As direct and unnecessarily uncouth he was, he was still right.

Anyways, Shurikens are on the bottom floor of Eureka, the same place where you buy the extra copies of the Optional Summons, as well as where you obtained the Ninja/Sage classes. If you are below level 50, then switch the party to Ninja/Sage/Ninja/Sage. Make sure you have 20+ shurikens, and a copy of the Bahamut Summon, one for each Sage. Besides FEOKs and Shuriken, this summon is the only one with similar attack power to Shuriken/FEOK.

They cost 65000 each one, but they also the greatest attack power in the game: +205. So the investment is huge, but alternatively, you can fight for the Onion Equipments (no chance in hell if you haven't beaten DarkCloud already).

Unlike newer games, they have to manually requip them during battle, and you can't equip two before a battle. So learn how to change weapons inside a battle (go to the items, and press up, it'll bring up the weapons for the Left and Right hands, press on one of them, and choose a new item from the item list to replace it with). This should be learned, and don't worry, as you noticed, that the battles are turn based. If you can't buy more than 20, then buy the twenty, and buy the heal-items that you need. During the battle, equip one shuriken at a time, and keep the two Ninjas with Ragnarok and FullMoon, one for each. They slow your item drain, and ignore back row damage. This will come in handy versus the DarkCloud, when you bust out ALL the stops.

In the future, don't save entirely based on the save states. They are somewhat useless, and better used if you use them right before a battle in a long dungeon, rather than inside it. You should also always keep a non-save state Save file, before you go into any dungeon. That way, you can save state as necessary, and if you need to, you can reload the Save file and not lose progress. It also takes the fun out of the game, since the game is supposed to be played without save states, as the makers intended it. It can also blow up in your face if you accidentally hit the "save key" while trying to hit the "load" key, or vice versa.

As much as we Americans like to take advantage of free stuff, there's a difference with free stuff with poison in it, and free stuff that's there as a non-malicious gift.