I literally just raised all my stats, early in the game, and have been easily beating every battle. It takes 1 shot for all the newb enemies, maybe 2-3 for average enemies and maybe 3-4 shots for any bosses. It definitely is a long game, just cause even with easy battles, you have all the cut scenes/dialogue/etc, but for those who enjoy the long drawn out story, it's great. But, it definitely isn't like Mario Bros where you can just warp to far levels and skip lots of content.
I have tons of saves at many different spots. They were all posted somewhere in this thread, I believe. You could start an early save, play a bit to get the idea, then load a save shortly afterwards, play a bit, and so on.
I think this was it. I organize my saves, and keep notes on what is on each save. This saves are right before certain scenes that I liked along the way. Hope it helps.