all seymour's fights are damn hard. You're pretty good ways into the story, as for the grid? Well, i'd just say fightfightfight LOADS, level up, and get enough little spheres gathered up to recover a tad bit in your grid.
Takes forever and gets annoying to level up but... hey.

edit: oh yeah, and if you restart it'll be waaay too long, annoying and just want to throw the disc away in the highway. Espacially the begining, takes WAY too long to get into the game.