I hit a wall at some point, the difficulty seemed to have ramped up or I was super weak.

Probably my stats and bad weapon and skill choices and I had not picked up certain items and pictos.

I left the game for a few months and picked it up again, started over and I just finished it now, about 30 minutes ago.

I'll admit I used some build guides and it helped me along, I wanted to finally finish the game without struggling as much as I did before.