Okay, so there aren't going to be any spoilers.

In chapter 9 I am having SEVERE trouble with Bartandelus (spelling is wrong, so I'm going phonetic here..). I have tried several combinations of characters and paradigms including Lightning + Fang + Vanille, Lightning + Snow + Sazh, and Lightning + Hope + Sazh.

So far, the last three characters have been the best combination for me so far since I would have Lightning do all of the attacking while Hope and Sazh are upgrading/healing everyone. I can get rid of all of the faces (which I always attack first) but Bartandelus kicks my ass with that super-powerful ray attack... Like it one hit K.O's my main character (who is always Lightning) even when she had shell up.

When it comes to equipment, I haven't really upgraded anything... And since the beginning of the game, I have sold all of the stuff that I can upgrade weapons with. Plus there isn't any good equipment guides (or walkthroughs for that matter..) on the internet that could give me the information I need (such as where I can find certain parts and where I can get the starting weapon).

So, for those of you that have beaten Bartandelus; how did you do it; what kind of weapons did you use; what was your strategy? =P

Well if lightning is getting hammered by his 'super powerful ray attack' then its possible that you do not have ur hp high enough to verse him, and it may be a good idea to chuck someone as leader who has higher hp, such as fang or snow, whoevers hp is higher for you.. if you use fang, lightning and hope you may be able to beat him if your players aren't strong enough. hope would have to have learned haste as a synergist though.. I would suggest having a paradigm set up like this. Lightning-medic, Fang-Sabatour, Hope-Synergist. As you can hit bartandalus with deprotect and deshell he is also not immune to imperil, which will help. once your players have boosted themselves up you can start ur assault to bring up ur chain gauge. I would also suggest having lightning equiped with Lionheart or Ultima weapon, depending on whether you upgraded, as it will help to stagger him when close to his stagger point.

Paradigms:

Fang - Sabatour
Lightning - Medic
Hope - Synergist

Fang - Comando
Lightning - Ravager
Hope - Ravager

Fang - Sentinel
Lightning - Medic
Hope - Medic
This is for after he uses the ray attack on you.

Fang - Sentinel
Lightning - Comando
Hope - Medic

Fang - Sentinal
Lightning - Ravager
Hope - Ravager
To use after the previous paradigm which was used for healing. This will give you a chance to up the chain guage on him without much damage being done to your other players. If he uses the ray attack.. Go back to combat clinic for health.

Fang - Comando
Lightning - Ravager
Hope - Medic

A safe paradigm to use to start off the chain gauge and deal some damage, before changing to relentless assault for some serious chaining.

Other than that you will have to watch out for him casting daze on you, which is healed with foul liquid.

It will be a very defensive battle for you so you probly wont get the 5 stars. But you should be able to take down his 3 million hp in about 10 minutes..

Good luck

Thanks a ton for the help! I did manage to beat him, following your strategy down to the punctuation.

Nice work

You can buy supplies from shops to udgrade with. Do it, will seriously imprive attack and magic. This may be why your losing. Also, start with Commando, Synergist and Saboteur (I haven't got to this boss but it works on most bosses) the synergist will buff characters while saboteur debuffs the boss. If health goes low change to Commando, Sentinel, Medic (the best paradigm in the game IMO) If your main character is the Commando you will rarely die with this setup. Once health is full and buffs and debuffs are cast change to Commando, Ravager, Ravager (to quickly rasie chain gauge) if health goes low change back to Commando, sentinel, medic. Sentinel due to the fact it will will keep bosses focus on the sentinel which means healing will be easier and so will keeping you main character alive.

This is my general boss tactic btw.

not a bad tactic..

my boss strategy is usually pretty similar. I usually start with two synergists and a sabatour on the harder boses. as it buffs your characters up pretty quick. then change to commando, medic, medic - coz the harder monsters usually start smashing u pretty quick. once your commando has started the chain change to ravager, ravager, ravager to pump ur chain gauge up to stagger. then change to ur commando, ravager, ravager to have ur commando take advantage of the staggered monster and have your ravagers build up the damage percentage.

then again all the hard monsters need a different approach.. I just defeated the "gigantour" who is mission 54 and is just a jumbo cactuar. but his attack is fierce. He hits you with 10'000 needles (you can guess how much that takes off). literally killing that character if their hp isn't high enough, unless they are using the sentinal role, in which it will take off around the 5000 mark. He is also very fast at dishing out this attack. he only has around 1 million hp, but is still the hardest battle i have fought thus far. I didn't get 5 stars for it, but i guess once i have some better accessories or something then the fight will be easier. But the only paradigms i used consisted of

Sabatour, Synergist, Medic
Sabatour, Sentinal, Synergist
Commando, Medic, Medic
Ravager, Ravager, Ravager

The advantage with the jumbo cactuar is that he can be dazed. So when your sabatour hits him with daze you have plenty of time to buff up ur characters (as long as you do not attack him, otherwise the daze is cancelled). then it is simply about hitting him hard and fast and then changing to your role with the sentinal while your sabatour tries to daze him again so you can heal. without the sentinal it is a game of luck because he can easily hit ur leader twice with 10'000 needles to kill them before there is much you can do.

a challenging battle.. it even unlocks a trophy (on ps3) and possibly an achievment on the 360 if you manage to take him down.

I absolutely want to throw this game out the window. I've just spent 20+ minutes on the fight. My tactic was really safe. I had it started so It was just a case of "slowly but surely".

