Rikku is one of the most popular characters amongst the several in Final Fantasy X, going on to be featured alongside Yuna in its sequel Final Fantasy X-2. As a very energetic but strategic party member she has a lot to bring to the table, including a versatile Overdrive and fairly consistent stats across the board.

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Combining the classic Final Fantasy job classes of Thief and Chemist, many of Rikku's skills pertain to item acquisition and usage. While she isn't particularly gifted in either Strength or Magic, her abilities more than compensate by granting her access to non-Magic dependent elemental attacks and different stat buffs.

9 Spare Change

Spare Change (commonly referred to as Gil Toss) is an ability that uses thrown gil as a means for attacking. It's essentially an ability that exchanges gil for stronger attacks: 1 point of damage equates to 10 gil, with a maximum amount of 100,000 gil for 9,999 damage.

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The main issue with Spare Change is that it presents very little benefit for gil disposal, especially since this gil can be used elsewhere. While Rikku has other gil-expending abilities, they prove to be more beneficial in exchange for the lost gil. Moreover, later in the game most characters should easily hit enemies for 9,999 damage, making the expended gil for damage obsolete after a certain point.

8 Pilfer Gil

Akin to Rikku's unofficial Thief job class, Pilfer Gil allows her to steal gil from an enemy in a similar fashion to Steal. The ability is exclusive to the International, PAL, and HD Remaster versions. This is also the case for Nab Gil, which is interestingly not found in Rikku's Sphere Grid section despite sharing the same qualities as Pilfer Gil.

Unlike its counterpart Nab Gil, Pilfer Gil does not inflict damage while stealing. The amount of gil is quite small but can change depending on the target — humanoids and bosses provide more. What makes Pilfer Gil pale in comparison to other abilities is the reality that gil is received at the end of every battle, and wasting turns trying to steal something guaranteed after combat is a waste of command actions.

7 Luck

For players who prioritize buffing their party, Luck will prove to be a helpful ability — though not for the stats they may think. Rather than raising the Luck stat (as one would imagine an ability with this name would), Luck raises accuracy and critical hit chances by 1%.

Unlike raising actual Luck, it does not affect evasion nor the chance to withstand or dodge critical hits — the name is misleading, Luck costs no MP to cast and can be stacked for a maximum of five times. It unfortunately does not serve as much of a purpose as many of Rikku's other abilities, hence why it ranks lower.

6 Steal

Steal is an ability that Rikku starts with. It's a quintessential ability for Rikku early on in the game, only becoming ineffective once she gains access to Mug. Simply put, Steal allows the user to acquire an item from an enemy; the item can be common or rare, but, as suggested by those categories, the likelihood of rare items being stolen is lower.

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A unique benefit to Steal in Final Fantasy X is that Steal dismantles many non-boss machina enemies. This saves the player from facing an onslaught of machina enemies by having Rikku eliminate them without dropping their HP to 0. The only downside to Steal, of course, is that it does not deal damage.

5 Use

As opposed to simply using items via the Item command, Use permits the usage of exclusive items not found in the regular Item menu. Items that require Use tend to be offense-based (such as various elemental Gems or items dropped by elemental enemies), curative (including the Al-Bhed Potions), or rare items stolen from enemies used for weapon upgrading.

The main benefit to Use is the larger item pool that it empowers users to. While most of these are harder to obtain since they're acquired from enemies, the ability pairs extremely well with Rikku's Sphere Grid formation as she immediately has access to Steal and, later, Mug.

4 Mug

Unlike Steal, which only takes items from an enemy, Mug has the added benefit of damaging enemies while also stealing. Mug is the standard Thief ability and mechanically works the same as Steal in terms of success rates and item-rarity rates. Mug will always be successful on the first use against an enemy, and the likelihood of stealing is decreased by half every time it's successful.

Being a combination of the Attack and Steal commands, Mug enables the user to simultaneously acquire items while assisting in taking down an enemy, therefore not wasting a turn doing one or the other.

3 Full-Life

Full-Life is the strongest restorative spell in the game as it brings a KO'd party member back with full HP. It is interestingly not in Yuna's section of the Sphere Grid despite Yuna being the archetypal White Mage. Regardless, it's an immensely significant spell that should be acquired by both Yuna and Rikku.

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Beyond its curative qualities, Full-Life can also be effectively used against undead enemies or enemies afflicted with the Zombie condition. While costly at 60 MP, it saves the player from having to continually cast spells and spend turns reviving party members and bringing their HP back to maximum. As such, Full-Life's high MP cost is more than worth it.

2 Copycat

True to its name, Copycat sees the user mimicking the action of the party member preceding them in combat at the cost of 28 MP. The only limitations for Copycat are that the user cannot replicate an ally's Overdrive, nor can it be used to summon one of Yuna's Aeons.

A major standout for Copycat is that it can be used to spare Rikku MP when copying abilities that are typically costly. For example, if Rikku follows Lulu using Doublecast and casts Ultima twice (totalling to 180 MP), the 180 will be cancelled out by Copycat's 28, thus allowing Rikku the ability to deal tremendous damage without the high MP cost.

It should be noted, however, that attacks and spells are subject to the user's stats, and is therefore not a true copy of the original user's command.

1 Bribe

At a first glance, Bribe seems like an ability that, like Spare Change, is an insufficient way for players to waste their gil. In reality, this simple ability is one of the easiest ways to swiftly and painlessly defeat the hardest of enemies while still acquiring rare items, to the point where some consider this ability to be quite broken and overpowered.

When using Bribe, the player decides how much gil to offer the target. In order for the Bribe to be successful, it must hit a certain percentage: if the Bribe is 10 times the enemies' maximum HP, it'll have a 25% success rate, whereas offering 25 times the maximum HP guarantees a 100% success rate for the enemy to leave battle.

This means that even the toughest enemies, including the notoriously powerful Ultima Weapon, can be defeated in one command — so long as the player has accumulated enough gil. What's more, Bribe also causes enemies to drop items, including rare ones.

Next: The Physically Strongest Characters of the Final Fantasy Franchise