The way enemies attack in Dragon Quest VII is purely random. As far as I know they've all been like that. You can have a fight go from ignoring one character for a few turns to Oomphing and Punching the ever loving trout out of her the next. No seriously, this boss in Grondel did just that. Ignored Maribel for the entire fight. Then Oomph'D and used Fists of Rage and landed all four hits on her in one turn. Then the hero gets his turn and kills the boss.

Also the Alltrades Arc went on for a bit too long. And during the present day I got lost. The start of the Alltrades Arc has two unwinnable boss fights, so I was conditioned to that thought. Fast forward to the present day, I hear two rumors. One about a sealed up hero and another about Bandits. I figured I go fight the bandits. The fight starts with my entire team being put to Sleep, Confused, and Blinded. I figured this was another unwinnable fight. I lose and there's a special scene playing afterwards. So I went to see about the hero. This girl asked me to find a special stone from a place I hadn't been to yet. I figured that was it so I went back to the Shrine and couldn't go anywhere. Spent awhile running around trying to figure out where to go. I gave up and looked it up. Turns out those bandits weren't unbeatable, I just had a very bad first turn. Which brings me back to the first part of my post. Second round, they didn't use the Snooze or Fuddle spell once. And the story progressed.