I've only heard and seen pics of this guy, so I was wondering if anyone has actually beaten this 12 million HP monster.

Or any of the Dark Aeons, for that matter.

Well my cousin has beaten him but i have no clue how he did it. Yeah he told me that beating the dark aeons was a biatch just to get to fight him. Anyway i think Penance's arms have half a million hits

Yeah I did it on my FFX: International, and he is probably one of the toughest bosses I've fought in an rpg.
I only beat him using a strategy devised by a very smart guy over at gamefaqs. (Though I forgot his name now.)
It involved lowering my HP Max back down to 9999, which sounded really odd to me at first, but it definitely worked.

The Dark Aeons were pretty tough as well. The first two or three weren't very dificult, but the rest are all stronger than Nemesis. (Who is the strongest boss in the US version.)
Fighting all three Magus Sisters at once may even have been more dificult than Penance.
I only found out afterwards that you're supposed to lure them away and fight each one separately.

Yes I have betean him as well. the reason you have 9999HP is becuase evan if you have 999999HP his attackes will kill you eney way.he is deinetly the hardest boss on eney RPG.

Yup, I beat him as well. The real satisfaction hit me when I finally got to him, though. As cheap as Zanmato'ing every Dark Aeon is, that strategy didn't get me anywhere when I had to beat Dark Yojimbo 5 times in a row xP . But I got very lucky and managed to Zanmato him 4 times in a row, then I pulled out all the stops in the 5th fight (having carefully planned that battle, prepared with multiple hitting overdrives and all) and managed to beat him. And on a sidenote: Dark Yojimbo could still have killed my characters with a single blow if he had gotten the chance, but I didn't feel like waiting for that to happen. =p

And then... I reached Penance. A nice, short, flashy intro on the deck of the airship and I finally got to face him. Then another Zanmato and adieu to Penance. What...? You don't think I'm going to level up for ages just to beat an optional super boss, do you? Cheap moves are my friend. xD

Zanmatoing everything, Xerno? I think you kind of missed the point with the optional bosses. XD
The reward is in the dificulty of the battles themselves, since you don't gain anything special from beating them in terms of items.


No actually, with my strategy he would usually do less than 9999 damage to me per attack.
So getting hit while on 99999 would land me somewhere above 90000.
The reason my lower HP was effective is because it drove my Overdrive gague to max every time I got hit.
(I only let him do two different attacks, by killing both his arms every time, before every turn he gets. If I would have gotten hit by any other attacks, I would definitely die.)

Ah i never got the chance to face Penance before i accidently deleted my FFX file but i remember i was stuck on Yojimbo for ages and to me he was the hardest Dark Aeon.

So i now am replaying FFX just to souly see Penance. I read a lot into it and i am quite surprised in how stupidly strong it is. lol

Well I beat Nemesis in my NA version, but I don't have a modded ps2. I really would want to fight the Dark Aeons though, they seem so unnecessarily more difficult then Nemesis, a real challenge =(

Yes, I have beated him. I fought him with max stats to all, except for luck.
I always casted cheer every now and then and my HP was around 30 000 or so.
He was really strong and annoying, though I have seen worse *cough Indalecio Limiter OFF, Star Ocean The Second Story cough*

I wish I don't have to Zanmato some of the Dark Aeons away but they were blocking my path to my ultimate weapons. >.< But I think I left a few there. Like Anima, Yojimbo and Magus Sisters. T-T

In short, I have not activated Penance, though I kind of feel like doing it. But after I finish my other games and feel like playing FFX again. >.> It's going to take a long long long time.

Oh you really should do it, cause he is well worth of a fight.
Just don't go Zanmato on every special boss, cause it is rather...well lets say every no0b can do that, makes it rather easy.

I wish I can Zanmato everytime successfully and save all the heart cells that died when wakizashi came out. *dies* Yojimbo bankrupts me. T-T

But yea... those were extreme cases because they were blocking my path and I really had to get rid of them. I think Dark Ifrit and Dark Ixion as still learing at me from somewhere... *hides*

Hahaha, well they're not hard to find...actually rather obvious >_<.
But I had a friend who claimed to be so good cause he deated every Dark Aeon and Penance and I asked him how he did that and he said, well with Zanmato.

The I just laughed at him...cause even a beginner can do that, save in front of the boss, fight, summon Yojimbo and pay him and let him do Zanmato, if he doesn't do it, then reset and try again, easy as pie

I Captured 5 of every fiend and so I was well on my way to fighting the dark Aeons and Penance when I lost that information. I'm back where I was but I just can't be bothered to catch 5 of each monster again... maybe when I can be bothered I'll attempt it.

Erm... fighting Penance & Dark Aeons has nothing to do with capturing fiends. That's Nemesis (who I never bothered unlocking either, I'd just Zanmato him anyway xD ). The only reason I bothered with Penance was to see what it was actually really like, plus they said Penance rose from that huge chasm in the Calm Lands (which is most likely relevant to its identitiy), so I wanted to see that for myself as well.

