>Some things about the gameplay seem sooo broken..
>Ive got questions
>
>Black Magic.
>Is any of the magic(black/de-buff spells) even useful? Seems
>like its all a waste of MP. Consistent weapon damage and
>healing is all i do. It works, but it just doesnt seem right.

get some 'magic lore' augments on your black magic-using character. my lvl 24 ashe has 4 magic lores and that augment that ups magic damage when your health is full and she can do 800+ damage with aero. and as always, keep libra going so you can hit know what magic the foes are weak against. if my ashe uses aero on enemies that are weak against aero, the damage jumps up to 1200+

>
>Summons.
>The last time i used a summon, the boss just targeted Ashe.
>She died right away and the summon was dismissed. Ashe is left
>with 0 MP.

dunno what to tell you. i make sure to keep my distance from any enemies before i summon. most of the time the foes will target the esper while i throw spells at it from a distance

>Quickenings.
>When i use quikenings the damage is always random. I think ive
>only gotten good results once. And once again the characters
>are left with 0 MP.
>One example: I tested it out on a small mob. I chained two
>quikenings and it wasnt even enough to kill the mob. How is
>that worth draining two MP bars?

you need to chain more quickenings to take out a mob. i'm not positive on the # of hits but i think once you get a 4 hit quickening, you'll get an extra attack that hits all enemies in a radius. and quickenings get REALLY powerful when you chain a bunch of them together. i think i've done 15000+ damage with a 9-hit quickening

>Im beating all the bosses pretty easily with my melee/healing
>method, but this game has to be more complex than that. What
>am i doing wrong?

hey, do you. if you're still beating bosses with that method, sounds to me like you aren't doing anything wrong at all