Knights Contract

This is a toughie, and could well cause a lot of people to give the game up, but perserverence is the key.

There are two stages - 1 on a rooftop and one on a platform. You insta-die if either you or your sidekick get knocked off the edge of either, and believe me, you will get knocked off.

On both stages I took matters literally into my own hands and carried Gretchen around with me whenever possible, so at least she never got knocked off. You simply cannot trust the AI to keep her from falling. Having a maxed blue bar is key here and I saved mine for the 2nd stage, which is significantly more difficult.

So, stage one - When Holda is on the ground just go for it. Hammer away like there's no tomorrow and unleash all magics as often as possible. You'll have the games standard multiple health bars to contend with. When Holda takes off, grab gretchen and use your boost (a button) to avoid incoming attacks and Holda own charge and crash landing. Repeat until victory.

Stage two - You're now in the tower on a scandalously tiny platform. It will take several goes to win this, so be patient. Hopefully you've kept your blue bar. Holda is on the Platform with you. Run up to her and unleash all magics while hacking away too, immediately after all magics have been used, hold left trigger and press X to go into berserk mode. Hit her as many times as you can. You can almost entirely deplete her life here, giving yourself a great chance for victory. She will then fly away. Grab Gretchen and stay central. If you get hit you have a better chance of staying on the platform. You can use the boost button to try and avoid if you like, but the closer to the edge you get the more chance you have of dying. After a short time Holda will return the the platform. You now have to remove the remaining life (I think I had her down to 1 1/2 bars left. Try not to stand in the fire pools she leaves, but if you do, it's not the end of the world. You may just prolong the battle by having to revive yourself. It's likely Holda will fly away a couple more times, so keep your shit together and repeat the previous strategy of grabbing Gretchen, staying central and hoping you don't get blown away. Once the life bar is down you'll go into the final QTE. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe the sequence is A, left stick left, left stick right, left stick forward, bash the B and finally, Y.

Good luck. You'll need it! :)

This is a tip for the rather difficult QTEs wich have a small time window to press the appropriate button.
First of all the Guide button is needed because you can't interrupt the QTEs with a regular press on the Start button.
Then you should have a list of the button presses for the QTEs for the boss you are fighting for.
Then when the QTE sequence starts, hit the Guide button and memorize the first button you need to press. Hit the Guide button again and press Start to continue the sequence, wait for the prompt and hit the appropriated button. Now press the Guide button again and memorize the next button prompt needed. Hit Guide again and Start to continue the sequence and so on. This makes the QTEs an absolute breeze which takes much of the difficulty away.

In addition to the above guide, you can avoid getting knocked off of the platform by timing a Lance throw at Holda just before her raining spear attack hits. After you cast/throw your Lance you are temporarily invulnerable and won't get knocked back. Also, you can prevent Gretchen from getting knocked back as well by casting any other spell (the longer the casting time of the spell the better) of course this has to be before you cast your Lance spell otherwise your magic is disabled for the duration of the throw.