of things. Besides, the thory is that you can teach them water spells with items, it's just that there is really no need to bother teaching the aeons any spells since their role is for a quick hit.

 

[TheEcchiSessha]

No water Aeon in FFX eh?

Spoiler (Highlight to read)

Actually, there is a water Aeon in FFX... It's name is Tidus. SURPRISE! The main character is actually an aeon. His fayth (sp?) is the world he's from, IIRC. That is the reason he disappears at the end.

Also, Sin was the gravity Aeon. =P

Yeah, the Aeons in FFX are really only good for some quick burst damage or finish off weak enemies quickly. Most bosses wipe them out in a hit or two. Seymour is a pain when using them too. On his next turn, he instantly banishes them. One-hit KO for your summon.

~The Ecchi Sessha

 

[Maschbot]

Silly, silly. I mean an aeon devoted to the element, in the same way that those other three are. The only time Tidus could fill that role is when you equip him with Brotherhood or Liquid Steel, and why would you do that when you have Caladbolg?

I almost never used Aeons against bosses anyway, unless it was as a Grand Summon to finish off something for an overkill. I liked getting to use my regular overdrives instead. But I never really used them as a meat shield, either. My aeons were plenty strong to take on groups of fiends even in places like the Omega Ruins, especially if I used Yojimbo or Anima. Maybe it's because I pumped their stats? I don't know.

It's not something that I feel ruins the game or anything like that. It just doesn't make any sense to me that they would leave it out, given the way they have their system of magic set up. It's the principle of the thing, really.

 

[SoulGriever13]

Basically? They're a useless plot device that makes Yuna feel important, when she really isn't ...

Honestly, there was no point to them in a purely game-mechanics sort of way. I can't recall one instance where they were really useful for much, other than a handy way to keep someone from croaking when they were low on health and the enemy was going to move before you could do something about that. By the time they got halfway decent damage scores going, Tidus was doing more melee damage than they did after hasting and shelling everyone, Lulu was spamming Ultima every turn she got, and Yuna did likewise whenever she wasn't healing people.

I was kinda hoping for something more come FF12, but here I'm steamrolling through boss fights with well-paced quickening combos without much of a problem ... time will tell, I guess.

-Griever

 

[ttestagr]

Quickening combos bother me in 12. They just don't have any point other than giving you a super move to use, and what's worse is that they aren't really relavent to the characters. Fuck, Basch uses what looks like a kamehameha. Where the hell does something like that come from?!

In 6, character's specials their characters (Terra's morph, Celes' Runic, Cyan's sword techs.) Even in 7 most of the characters had fitting limits (Cloud's Climhazard and Omnislash, Cid's Highwind, Barret's Ungarmarx, Tifa's combos.)

To put it simply, I don't like 12's quickenings and I prefer not to use them.

 

[Mighty Bob]

I like 12, but yeah Quickenings are cheap super hits, especially if you're good at chaining them and getting Mist Charges. I've found so far that like FFX, dieing in 12 is next to impossible unless you get really unlucky or really screw up. The summons in 10 and 12 are both fairly useless, I never really used em in either game unless I felt like using em for the helluvit.

Crimson Skies has a FFX story that has an answer to where the water summons is:

Leviathan
AU Exactly where is the water aeon? Perhaps a lot closer than everyone thinks, for he won't be allowed to dream much longer. Probable TidusxYuna.

 

[Maschbot]

This is actually starting to weird me out a little. I found the aeons to be very useful. Ifrit and Ixion are both doing double the physical damage that anyone else in my party can do, and they both have more HP than anyone except Auron. Their defenses are also better than anyone elses, except for Lulu's magic defense. They charge their overdrives WAY quicker, which lets me get overkills on tough enemies very easily. Valefor's special ability, Sonic wing, allows me to take on enemies like Ochu without being hit once, especially since it has great evasion for those few hits that do get through. And I haven't even gotten to Macalania yet. Heck, except for allowing everyone to take one turn in order to get a share of the experience, I had Ifrit take on Sinspawn Gui by himself and he won with no problem.

Do I just have a weird copy of the game, or do I play it differently than all you guys?

 

[SoulGriever13]

We probably play differently, but that's mostly due to the fact that I like a quick kill, and the Aeons just don't deliver. Basically, I built my party around a strike first, strike hard, and you won't need to do so again philosophy, which served me well in Omega's place against the annoying appearances of status effect monsters. Then again, I was basically riding high level magics almost through the whole thing, as well as at the end. The fight against Jecht was maybe the toughest one, and I did use Aeons there, but only because I'd taken care to load up Overdrives beforehand and basically used them as oneshot artillery before going back to Ultima-ing the shit out of the guy. The stuff that came after that ... well, it was almost embarassingly simple, but maybe in part because I didn't bother with leveling the Aeons. Valefor? Ultima. Ifrit? Ultima. Shiva? Ultima. And so on ad nauseum. First time through I never bothered with getting the sisters of Anima, and even Yojimbo and Bahamut didn't manage to escape a double volley of Lulu's finest. Almost the same with Yu Yevon, except that he got Tidus' overdrive in the face to start things off. Went pretty much downhill all the way.

-Griever

 

[SotF]

If you want another oddity there is at least one other Aeon that you can't get. The Giant Yellow Monkey thing that shows up in the Summoner clipscene in the Al Bhed Home when Tidus learns that summoners basically train to sacrifice themselves.

 

[DemonDream]

In FFX, I am actually more powerful than my aeons. The only time I use them is when I need a meat shield against Nemesis, the ultimate Optional Boss. And believe me, they are necessary, even with my defense maxed out (255) he was doing 15K+ every hit. Did manage to beat the SOB though. As for the game bosses? The only reason I can't one hit them is they have over 100K HP. Annoying, really.