The PAL version has the benefit of having an Expert Sphere Grid, so you can customize your characters better, although you'd better be familiar with the ordinary Sphere Grid or your characters will only end up worse. I think having Dark Aeons in the PAL version is more of an annoying feature than a good thing because they block your way to loads of locations, and if you want to get somewhere, you'll either have to level up for dozens of hours or use dirty tricks and hope that Yojimbo will use Zanmato.