I beat the game finally, I ended up spending a lot of time just playing around in Gran Pulse because I didn't feel like going back to the final boss. But I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and what was the cause of all of my frustration last night. If I had realized it sooner I probably would have won last night. Stupid poison was the enemy and because of all of the special effects on screen I wasn't able to put that together until just recently when I was able to everyone die at once. Which was when it finally clicked for me. After that the boss was surprisingly easy to deal with it.

So I have the final section of the Crystarium unlocked and I have chocobo riding access. I also unlocked the cactaurs. Yeah, I know that sounds strange that you have to unlock a monster to fight, but you have to get the chocobo first and then find a specific spot and you find a cactaur. A cutscene later cactaur will be all over Gran Pulse.

The logo art finally makes sense now as well. But I'm going to go off and do some more missions. I completed about 30 so far. I'm able to deal with a small Adamantoise now, though I still got a ways until I can deal with a big Adamantoise. >< I don't think size difference is there, but they only are different by the gear on the tougher one. They do 9000 damage AoE with just walking. >.> Yeah, pretty rough times.

Oh and I have 800,000 gil. I managed to get my hands on some good items finally.