The battle is getting down the wire. You're guys are tired, sapped, poisoned, slowed, stoned, diseased, mostly dead or on their way. The boss's defenses spike. You toss a few tufts of Pheonix Down, a few Remedies, and a couple of Elixirs. You're men are up and ready for the fight again. How do you finish that baddie? Esper? Quickening? Little bit of both? Or just beat him into the ground the old fashioned way with good steadfast pummeling?

For me, typically I just pummel the bastard. When my characters were behind the leveling curve I summoned. I rarely use quickenings. I didn't get them when I was at lower levels and now that I'm in front of the leveling curve, I don't need them. So I typically just beat the bosses into the ground. My gambits are set up wonderfully so there's no real reason to do otherwise.

Right now I have everyone's quickenings and for Espers:

Belias - Plot
Mateus - Plot
Shumihaza - Plot
Hashmalim - Plot
Famfrit - Plot
Adramalech - Optional
Exodus - Optional
Zalera - Optional
Cuchulaim - Optional

I only have Belias and Famfrit assigned.

Honestly I haven't gotten far enough to have either Espers or Quickenings! I feel pathetic!

Early on it was Quickenings for me. Now, I prefer the attack, heal process with my main characters. Just fought Earth Tyrant in a Side Quest out in Dalmasca Desert and with 70,000+ HP I took him down in less than a minute I believe. This battle system jsut makes is so enjoyable to partake in.

I have all 3 Quickenings for every character so far, and the Espers I have are:

Shemhazzai
Belias
Mateus
Exodus

uhm...ive never tried using espers in a boss battle. They seem weak enough on the field, i can't imagine how much worse they would do in a boss battle. As for quickenings, the only time i used them on a boss battle was when I fought Shimuhaza (which was last night :P) And I needed it, because on his last tiny bit of HP his defense just boosted a lot and he kept casting flare one after another. Quickening's are really confusing, i still don't get how they work, I think the highest i've ever gotten was like somewhere around 3,000 O.o what am I doing wrong?! I press the R2 button a lot, and I combine them with other characters' quickenings...

Actually, I tend to start off a battle with my preference. Instead of waiting 'til the end like you described. But that's neither here nor there. I use quickenings. I think the espers and just meat shield with not enough hp. Really don't last long enough or do enough damage. I dunno, I also find doing the quickenings kinda fun.

Can I ask why you use the quickenings at the start of battle? I admit I didn't really even think of that.

As for the Espers, I think they really do a good job agaist enemies, you just have to keep them up to date. Belias, no matter how strong you are, does not hold up well against anyone in the Sochen Cave Palace. Hashlam on the other hand, could probably tear it up pretty good. You just have to keep pushing that threshhold on the espers. Just like how you don't try to stick to level 1 quickenings when you can easily get level 3's.

I tend to use Quickenings (a lot at the start of battle too). I guess mostly it's because I'm kinda impatient and want to get stuff done as soon as possible, but also when you use them at the end, you usually have to replenish your MP while at the beginning of the battle it's already filled (so if you use Quickenings with characters that don't depend on MP as much at the beginning but keep the ones that cast black magic or healing spells from using their quickening, a big chunk of the boss's HP is gone and the characters that lost the MP as spending all boss fight replenishing their MP. That way you don't have dead moments when you have full MP and you can't really recover anymore... Yay! It might be a premature thing to do on my part though seeing as if I've only just gotten to Mt. Bur-Omisance though lolz)

Espers are alright I guess. I mean they're cool, but I think Quickenings is a little better (at least from what I've played, but seeing as I almost already have all three level quickenings for everyone, they might lose their effectiveness later on in the game...)

Like Mathias suggested, it's because I already have ful MP. Just load 'er up and let 'er loose and bam! A quarter of the health gone, and you have health so you don't have to worry about healing as well as repleneshing mana. Just toss up an ether or two and go from there. Don't even have to, you can use charge if your ethers are low. Like I said, already have full health becasue the battle just began so you're not scrambling to charge and get off a cura asap.

i use quickenings for 2 reasons.

1) they are incredibly incredibly useful

2) i only have one esper and i don't even think i really have it. i am in rabanaster after taking down vossler and i think i'm supposed to have the big ifrit beastie thing but i don't think i do yet???

anyway, i discovered the usefulness of quickenings during the vossler battle. up untill then i just sort of didnt know what i was doing, and then during the vossler battle i had 3 people with quickenings in the same lineup and i got that lovely little chainy button... fabulous. i got off 6 quickenings consecutively and he died. just like that. i frickin love it.

To use an Esper, you have to get the Esper Liscense. Once you beat an Esper, it's automatically added to your license board. You just get the license for a character (only one character can have each Esper) and then you can use it in battle. After that you should be able to use Addremelech (something like that... I think that's the first esper you get)

Ethers though, are not too common early in the game to come by. I've easily hit for close to 40,000 chaining together 18+ Combo Quickenings, seen the most powerful attack in the game, "Black Hole", but I feel taht Quickenings don't really show how strong my characters are. It kind of takes the fun out of it. Sure I used them to defear Demon Wall, and Tiamat early on, but now that I'm fighting Hydro, and Exodus and Zeromus, I love the good ole' hack, slash, heal, strategize, all thet junk.

Quickenings are powerful in this game, but seem to get VERY repetitive if the privilage is abused.

=_= so all you people have been using quickenings to kill every boss up until....like halfway throught he game?? The only time i only used a quickening to kill a boss ONCE...

Well, no. That's not really the case for me man. I tended to pull out a Quickening if the sucker I was facing had multiple little bosses running around gnawing on my leg while I was trying to pick off the boss I was squaring up against.

One thing I did notice though, in the beginning I had a preference to pull out a Quickening before I got hammered by status affects because some Status effects in this game are a royal pain in the ass.

Finally got the Adremmalech Esper a few days ago, I'm up to 5 out of the 13 now. I faced Cuchilain last night and had him down to about 20,000 HP left of his 150,000 total, but he disabled all my alive characters and...

...they died.

Quickenings can be a life saver, it has to be said, my experience with Adramallech taught me as much. However, the thought of being completely without MP ( provided you use Level 3's ) is not a pleasant one, and if you mess up your chain then it's a very, very big gamble.

There are certainly times when Espers are useful, they're invulnerability to Statuses can make them very handy, as does their ability to absorb elemental attacks. But of course if the summoner is downed quickly by a mob it's all for naught.

Each of them has there time and place.

That problem has come about more than it should have for me. Every time I think "Hey, I should use an esper" my guy craps out on me. It's a tough gamble. Although, I admit I usually completely forget that I have the esper or quickening option available. I was just in a boss battle where a quickening or two would have been really smart. The boss constantly was sapping my MP and I could easily go from 700 MP to 0 with all of my characters in no time at all. Then it was Hi-Ethers all around. I should have used a quickening when I had the chance if I was going to lose my MP anyhow. I probably would have done more damage for the MP lost.

Well, I'm at the end of the game and I've found no real reason to use Espers. It's not even like a "Hey, I'm dying I better pull out my Espers!" thing. Because by the time your in need of them, you're out of MP and reading your own epitaph on your gravestone.

I think I may use them on my way to hard enemies if I need to clear out an area before reaching some of the high-ranking marks, but otherwise, the Espers are just a pretty thing to look at, and that's all (except Cuchallian; ugly mother fucker).