Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago

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"You made Ion suffer! You made Florian suffer! You made Sync suffer! I hate you!"


Thank you to @mystearia5441 for the thumbnail!


Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:39 Phase 1
2:13 I hate you!
3:09 Phase 2
4:45 It seems I have no choice but to unleash this terrible power within me!
5:37 Phase 3


Game Modifications:
-Modified P. and F. ATK
-Unlocked doll artes
-Modified party


Closing thoughts on the run:
I have to say, this run was very enjoyable! I'm not exactly sure what I expected going into this run, but I really wanted to have a high quality Abyss run on my channel since my Jade run was unsatisfactory to me. I think I was able to use a lot of creative strategies as Anise due to her limitations as a character (her hitbox) and that was super fun. I remember things like the AI reset I exploited on Tyrannopion and the turn buffering I exploited on Kaiser Dist XX as high points of the run for me personally. I love finding random AI quirks like that and then actually using them in a practical way to beat a boss. Sometimes playing as Anise felt like a puzzle to figure out at times since I would have to say, "Okay, if I was any other character I could do X but I have to find another way to get past this because I'm playing Anise." The AI exploits I mentioned above are a great example of this in action.

This run wasn't too difficult for me overall though (other than the dreaded trio). I have a lot of experience with Abyss now having done a Jade run and a Luke/Tear duo run. Honestly, this run was kinda what I used to chill out when I didn't want to record for Judith lol. The Vesperia run took a lot out of me so I'm grateful that I had this run to work on alongside it. As always, thank you to everyone who watched this run! I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.

Strategy:
Phase 1 & 2:
These phases are nearly identical to Van 1. He'll mostly just cast Negative Gate and Ground Dasher if I'm at a distance from him. I can dodge one spell and then use that window to cast my own. From there, I can punish if I want to or continue casting. For phase 1/2, I decided to take a more casting heavy approach by using spells like Rock Mountain and Miracle Hammer.

At the start of phase 2, he will always use Guardian Frost at the start and he will run up to do so. I don't want to lose space on my side of the map, so I need to run up and bait it before doing anything. After taking some damage, he'll destroy Imperial Slaughter so I gotta watch out for that. Other than that, it should be pretty free.

Phase 3:
At the start of this phase, you'll notice me menuing a lot. I'm changing out my Mystic Symbol for a Spirit Symbol since I will not have enough TP to last me until the end of the fight. This means that I can no longer use Bloody Howling since the cast time is just too long. Thankfully, the window after dodging a spell is just long enough for me to punish with Negative Gate. I also switch out Miracle Hammer for Mighty Charge and Surge Breaker for Soaring Blast. I use Mighty Charge to FoF change off of one of Van's spells for Mighty Circuit (mostly just so I can say I used it tbh. Messing around with this also waits out his OVL) and I use Soaring Blast to FoF change off Negative Gate into Brutal Torrent. Van will almost always air recover off of Brutal Torrent if he's not near a wall, so I can use this to create more space for myself and start a new combo chain unless he blocks.

I later change Mighty Charge out for X-BUSTER to tank through an OVL proc and then Dragon Surge for a potential Stone Dragon Ascent.

From here, I can continue using my strat from phase 1/2. When Van gets lower, I find that he has an increased chance to just randomly decide to use melee artes which is quite dangerous. When I see him doing this, I want to let him walk as close to me as possible and then look to jump over him. I always want to make sure I have enough space to force him to cast rather than melee. He'll also start spamming Judgment later in the fight. When he does this, I can just stand at the edge of the map and cast spells.

One last thing I really wanted to do before the end was use Stone Dragon Ascent. To do this, I used Negative Gate and then used Stone Head right after the last hit of Negative Gate to try and get a stun and a dark FoF field at the same time. If I get the stun, I can simply use Stone Dragon Ascent off of the FoF field... I'm glad I was able to use it.


BGM:
Highbrow - Star Ocean 3