LogFAQs > #979517402

Weapon levels help but I don't think they make a huge difference in most cases (maybe if a really valuable skill is unlocked). Maxxing materia will do more. There are lots of ways of winning the fights though beyond the method I described above, just that most of them either take a lot longer (e.g. the PowerPyx recommended strat is based on tanking all the damage with Barret/Cloud/Red, but it'll take an hour) or require at least some reactive timing skills/perfect parrying.

Edit: And yes I think they've gone too far with this stuff. I don't mind the difficulty, but does everything need to be a 5- or 10-round endurance run?! Staking that much time completely disincentivises taking risks or experimenting since even 5 runs could take up most of your evening. Weiss was great fun. FFXIII still has the best post-game in an FF I think (characterised by relatively short and intense battles).