So I just got done fighting what was a major boss albeit fairly early on and I've now got access to another party member. I ended up soling the boss because they died early on in the fight. Which wasn't too hard but still would have been more efficient with the other party member. So, do I need to constantly be baby sitting the other members of the party by switching back and forth between leaders? It doesn't seem like the tactics menu is cutting it for keeping other party members doing what I need them too.

A lot of it depends on which familiars you give them. High defense and a healing spell or two can definitely help. Later on, you'll unlock the ability to have your other party members defend with the square button. I rarely ever switched characters, but I did have to dip into my healing items quite a bit during boss fights.

@SpunkyHePanda: Well that might be handy then because that seemed like the part where everything was going tits up. I was able to defend against the oncoming big attacks but they kept eating them over and over again.

The A.I. straight up is bad in this game. It's more tolerable as you level more and get better familiars, but they will waste MP like it's going out of style.

@kishinfoulux: Yeah, so I've noticed.

*Plays as Oliver until his health stops being healed*

*Switches to Esther to use a provision item so she can heal everyone*

*Oliver repeatedly uses an attack that attacks every enemy on screen when there's only one thing to kill, repeatedly*

*Eyes are rolled*

Grind so you can steamroll shit and avoid having to suffer from the bad AI.

That's why I grinded on those Toko things. They give a shit ton of exp. Powered through that shit son.

@rjayb89 said:

*Plays as Oliver until his health stops being healed*

*Switches to Esther to use a provision item so she can heal everyone*

*Oliver repeatedly uses an attack that attacks every enemy on screen when there's only one thing to kill, repeatedly*

*Eyes are rolled*

Grind so you can steamroll shit and avoid having to suffer from the bad AI.

Oh this is lovely, I went into a new area fought a brand new enemy for the first time and it became charmable so I switch to Esther to use the harp and catch the thing and then Oliver proceeds to use a AoE attack and wipe out all enemies on the screen including the monster I'm trying to tame. Gee, thanks Ollie. -_-;;

Oliver gets some powerful spells towards the middle/end of the game that make it easy just to ignore the other party members, so I spent a lot of time running in a circle casting certain spells and not caring what happened to my other party members. Usually things went bad when I would try to help them; however, since I didn't pay much attention to them, I had no idea what to do with the other party members when Oliver died.

If you plan out the familiars for your other party members you can compensate some for the bad AI. Just give them some familiars that can play very specific roles and they'll do it pretty well. A healing familiar each, a high attack fighter without MP-using abilities, a tank with an aggro ability, etc. They'll blow through their MP, but can support well enough.

Their main deficiency is they don't run in circles dodging like I do the whole time, though I do feel a little cheesy when I chip away a boss by doing that.