Currently I'm at the "At the end stands the god of justice" and I can't tell if Varuna is tearing me apart or if I'm getting anywhere with him, because I can last a good long time before he kills me, but at the same time he teleports around so much I don't think I'm hitting him as often as I need to be.

And I will admit there's been a fight or two where I've been wondering if the purpose of the story mission was to coax me into buying my weight in scape dolls... I'm worried about getting tempted and spending $30 only to learn I was doing something horribly wrong and waste the money.

most of the story fights is just learn their pattern and evade or counter, yes Varuna is annoying for taking much less damage that you normally will do and even if you fill yourself with scape dolls there's a limit of how many you can use per quest and that includes story quests.

if you are having too much problems and only want to see the story then do the normal version of the fight now if is the normal version you are having problems then better get some levels and better gear to face him.

Yeah, I'm already maxed on levels on the classes in use. I guess better gear is possible, though I'm kinda hitting the "diminishing returns" point.

My completionist side is really getting to me though.