I was also getting frustrated when fighting the boss in the desert. I was so close to destroying the blastia that comes out of his mouth and then my stupid party members would kill him, even though I tell them to defend.

Set them on manual when you want them to stay back. That way they won't do anything but stand there.

Your party still like to rush in and attack and do other stupid stuff even on defend.

Yeah i've noticed. -_-

They seriously need to revamp the ai in these games. They are quite pathetic. More than once have I had Rita spam tidal wave on a water monster and haver her heal it 10k hp.

I've had similar things happen as well. It is true that the AI in this game is really pathetic, unless you set Karol to heal, his AI is actually pretty good at that.

I had no problems with the Al in this Tales of Vesperia.

Do we both have different versions? The AI in Vesperia is dumb.

Set your team to defend, even go in and edit them so that they use no TP, just defend, no items, have them set to do nothing and then hit the D-Pad direction that corresponds to that tactic and then tell me why in the hell they run to an enemy and start unloading Artes on them.

Did you press start first?

Indeed. I know when I want them attack the same enemy as me it works everytime, but defend does nothing unless I set them all to manual and just let them sit back and do nothing.

The AI just isn't that smart in this game. That doesn't mean the game isn't good, it is just that it should have been better.

When ever i commanded the party to defend they did what i said. Maybe your doing something wrong.