Was the level up system improved with later ports?

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Or is hitting yourself still the best way to raise your HP in mobile and handheld ports?

[Galuf]

I got to 9999 hp without touching myself on ff2 gba

[Bubba]

I played the PSN version and I used the Switch spell trick to up my HP. I never attacked myself. I understand why you would do that but it just seems stupid to me.

[Fynn]

Yeah, the GBA version is very smooth, and the PSP port smooths thing out even further. Like Galuf, I never touched myself. However suggestive that may sound.

[theundeadhero]

It's possible, but not as necessary as in the NES version.

[Peter1986]

I never really liked hitting my own characters in order to gain HP, that feels kinda like using steroids to build muscles or something - it just doesn't feel "real" to me.
It's much more rewarding to struggle through the game and see your HP gradually increase in a natural way instead, and I have found that one nice way to do that is to actually walk to every destination in the game - yes, this includes walking to the Warship and to Mysidia - since this gives you many chances to build your stats while fighting regular battles.
You can use a Cottage to restore your party if you are beat up right before entering the Warship, or outside of Cave Of Mysidia.

Speaking of that, I have always felt that the only items that are really worth using in this game are Elixirs, Phoenix Downs and Cottages.
Potions really suck hard in this game, Elixirs are much better investments despite their high price (and you do find free Elixirs in some of the dungeons as well, which is nice).

[Fynn]

I never really liked hitting my own characters in order to gain HP, that feels kinda like using steroids to build muscles or something - it just doesn't feel "real" to me.
It's much more rewarding to struggle through the game and see your HP gradually increase in a natural way instead, and I have found that one nice way to do that is to actually walk to every destination in the game - yes, this includes walking to the Warship and to Mysidia - since this gives you many chances to build your stats while fighting regular battles.
You can use a Cottage to restore your party if you are beat up right before entering the Warship, or outside of Cave Of Mysidia.

Speaking of that, I have always felt that the only items that are really worth using in this game are Elixirs, Phoenix Downs and Cottages.
Potions really suck hard in this game, Elixirs are much better investments despite their high price.

You mean people don't normally do this?!

[Peter1986]

I never really liked hitting my own characters in order to gain HP, that feels kinda like using steroids to build muscles or something - it just doesn't feel "real" to me.
It's much more rewarding to struggle through the game and see your HP gradually increase in a natural way instead, and I have found that one nice way to do that is to actually walk to every destination in the game - yes, this includes walking to the Warship and to Mysidia - since this gives you many chances to build your stats while fighting regular battles.
You can use a Cottage to restore your party if you are beat up right before entering the Warship, or outside of Cave Of Mysidia.

Speaking of that, I have always felt that the only items that are really worth using in this game are Elixirs, Phoenix Downs and Cottages.
Potions really suck hard in this game, Elixirs are much better investments despite their high price.

You mean people don't normally do this?!
My experience is that a lot of people like to abuse the leveling bug thing, and prefer to travel by boat or airship to a lot of places. :p

[Fynn]

Idk, in my experience, stopping every battle to just keep hitting yourself was just incredibly tedious and my characters progressed naturally just fine when I walked and fought every battle

[Peter1986]

Idk, in my experience, stopping every battle to just keep hitting yourself was just incredibly tedious and my characters progressed naturally just fine when I walked and fought every battle
Well, I can certainly agree about that.
The problem with this system, however, is that it doesn't really work for situations when you pretty much need to level-grind for certain things.
For example, the game becomes really aggressive with bad status effects at around the Mysidia Tower or the Whirlwind and suddenly has enemies spam crap like Wink and Stone on all your characters, and I don't think you can get ready for this without intentionally spamming the Heal spell over and over until it reaches a high enough level to be able to heal those things.
The game flows quite smoothly in the beginning, like for example at around Kashuon Castle you will get affected by Poison and Dark very often, which gives you a lot of time to naturally practise the Heal spell, and I think the game should have been like this until the end.
Like for example, have the enemies throw the Curse spell very often at the Warship or something (at which point you will probably have Heal at LV2) so that you have a reason to use Heal until it reaches LV3, then have the other spells appear one by one for the rest of the game.

[Mirage]

hey now, steroid muscles are real muscles too.

[Vermachtnis]

I walked everywhere. And on the original question: in the GBA and PSP your HP just increases at random intervals.

[Peter1986]

hey now, steroid muscles are real muscles too.
Yes, and the HP you earn by abusing the leveling bug is real HP.
My point was that I feel that this HP isn't really "earned" in a natural way if I just abuse a bug for several minutes, but more like something that I might as well have programmed into the characters via a cheat code or something.

You don't risk anything or do any actual work when you abuse the leveling bug, because all you do is that you repetitively choose the exactly same commands over and over, and the enemies cannot even get turns while you are doing that.
Compare this to playing the game normally - this means that you actually take damage and plow through possibly dangerous battles, and become stronger that way.
And to me, this seems a lot more "real" and "honest".

But sure, there are some parts in the game where the leveling bug is tempting to use just because this game is so poorly balanced in some places;
for example, like I said in my last post, in the later dungeons like the Whirlwind and especially in Jade/Pandemonium you had better have the Heal spell on a reasonably high level, but you probably won't have enough realistic chances to use it often enough for that.