Chaining skills in Star Ocean 4?

[Sea Of Thy Soul]

I barely defeated the Dragon Newt boss at Lemuris Alanaire Citadel all because of the skills these characters in the game seem to have... For example, the main protagonist's (Edge)'s Rising Blade and Stampede Slash, no matter what I do I can't seem to chain these two skills to each other he sucks btw - the rest of the party I have as of now, I don't really care very much as they are pretty much irrelevant in the end game (Faize and Lymle) the latter being annoying as hell with her 'KAY?' habit at the end of her sentence, excluding Reimi of course, as she has a great future I predict. Isn't there a skill like Sidekick in this game? Where you can constantly chain it after use plus the after use invisibility frame it grants is just overkill. I remember in SOT3 I pawned pretty much every enemy in the game (small, medium or large sized) just by chaining constant Sidekicks from short range to long range. In 4, it's hard to chain skills. Do I need a battle skill or something to chain skills? I need to know because I'm barely beating bosses in this game.