To punish with HP attacks, block is the way to go, time your blocks well and you'll leave your opponent staggering, so that even the most slow HP attack, will hit your opponents. Make sure you equip Riposte ability to maximize the effect of hitting staggering opponents.
What I don't like about the A.I is that some characters are really cheap, like Cloud Of Darkness, since the AI can pull combos and attacks faster than I've seen a live person do so far, especially in the Blackjack DC. I like to fight underhanded most of the time, but CoD is just way too brutal.
EX builds are the way to go for melee attackers like Squall, Cloud and Sephiroth, they really take advantage of the EX mode, especially Cloud, since he can break through every defense and almost all the attacks in the game with his EX Defense Crush xD.
I haven't dwelved in command battles much, but I found the ones that I played rather fun ;)
Current PC Build
CPU - i7 8700K 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz turbo) 6 cores OC'd to 5.2 GHz with Watercooling (Hydro Series H110i) | MB - Gigabyte Z370 HD3P ATX | Gigabyte GTX 1080ti Gaming OC BLACK 11G (1657 MHz Boost Core / 11010 MHz Memory) | RAM - Corsair DIMM 32GB DDR4, 2400 MHz | PSU - Corsair CX650M (80+ Bronze) 650W | Audio - Asus Essence STX II 7.1 | Monitor - Samsung U28E590D 4K UHD, Freesync, 1 ms, 60 Hz, 28"
