Can't you grind in the tower? I thought the monsters respawned whenever you went up or down a level.

I'm guessing you've played enough to have a handle on advanced tactics. Don't be shy about using a shroud before a tough battle. And some fights might need a slow and steady approach (like Sentinel-Medic-Ravager), or rearrangement of your battle party to get guys in there that match up against the right weaknesses. And there was one monster in the tower that I just couldn't beat. So I ran past it, and never had to fight it. So unless it's the mark itself that you can't get past, you might be able to avoid the particular fight that's giving you trouble.

i'm debating just finishing the game or grinding it out to complete all the side missions. considering there is nothing i'd trade this in for right now, i may just grind it out.

I thought the same thing

I told the wife after we finish it, I'll trade it, and she's like "No, it's a beautiful game, just keep it."

Women.

Yeah, that's what I did. I kept going from 5th floor to 6th and battling the same guys. Now I am having a bigger problem.

How in the hell do you beat Barthandelus!!!!

My party is all level 4 (Lightning/Fang/Hope) and I can only get him down to about half when he casts Doom and it ticks me down to death. I invest 20 minute battles into that fucker! ACK!

That battle took me five tries. I was ready to smash my controller. I couldn't get him to stagger at all until I used Odin near the end of the battle.

My Doom gauge was just about over and Odin not only got him to stagger but finished him off for me.

Make sure you have Combat Clinic or something similar (2 Medics) to heal his lame status ailments. A Saboteur is good as well to debuff him from time to time.

I just kept beating on him with Delta Attack and Mystic Tower, healing when necessary.

Wow, just beat that battle and he never cast Doom on me. I thought the battle seemed easy, now I know why: I was lucky.

I now have 5000 HP (due to upgrading some Bangles) and all my mains are Level 4. I just started giving Fang Medic so I will have THREE people to cure me.

I use Smart Bomb to get him to stagger and my first plan of action was Delta and Mystic but now I figured I wanted to pound on him as much as possible and needed to free up Fang for that. Going to try him again later.

With regards to the Robot parts mission:

Finally beat him after leveliong up to 5000 HP, getting THREE medics and just hammering the hell out of him after lots of buffs. He cast doom at the end but it was too late for him.

Now I am getting my ass handed to me by the Proudclad #2 so I walked all the way back to see if I could go back to Grand Pulse and no dice. Ha! Now I am heading back to him fighting everything in my path. I decided to have THREE ravagers (tri-disater) as I am learning it is easier to stagger with that one selected. Almost done this game. What a game to pick to get me back into gaming.

Question to those of you talking about the difficulty of the Barthandelus fight:

uno

You really needed 5000 HP and three medics?? I die all the time and it only took two tries, I don't even think any of my characters except Fang had over 3000 HP, she had maybe 3500.

Wait ... the fight at the end of Chapter Nine? I thought that was easy. Just kept hammering away, switching between Com/Rav/Rav and Com/Rav/Med as needed. I think every now and then I switched to a paradigm with Syn to rebuff myself, then back to hammering away. I never even needed to summon my Eidolon.

Same here.

Took a few tries but finally beat this game. It's the first RPG I have completed since my teens. I feel like lighting a cigar.

Best Buy is offering $45 Trade for it now so I will do that and, really, only padi 15 bucks for the game, to pick up GTA4.

The first fight was easy. The second was brutal, but only because of Doom.

Hmm, he never cast Doom on me.

Question for those who have gotten the achievement for maxing out your Crystarium: do you have to do a lot of grinding to get there? I just expanded my crystarium to the point where each new ability costs 4000 CP which seems like a ton.

Later, some of them cost 18,000 CP

Depends on whether you intend to complete the other achievements. If you're going for the platinum trophy (getting all trophies) then it requires virtually no grinding. I'd estimate the total CP required to max a character out to be about 20 million. This sounds like a lot, but if you're trying to beat every cie'th mission with 5 stars and trying to get every accessory and weapon in the game (the two toughest achievements) then maxing out your characters' crystarium should be cake.

Wow, some of those missions are difficult. Especially:

Yay ... I finished (the main quest). Took me 60 hours and change. Never managed to unlock chocobo riding Overall I enjoyed it. Beautiful game to look at. Like others have mentioned, this game certainly takes a few hours to get you into it. Partially because of how the plot is set up (leaving the gamer in the dark about what's going on) and the baby-steps in building up the complexity of the battle systems. Linear as hell, but that can't be unexpected if you have familiarity with JRPGs. Difficulty wasn't bad - as long as you're not shooting for all 5-star battle results. Aside from the avoidable battles where I was way over my head, there wasn't much that gave me fits. Maybe a couple of the timed "Doom" battles were the hardest for me. I like that the game was very forgiving of death. Not massive amount of replaying ... just redo the battle you lost (with a chance to change you party) no matter what your last save was.

I still have a lot of Ci'eth missions I haven't done (including getting those Chocobos!). But I think I'm taking a break from this game for the time being. I'm not one those gamers that has to get every trophy.

i've decided i'm going to beat this and then trade it in. i'm sick of playing it. i like it, but it's just too much work to go back and do all the ci'eth stone missions.

This is a game that I'll likely make an exception for and go for the platinum trophy, really enjoying it so far (just got into chapter 11).

This was the last story-related post, so quoting it even though I don't think that's all that accurate.

I don't think this needs to be spoilered, as this is just game background, but I still don't understand the difference between Pulse and Cocoon. I thought at first that Pulse was the surface world, and Cocoon was some floating city in the sky. But then at one point I thought the team went down to Pulse... but then they end up walking to cities that I assume are part of Cocoon? Or did they travel back to Cocoon, and if so how did they get past the metal wall or whatever shield they have surrounding it?

Also, in regards to l'Cie

By the way, I was really put-off at first by the lack of customization, the constant x-button wins, and especially the linearity of the levels (which were basically just straight lines in the beginning), and I was really afraid that the first 15 hours would be like that. I'm glad they introduce concepts to you earlier than that.