Crashes every single time. This is with the US PS2 version (not international or PAL). I win the battle where Sin slowly opens his mouth. After this I am supposed to go within Sin. But the screen fades to black and stays that way. No post-battle screen displaying AP and Gil. Nothing else happens. Left it like this for 20 minutes and still nothing.
I don't think it's a scratched disc or damaged ps2 because I just had somebody check my ps2 and had the disc resurfaced. Freezes don't happen anywhere else in the game. I suspected it was related to a bad clock battery so I just set the date/time to a much later date then tried again. Didn't work. Neither did trying a different memory card.
Is there some obscure glitch few people know about? I am at a loss to figure this out. I would like to advance to the next stage but can't because of this.