Am I too weak? / How powerful should I be at each point of the story?

I'm currently up to defeating the Agnaktor EX in Manelger's laboratory and I seem to have hit a power brick wall. I'm not sure if I should've done more grinding or not, but I can't seem to survive two hits from the boss.

According to a few guides, I should be breaking its head and tail before attacking the main body to prevent it from attacking twice per turn in its enraged state (which means it has 2x damage) and perfectly attacking all weaknesses, but even after doing so, I can't seem to survive at least three turns taking damage (especially the rider). Healing items can't keep up in the rage stage, and I'm always for the most part, ending up using at least half of my collection of Potion/Mega Potions.

I'm currently using Uragaan Armor, upgraded to Level 2, and all my monsties are Level 20-25. My character is at Level 22.

I don't want to have to hit a brick wall in the story, so when should I be levelling up for the next part of the story?

To make sure this is helpful to all, how powerful should I be, or more specifically, how powerful should I be at each stage of the story?

Solution 1:

It's been a while since I played this game so I don't remember the level numbers, but I do remember that this fight was easily the biggest difficulty spike of the game (outside of postgame content). You will need to use every advantage you can squeeze out of the game, including consumables, traps, weapons that can inflict statuses that your monsties can take advantage of, and so on.

Focus on letting your monsties deal most of the damage while you support them with healing, buffs, and other items. If you have monsties with a water element (which are annoyingly rare in this game), they can be helpful too. My most useful party member for this fight was a Gravios I had changed to be water element, as it took little damage from the fire-element attacks and hit back hard with its own water-element ones, slowly chipping away at agnaktor while I focused on keeping myself alive with party buffs and healing.

And of course going out and grinding a couple levels wouldn't hurt, though I never needed to grind during the story.