The key is to make sure that you've got the best weapons and armour equipped, to start off with. Then you need to make sure you've equipped the best gems for the character (e.g. Reyn Attack, Melia Ether, Dunban Agility, Shulk Ether Def. etc.). Try and make Rank V or VI through heat if possible, so when crafting, put together stones which have the same attributes, and also between two characters with high affinity.

Then move onto Arts and Skills. Are you levelling Arts? Are you linking skills? If not, why not? Which skills are you linking? Some are better than others. Focus on similar skill links to similar gems as mentioned above. If you're struggling for exp, then Riki and Shulk have great links for that.

Finally, what's your party? I'd ditch Reyn and Sharla. However, Melly, Riki and the 7th character are my favourites, in that order. Do that and you should have no problems.

It's fine. It was highly useful to me after I'd done most of the story to just make sure I hadn't missed anything. It's not perfect, but it's very good. It's best to use it when you're stuck than relying on it, however, or it may ruin your fun.

And exploring is the key thing. Keep an eye out for Ice Cabbages in Valak, though! They are...pretty rare!

Oh, and you mean Colony 6!

Yeah, I don't leave an area until I have the map 100% filled in. Only time that became tedious was on Eryth Sea!

Another thing, I don't really understand how to craft gems. I've been fooling around with it, and having Reyn and Shulk to the crafting since they have maxed affinity. I try to string together attributes that are useful and over 100% or 200%. I guess the rest is up to support character affinity?

Also, I hate, I mean absolutely hate, that if you link and skill and delink it you lose affinity coins. That sucks. I didn't know that linking skills used affinity coins when I first started playing thinking I could swap skill links at a whim. I lost a massive amount of coins because of this. If you already paid to link a particular skill, you shouldn't have to pay again if later you change your mind and want to go back to that skill.

Also, if you wear full, complete sets of armor are there any perks to that (ala Monster Hunter?). Just wondering, because I see a lot of areas have specific gear.

Everything's been pretty much summed up by Rol, i.e. it's down to the quality of the gems (listen to the special noise when mining), and choose to craft gems with the fewest different attributes in the pot as possible, for obvious reasons.

In addition, you never lose affinity coins. Never. 

And no advantages to different armours, if you wear the whole set. Darn.

Finally, you merely need to find all locations and landmarks in a map to fill in the entire thing, NOT explore every single inch.

Nice to see this Thread still alive. I think I will start replaying it after my big examn.

Good idea! Where did you get up to? I can't remember...

In that case the Homs pilot is completely unnecessary: just stick a pump on the mechon that circulates the Bionis blood throughout the thing, and boom!, instant Monado-neutralizer, no rebellious Homs needed.

They all did, actually. Remember the scene outside Colony 6, just before the final boss? And there were plenty of Faces even before Colony 9 was attacked.

It's basically just flimsy writing. Not that I mind too much: the game was enjoyable, so plot holes can be overlooked.

Does that make this a fantastic story then?

 Remember, the Face at the ending turned coat because he used to be a Homs. Otharon explicitly says as much. Regarding when the Faces started, think back to the scene after you kill Xord. You are ambushed by Metal Face and a half dozen or so other Faces. At that point, Fiora was still being "processed" into a Face, and she was captured during the attack on Colony 9, so unless the Faces were all created in the, what, three days between the attack and that scene, with Fiora taking way longer than the rest..

Plus, I believe either Sharla, Otharon, or Juju mentions seeing Faces during the attack on Colony 6, although I'm less sure of this part.