Managed to make it to araguay woods. Did so after 8 serious tries at Zirekile falls, then just restarted the game over and over until assassinate worked on the turtle. Without the turtle that battle still took ages since I can't hit, and because the enemies did the energy blast and slow on attack so often I had to use what few turns I got to heal and revive. The counter-geomancy hit every time I did attack with added negative status effects. Side note: I guess the enemy attacks with slow or immobilize have 100% chance to do that effect? That's rough.
There was some new gear available after the falls, so I got it, then on my way back to araguay woods I got steamrolled 4 times by random battles. I'm typing this after one that should have been fairly doable: one beastmaster, one bomb, and one chocobo. Combination of beastmaster reraise/haste and chocobo cure, along with the hit % problem I'm experiencing, meant that the chocobo can undo any damage I manage pretty much right away. The bomb can self destruct, reraise, and do it again. The beastmaster is pretty much untouchable, given the range of his abilities and chocobo cure.
I have most of my guys' special abilities unlocked, but I have yet to see any success with the more useful ones aside from the one time assassinate worked. Also tried changing jobs to get some of the useful abilities I thought maybe would help, like auto potion or energize(I mean the reraise one? Sorry) or Knight's sacrifice, but when I have someone as a nonstandard job my already small chances of victory get even smaller.
I actually tracked my hits for one battle. Bariaus Hill, with three bombs and 7 assorted humans. Before I lost, I missed 32 attempts that had 85% or higher. 5 were 95%. Only one out of more than 25 attempts(didn't count, just estimated) to use a special ability (sleeper hold, finishing touch, song of time, etc) worked. This battle took a little less than 2 hours, and only lasted so long because the bombs were on a separate team and kept some of the humans occupied and away from me.
At this point I'm about to just give up and go play regular WotL so I can feel good about myself.