I lucked out and got some really good equipment that he seems to be the only one able to wear which really boost his Brave stat and Hp. I wish I had discovered his long rang Hp attack earlier cause it would have saved me so much time.

The thing that makes his story mode so difficult (besides having the highest amount of battles next to Bartz) is that most of his random encounters are equiped with this obnoxious accessory that raises their Brave as they raise their EX gauge. It makes Brave Breaking damn near impossible and them acquiring an EX Core becomes an almost game over depending on who you are fighting against. (SPOILER)Not to mention his high level optional encounter is with CoD. That was fair, the most close range heavy character versus someone who has tons of long range Hp attacks and she gets to start with a huge boost of Brave at the start of the encounter... She just needs to break you once and then she will have enough Brave to instant kill you... Only Bartz and Tidus had similar broken fights against Kuja and Kefka respectively.

Playing through Cecil's story arc again with a better understanding of the combat system (and full dark gear) Cecil is just too much fun for me. He flows so much better and I now know how to counter his weaknesses better. Hopefully I can gain his uber powerful ground based Dark wave attack or his Paladin form's holy projectile.