FF 13- Strategy Guide Required!

Now this may not be true for everyone. In fact, I might be in the very small minority. But after playing Final Fantasy 13 for a couple more hours, I discovered that some form of strategy guide will be vital to get through this game. Now and then the game will present you with some tough boss battles. (Chiefly when you fight summon monsters to add them to your collection.) In these battles, the game seems to have one very specific way to win the fight that you have to figure out, and if you don't use the strategy they have in mind, you're toast.

Also, with some other normal battles I run into situations where they take a long time to finish and I get a low performance rating because I didn't finish it quickly in the way the game wants me to. I've tried every combination available to me and there is a particular enemy that just takes a long time to beat every time I run into one or more of him. The only conclusion I can come to is that I haven't rained my characters in the classes needed to make short work of these particular bad guys. A little annoying. And I can say with confidence that I've seen the "Game Over" screen more times in this FF than in all the times I've seen one in every other FF game combined.

So just FYI, although the linear nature of exploration has not bothered me so far, the very "linear" battle strategy does not encourage independence of thought or creative character development either. As a card carrying non-conformist, I find this a little lame. But the combat is still very addictive and fun outside of these quirks and so far I have found the strategy answers I need for free online. So it's only a minor annoyance so far.