A lot of grinding is necessary to get decent gear and experience. The easiest way to do it is as follows. Go into "Settings" and turn off "Show Movements" and "Show Effects". Then, press Back to turn on "Auto Battle". You can select a battle slightly further back in the story line and let the AI do your grinding for you. The process is quick, and the AI is actually quite competent in using group attacks and healing. As long as it is not too much of a challenge, you can ignore it and let the CPU do your grinding. It will even Overkill quite often, which provides bullions which can be converted at the blacksmith and sold for a lot of gold.