The lightning attack was superior to everything IMO. I hated the fire columns because of their stationary nature. Lightning was how I got the 1000 hit combo after equipping a ring the made you super weak with the caption "Why would anyone ever use this?" It took me a while to figure it out, because nothing lasted beyond a few hits by the end of the game.
The narration of this story is amazing. The voice actors are spot on. If you haven't got to it yet, there are some crazy puzzles to solve... All I can say is the ending touches your heart, and makes you beg for another game.
As I've said before, the game mechanics remind me of Super Metroid how you can go back to portions of the map and find new secrets once you've obtained new abilities. But has one of those Dark Cloud 2/Zelda type stories... If there are 7 Blades of Elysia, I expect 6 more games dammit!