Good news: I finally beat Zeal once and for all.
Bad news: I lost to Lavos Core THREE times in a row

During one of my attempts, one of my allies actually survived the Grand Stone attack, but for the others, it was a one hit KO. There could be only two explanations as to why I can't seem to beat Lavos Core:

1) I haven't figured out the strategy as to win (and I know there's info on this boss in the walkthrough, so I'll make sure to check that)
2) I'm still under level and I need to do more sidequests just to do more leveling up.

Based on these two theories, it may be awhile before I'm finally able to beat Lavos Core.

Okay, my past few failed attempts at battling Lavos Core got me thinking that maybe I'm still under level. But it looks like I may have found the BEST place for grinding experience points (even better than Black Omen): Geno Dome. That's because there are four battles in a row that take place on a conveyor belt, and they re-spawn if you get on the conveyor belt again. So, I'm gonna use that to my advantage. On another note, I thought of getting the Sun Stone but I didn't memorize how to do that. But if I decide to try again at getting the Sun Stone, I'll read the walkthrough for that. So, from here on out my plan is to do 90 minutes of grinding and then another attempt at Lavos Core the next few times I play until I actually win. Because I'm certain that Lavos Core is beatable at some level other than 99 (I'm currently at Level 55).

So, I ended up using the Geno Dome to grind Crono and Marle to Level 66. For some reason, during all of that grinding, Robo gained more experience than Ayla (I'm not really sure how that's possible). Anyway, before I started all of that grinding, the three that were leveled up the highest were Crono, Marle, and Ayla. But when all the grinding was done, Robo was leveled higher than Ayla. Therefore I couldn't bring Ayla into the final fight like I wanted to. Anyway, as the battle with Lavos Core was starting to wind down, I got really concerned about the fact that it would take one Grand Stone attack to ruin everything. But luckily that didn't happen.

So this RPG was totally a new experience for me basically due to some of the features I did not encounter in the other RPG's I've played:

1) The whole time based mechanic in battles. When I started this game, I was used to the turn based mechanic. But as I got further into game, I learned how to use the time based mechanic as a strategy which paid off most of the time.

2) The single, double, and triple techs. At first I didn't find a use for the double and triple techs, but someone I ended up using these techs to my advantage. And I liked how the techs provided more (and possibly better) healing options than most of the items provided.

I'm sure there were others as well, but I can't seem to think of them right now.