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.

This place certainly keeps you on your toes...

So I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XII, pretty much all day, and since I knew I wasn’t strong enough to handle the boss that would advance the storyline, I was just running around hunting marks. I’d gotten about two or three when I saw that the next person I needed to go talk to was in the village of Jahara. Since I was in the westersand, the shortest route would be to cut through the Zertinan Caverns and come out in the Ozmone Plains, right next to Jahara.
Only I’d never made it all the way through the caverns. Usually I would just step in and instantly die from some unknown creature forty thousand times stronger than I was. So I’d stopped going in there.
So I looked at my map for a long time, debating even trying the caverns, or going the long way around back to Rabanastre and then down through Giza, then to Ozmone and finally to Jahara.
 
If you look at the map above, the distances may not look like much, but trust me, Ivalice is HUGE. If I’d had teleport crystals, none of this would be an issue, but I was all out and the only place I’d found that sold those was up in the Mosphoran Highwaste.... completely the other side of the map. So yeah. Either thirty minutes of walking and pushing past now relatively easy monsters through Giza and the Ozmone, or a tentative trek through a place I hadn’t ventured to go in a long time.
Guess which one I chose? That’s right, I was asking for it. See how confusing this place looks? And this isn’t even all of it. Right around where that image of the save crystal is, there’s a whole... ah, but I’ll get to that. Before today, my exploration of this place was limited to about half of that room in the far south. That was it. I had no idea what I was walking into.

So I entered from the northeast, and as I worked my way down (very carefully), I noticed that the creatures I was running into weren’t that bad. I wasn’t even having to heal that much. So I twiddled my way along, and then I remembered that one of the marks I was looking for was in here... somewhere. Woohoo. Now instead of sneaking through as quickly as possible, I had to go poking in every nook and cranny looking for something that could very likely kill me.
Instead, I found a very creepy secret area, realized I was holding my breath (which I felt silly for), and then, I found a save crystal. Huzzah. Now I’m trapped in here.
So I started wandering a bit more, and then I ran into trouble. Or so I thought. And actually, looking at this screenshot (which I did not make, I found), I see a character named Reddas in the party of whoever took this. I wonder.... I’ve never ran into a Reddas. Who is he? Or she? Where do I find this person? Are they helpful? Obviously not too much. Look at that pitiful MP capacity.

A random boss, stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no explanation as to why he was there or anything. And in my least favorite and most fright-inducing of all locations. So, reacting more than thinking, I unleashed some mad quickening chains on him, which I didn’t really expect to work. Lately, when I use quickenings on a boss, even if I get in a good twelve or fourteen chain, all I get is a very ticked off boss with three-quarters health and my whole party with no MP. Yeah, not a good plan. But this time, things went surprisingly my way:

 and then he was dead, with alot less fuss than I expected. And woot! Turns out he was an esper! So now he’s mine and will fight for me! I was so happy, I gave him to Basch, making him the third person in my party with an esper (I’d already assigned espers to Vaan and Ashe).
I kept combing the passageways, growing ever more confident. A horde of undead thingies swarmed up after I defeated the boss, and so I dealt with them, and then Basch leveled up. And then Vaan did too. Everything was looking peachy.  The thought to run back to that crystal and save briefly crossed my mind, but I was ecstatic and wasn’t thinking about anything... useful. I kept moving south, and it never once crossed my mind that I was getting closer and closer to the place that always, ALWAYS, kills me. Hey, I’d beaten an esper. Surely I was good, right?
Then, I ran into some bug looking things. Now I’d beaten similar-looking bug things before, so I wasn’t all that concerned, even when the one bug looking thing called for a couple of his buddies.
And then, suddenly, I was dead.
Yeah. I should’ve kept the confidence down. Or at least gone back and saved while I had the chance.