Why is there a sharp increase in the difficulty curve at Pulse?

I spent my weekend playing through Final Fantasy 13 and managed to get up to Pulse late afternoon Sunday.

I haven't been avoiding any encounters the entire way through, I've used good strategies to get good weapon upgrades (pouring 36 Sturdy Bones and then anywhere between 20 and 50 Turbojets once the weapon has reached x3 EXP BONUS). My characters up until now have shredded anything they come up against including an easy Barthandelus battle.

I made my way through the Ark with ease and defeated Bahamut and afterwards made my way to Pulse.

OK so now I'm here on Pulse and have defeated Hope's Eidolon. I've reached the huge open area where you have access to Cie'th stone quests and suddenly I feel like I've missed something major or should have done a tonne of farming beforehand.

There are a scarce few enemies here I can actually defeat. The King Behemoth gets me once it stands up and starts using Thundaga to kill my party in two strikes. The huge turtle things - I don't even understand how these could possibly be beaten at all. The wolves in groups larger than 3 are too tricky to bother. The bird type enemies use an attack called "Feeding Stoop" or similar that kills a party member instantly. Etc etc.

Is this a point in the game where I need to venture around these enemy types and slowly (very slowly) work my characters up through fighting the smaller enemies like Goblins and other smaller creatures? Or have I accidentally bypassed a huge portion of the game somewhere and am ridiculously underpowered?

Solution 1:

You are hugely underpowered for the majority of the enemies on Pulse, since Pulse is the end game location - your characters have access to that area and all the missions after the main story of the game is completed.

At this point, you should just finish the missions you need to move the story forward and don't worry about any of the enemies that are too difficult to defeat. Once you are done the story, you will be able to defeat most of the enemies in Pulse and you can spend time grinding in order to defeat them all (and finish all the missions).

Solution 2:

Gran Pulse is a little different to the other areas of the game, in that your stats start rising much quicker and it's fairly easy to get yourself caught up in a fight you can't really win.

Pushing forward can cause problems, because there's quite a few chokepoints where you'll be required to fight very strong enemies. While FF13's battle system is much more forgiving of underpowered characters than other Final Fantasy games, that doesn't mean these fights are going to be easy or quick.

Your best bet is to follow the Cie'th stones; not only are these enemies much easier to manage, but they'll lead you back through the pass you entered the main area into another, smaller area with easier enemies. There's an optional boss fight at the end which will wake up the teleport Cie'th stones, and give you access to a new store.