Oh, I know that you don't have to capture all the fiends but I'll need higher stats than the Sphere Grid has to offer and So I need Clear Sphere Nodes and +4 Spheres.

Come to think of it, what is Penance exactly and why was he in that place in the alm Lands?

I mean, for me he is just random, since he has no background story whatsoever, but he only pops up when you defeat the dak aeons...

Gosh, when putting a lot of optional dialogue from the game together there was someone who I thought seemed like a good possibility to be Penance, but it's been a while... kinda sucks the optional dialogue isn't included in the script faqs >< . Heh, but I found that ancient post of mine again on Google =p :


And if I'm not mistaken, Gandof was the very first High Summoner of Spira.

I don't even know why there are dark aeons. I know he comes from the rift in the calm lands and according to that old Fart who follows you about that came about from a battle with sin. A High Summoner brought sin down with the final Aeon and it crashed there (or something like that). I really can't see how that could be connected to Penance in any fashion. The only thing that I can see is that the summoner who summon his final Aeon was never sent (surly summoners need to be sent as well) and grew into that big Fiend (much like Omega)... I'ts not a very good explanation of it though.

Edit: Aparently, me and Xerno have a simular way of thinking heheh

Ah okay, that is pretty cool to know, it sounds logical though, but I doubt SE has any further information about it, other then it is an optional boss.

Also, I just had to look up what Penance meant and this is what came out:

An activity similar to mortification* while also containing the idea of reparation (atonement) for personal sins. Most religious communities encourage their members to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance) on a regular basis. There are also admonitions that individual religious carry out their own penances to help them grow in the spiritual life and to free themselves from bad habits. ...

And this is what I read on a chinese site:

Penance: atonement; mortification; penalty

yes i beat penance but my party had an extraordinary status with tidus auron and wakka having full strength defense etc and luck about 190 and hp->60000. armour should be break hp limit,ribbon,auto protect and auto haste.
must have celestial weapons. Use three stars and continue with quick hits on the hands of penance and do not let both the hands co exist or get the final overdrive JUDGEMENT DAY .double your hp buy using stamina tonic to 100000. and toast him easily.

I found that it was easier with only 9999 HP and no ribbon. But there are a lot of different strategies, I just never found a good one involving 99 999 HP, because it's hard to replenish.
With 9999 and Auto Potion on your armor, you can cast X potion every time you get hit, and gain full HP without wasting a turn.

Please don't make fun of me, but... What is FFX:International? I know what international means, I am not ignorant, but what is the difference between International and just the normal game. I have not even seen an enemy known as penance in my copy, so I'm sure that there must be some difference.

FFX International is the name of the second Japanese version. It was released in Japan with an option for English subtext.
The International version has new super bosses like the Dark Aeons that are stronger than the bosses in the monster arena, including Nemesis. And it also has a new super boss named Penance.

FFX in Europe is the same as FFX International actually. But it was never released in the US.

I killed penance without using any overdrives, mainly because I don't like blitzball and didn't do it for Attack reels etc. Its pritty easy if you customise auto-haste and auto-protect on all ur armor + the obvious choices, and just quick hit down 1 arm at a time, the most efficient way is to quick hit one arm 5 times, then if its the start of the fight the other arm twice, or in any other case the torso twice, then kill the original arm, and follow the process over n over again, using healing water + dispell in phase 2 (full break) when u need it. His damage is cured with 1 water in both phases with auto protect.. and apart from the start of the fight where both arms are alive, neither arm should ever get a turn. Since you let him have one arm only alive at a time, he'll never use judgment day. Its a long fight with this strat.. but if u really want to speed it up.. use auron, tidus, and wakka (aeons are useless, unless ur lame and use zanmoto ) as their weapons allow free hits on penance everytime he attacks in phase 2, which is the only difficult part of the fight. Over 30k hp will do, (use a stam tonic) so 60k would be nice.. max str,def,mgc def, agi and accuracy and 120 luck mainly for the magus sisters is all u need to get to and kill penance without overdrives.

I just had 255 stats and like 70,000+ HP to spare, if you have auto-protect, auto-ribbon, break hp ribbon armour, you can just spam quick hits on arms and when both dead, quick hit his body for 99,999 (of course final weapons as well)

Also if you do cheer 5 times, his 1st phase attack only does like 10,000 or so damage (maybe even less) so u can use a albhed potion.

I tend to stay away from overdrives, as quick hit spam is faster. (u can use a triple star or whatever it is to limit mp consumption but I never found it to be a issue)

However I delayed killing penance because you can steal dark matter and other goodies from him and then simply flee the battle (useful if u are trying to get more ribbon armour)