the last remnant - the fallen

can anyone share with me a winning strategy to beating the fallen, i have done several playthrough training different characters on each and attempted the fallen on each playthrough using several different strategies, my main problem is animalcule which wipes out my unions or leaves them helpless; i have read many forums that say to get the unions out of the way but i dont know what they mean by that, my second problem is generaly survivng past that and inflicting a steady and sufficient amount of damage, i am posting to see if anyone can tell me...

what unions/characters i should use

what strategy i should use

and how much i need to train beforehand

i am desperate to get this beaten as it is restricting me from getting 2 other very high scoring achievements,

please help me :)

i used baulsons weapon art alot to kill the fallen ^_^, just use the rush trick to level up skills fast

thanks for the advice i'll give that a try