Then the cunt goes and casts doom on me. I had to watch as I continued my attacks, knowing I was not going to take enough health off in time. I honestly want to break the game. Seriously, i just feel like not even bothering with it any more. That's absolute shit.

did you buff up your characters which haste and such??

it may make you win the fight before he casts doom...

to be frank i thought that this fight was relatively easy.

The game will be extremely challenging after this fight if you only just scrape through.

My suggestion would be to back track and do some CP grinding to pump up ur characters before taking him on again..

On the main open section of gran pulse, there are monsters who you can take advantage of through pre-emptive attacks that will boost ur CP. Just before the exit on the northern side of this section, there is a behemoth fighting a big fuck off wolf. Everytime you attack them the battle is pre-emptive.

If you have the following set up.

Fang - Commando - Leader
Hope - Ravager
Lightning Commando - equip lightning with the weapon that helps you stagger. i think it is called lionheart (or ultima weapon if you have upgraded it to a second tier weapon)

This way Fang and hope will stagger whoever they are attacking and so will lightning. Then after they launch the two beasts into the air simply let them continue attacking until they are dead.

Even with a low levelled team the fight should take no longer than 30 seconds.

Then you just need to walk up the hill so they re-spawn and do it over again.

will net u 6600 CP each battle.

I've beaten it since I posted. But man I was angry. And I didn't need to grind anymore, because I was at all the Role Level 3 for each of my characters.

The same thing happened, only this time the Doom attack came slightly later than before.

The best way I found to defend against Destrudo was to change Paradigms as soon as the warning appeared. Heal everyone and apply protect/shell/bravery etc. Then change back when it was over and continue attacking whilst my medic healed everyone.

I got through it much easier on my second try. I think I just had terrible luck with when he cast Doom on my first attempt.

I also used a few bits and pieces to make Lightning's weapon stronger. I also took away the Strength boosting accessorys from Fang and gave them to her. It meant she had less HP but my medic was proficient enough and I was never really in the red danger zone apart from after a Destrudo attack. And that lasted no more than 2 seconds anyway.

I use Lightning, Fang and Hope.

Tactic:

Begin the fight with Protection (Medic,Sentinal, Syn)
When full buffed, switched to Relentless Assault (Rav x2 com x1) and start dmging the heads. Switch to a healing para every so often to get some health back and then continue to do dmg.

When all heads are down, repeat the above (Dmg and heal when needed)

His dustrudo move is a pain in the ass. But make sure everyone has health and switch to relent assault. And while he is charging his attack he will get stunned which reduces the damage taken by the attack. And then just keep repeating the above.

Thats the tactic i used. It worked well.

Goodluck

I'm really really stuck on Proudclad at the moment.

He rapes me after the first Stagger ;-;

I absolutely want to throw this game out the window. I've just spent 20+ minutes on the fight. My tactic was really safe. I had it started so It was just a case of "slowly but surely".

Then the cunt goes and casts doom on me. I had to watch as I continued my attacks, knowing I was not going to take enough health off in time. I honestly want to break the game. Seriously, i just feel like not even bothering with it any more. That's absolute shit.

No offense but how is that even enjoyable? It's common sense for me that if I am in a battle for more than 20 minutes AND the boss is putting a time limit on you then you are doing something wrong. I have had this happen to me and I simply would retry the battle and try a different, less conservative strategy.

Stagger the bastard and get over with it. Go all out until you HAVE to heal.

And for the record if you go relentless assault while barthandelus is casting destrudo or whatever his attack doesnt do much.

He didn't give me any trouble at all. It took a good 10-15 (maybe 20) minutes to do, but that isn't really anything new.

When he was charging up I used Combat Clinic (I was using Snow and Hope) and he really didn't even hit me that hard given that he was attacking me when I was at full health.

I haven't put a single component into any of my weapons.

I had severe trouble with Barthendalus as well - Doom got me good the first few times too, then on the third attempt I was too slow at healing after Destrudo and he picked of my weakened party with Thanatosian Smile long before he could even use Doom. I eventually managed to beat him though, after realizing that the fight has a few peculiar tricks to winning:

He only casts Doom after a certain length of time has passed (I've heard he only uses it if the battle has been going longer than ten minutes), meaning the goal to success is defeating him as quickly as possible.

Hence, it is absolutely imperative you do as much damage as you can do in as little time as you can manage (a good trick is when he's powering up Destrudo, his 'big nasty attack', it takes so long to charge as long as you're healed up it's possible to switch quickly to Relentless Assault and wail on him, as you can deal a fair amount of damage while he's sitting there charging the attack up and doing nothing else. The charge up takes around thirty seconds, so if you switch quickly to Combat Clinic just as the attack is launched, you should be able to heal up quickly enough in order to stop him picking you off while weakened.

Once healed up enough, return to Relentless Assault and keep up the heat on him, making sure to heal if your HP drops to yellow (of his other attacks besides Destrudo, only Thanatosian Smile is nasty, the rest are pretty weak, especially if you have buffs up.)

Also, take off his pauldrons and side turrets first in succession before moving onto the main head (with Relentless Assault and good buffs you should be able to stagger each part quickly and destroy them all in a couple of minutes maximum).

But really, it just comes down to dealing as much damage to the mechanical freak as quickly as you can in order to win.

Why is this thread still alive =P ??

Thanks for all of the advice you guys but I've beaten the game since late March 2010. I guess that this thread is very useful to people who are struggling at this point in the game.