I'm right now at the vile peeks, with the annoying voice girl, the black dude, and that one weak kid. Everytime I choose auto battle all they do is spell attacks. When I go to abilities all they have is spell techniques. How do I have them just attack with their weapons?

I use to be able to attack, but then suddenly after I kept upgrading the crystal and getting fire, ice, aero etc, that's all they do now.

Edit. Also how do you switch party members to be lead etc?

You have to switch to a paradigm where some of them are Commandos. Preferable just one of them. Relentless Assault is your ideal at that point. That way one person is attacking as a COM and the other two are attacking the same target as RAVs. If you have two COMs they'll be attacking different targets.

You can't change the leader yourself until Chapter 10. Or the end of Chapter 9, depending on where the division point is.

So basically only snow and lightning then can do normal attacks at the point of the game? Man this sucks. Watching them do aero and fire is hella boring. Atleast with normal attacks they have different angles. Already felt like quitting too. Now I have to watch them do these boring attacks for good knows how long. This has to be the worst battle system ever in FF imo.

Thanks for the help.

Could have sworn Sazh was a COM by that point....

Get used to RAVs, you're going to need them, all the time.

I agree with neg here:

You need to learn how to use the paradigm system.As much as i hate it,you cannot play without it.
Paradigm system was put by one guy like this:You play offense defense buffer/debuffer.

Commando:Melee attacker
Ravager:offensive spell caster.
Medic:Healer for the group.
Sentinel:Damage eater.Use this class if you see that your team gets wiped out real easy and need someone to constantly absorb damage.One idea is to make one guy threaten the enemies while you heal everyone.
Syngergist:The buffer of the group
Saboteur:Debuffer of the team

One idea,is to make 2 ravagers and 1 commando.Ravagers fill the break meter faster,but it also goes down very quickly if not followed by a commando.
Commandos fill the bar very slowly,and do massive damage.

My strategy is this:Use
commando commando ravager.
Medic Medic Medic
Synergy Synergy Synergy.
Saboteur Saboteur Saboteur.

You can win most fights early on with extreme ease,and it doesn't start getting a little more interesting till you fight cid raines the first time.
I recommend you use an accessory that increases your max hp on characters(I'm looking at you hope) For your first big boss with the system.

The first boss is hard,because you got such low hp and the first boss with the crystagen does a lot.