In the Bag

Finally.

I'm Beginning to Think I should have taken the Long Way around

So I just tried, for the who knows how many-eth time to kill that evil sonnuvagun. I managed to get off a seven chain, which for some weird reason only threw out the Inferno combo at the end - and then a magnificent twelve chain with my back party, which brought out the wonderful Luminescence combo, something I’d never seen and is so far my favorite. However, while I was switching parties, something popped up under Adrammelech’s action log that I’d seen before... I don’t know why I didn’t pay attention to it. He called up a paling, a shield you can’t see and prevents whoever calls it up from taking ANY damage at all, magickal or physical. Pooh. So I pulled off that wonderful twelve chain for naught, it didn’t do a lick of good. And then, wouldn’t you know, he dropped it just as he called out Thundaja, and again, I was dead.
I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get him.
Maybe I should go back and try and win some more HP first... level up and stuff so I don’t die so easily. But what I don’t understand is that people in forums and stuff are getting this guy at lvl 20 --- I’m at at least 40 for all six of my people... what are they doing that I’m not????

Can't you do something useful, like .... die?

So this morning, after talking to Cody, I couldn’t fall back asleep. A very rare occurance. So, I turned on the computer. But no emails. No messages. No comments. *sniff*
So, I crawled back in the bed and decided FFxii deserved another go-round.
Ha.
I brought my party to the spot where the esper was hiding out, and sure enough, he popped up. Okay, I thought, just throw down a good quickening chain and this should be over. Then you can run back and save and then move on. So I unleashed the best quickening chain I could muster at that point. I was happy cause I got to try out Vaan’s new one, Pyroclasm:

Doesn’t it look awesome? Well, actually. This picture isn’t that great. It looks better in the game. It’s not my favorite one though. I really like Fran’s Whip Kick:
But I couldn’t find a picture of it. Boo.
So anyways, I pulled off a seven chain - about my average. And that knocked Addramelech down to about 20% of his total health. I thought surely I can finish him off from here. Didn’t even occur to me to pull up my back party and use their MP for another quickening chain. Nope. So he killed that party, and I pulled up the other one, but before I could get anything at all fired off, he did something called "Thundaja". Now I’ve got Balthier and Ashe both with the ability to use "Thunder" which throws lightning at one opponent, and "Thundara" which throws lightning at all opponents within range. But this..... this was huge. And suddenly that party was dead and I was staring at the Game Over screen.
So I loaded it again.
I took a second before storming in there to face him a third time and revamped my gambits. I kinda brushed them off at first, but it’s actually pretty useful not having to keep tabs on every single person in the heat of battle. Then I barged in, thinking I was ready this time. Oh, back to the fight. So I throw out the quickenings again, and I only manage to get off a five chain. Not cool. So, thinking about my last mistake, I pull up my other party and use their quickenings too. Again, only a five chain. So now I’m left with six characters with very little health and absolutely no MP in a battle with an only half dead very angry demon monsterthingie. Yeah.
So I died. Again.
I was getting frustrated by this point. So I loaded it again, determined to kill this creature. I mean, I’d done it once before, right? Or did I just imagine all that?
Again, for the third time this morning. I died. I don’t even know what happened this time. I just remember the Game Over screen coming up and Mango looking at me like I was stupid. But she looks at me like that all the time.