I've been playing Agarest War, and I'm not sure I have the fortitude to actually play that on Hard for 100 hours to finish it. 
 
It's all really great, except the combat. I enjoy combining skills and all that, but I just started Gen 2 and I'm kind of in a rut where I can't really upgrade anything and the battles are still a bit rough from time to time.  Often it just seems that I send people in to die just to get the big attacks activated and then just kinda go off all over the enemy's faces. This strategy unfortunately requires a lot of Fragments of Life, time, and a bit of luck.
 
Any protips out there? (other than 'Buy the DLC points')