I wasted my time with FF6

Ahh, for some reason I had to go and ruin a perfectly good game by trying to conquer it. I ended up getting every character to level 99, all having learned every spell. And I equipped all my characters with the best equip I could find especially my front 4 in the final battle. I the meanest was terra doing nearly 5000 damage a stroke, and had the offering, genji glove, illumina, excaliber. I beat Kefka in 2 rounds to say the least. Never again do I want to play characters to high levels as it is a waste of time, and ruins the game. Anyone else make the mistake of making it too easy on yourself?

Yeah, FF6 is that way. The first time you play it through it is a challenge. But after that you try and get super-high levels, you learn how to use the esper level-up bonuses to your advantage, and it just makes the game easier. It all just comes down to your personal playing style.

I don't know, I've replayed the game like 8 times, and the 9th time on i90east's (sp?) version.

No, I don't get to 99. Once my Sabin can hit for 9999 damage times 8, Would go down in one round. If not, Quick him, and hit again. BAM!

the main reason the ending is so underwhelming is because the damage caps at 9,999, and square didn't allow enemies to have any more hp than 65,535. which means that seven strikes from the atma weapon will kill any enemy if you're leveled up enough and at full health, no matter what that enemy's defense is. so basically, they couldn't do anything that would possibly make the game anything of a challenge - even if they made an enemy with ridiculously high physical defense, the atma weapon would still penetrate that and deal 9,999 damage a hit. unless we're talking some sort of monster that's immune to physical damage, like the guardian you encounter in vector and thamasa.

i'm one of the people who wishes that square had added something like the weapons of ffvii so those of us that bothered to level up would still have something resembling a challenge, but that's not really the point of leveling up to 99 anyway.

the main reason the game is so easy, though, is the genji glove+offering combination - even if there were no damage cap, the offering means that you'll still deal twice the damage you would without it.

Terra was only doing 5000 per? :p That's weak.

I got all my guys to level 99 only once. Just cause. Every other time I only level as I go along with the game. No side leveling.

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Originally posted by Daryn
Ahh, for some reason I had to go and ruin a perfectly good game by trying to conquer it. I ended up getting every character to level 99, all having learned every spell. And I equipped all my characters with the best equip I could find especially my front 4 in the final battle. I the meanest was terra doing nearly 5000 damage a stroke, and had the offering, genji glove, illumina, excaliber. I beat Kefka in 2 rounds to say the least. Never again do I want to play characters to high levels as it is a waste of time, and ruins the game. Anyone else make the mistake of making it too easy on yourself?

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5000 damage on level 99? That's bad. I started to do 9999 damage ever since I got to levels 60-70. Oh, and level 60+ makes Kefka a cakewalk, so he's always that easy. I guess his "godlike" powers aren't all that impressive after all. Oh well, at least the final battle music is great, and Kefka's Goner is a pretty good-looking spell if he lives long enough to cast it.

I've said this once, I'll say it a million times, do not level up past level 35-40 playing FFVI (even that's too much), there's no point. The game can be played from start to finnish without getting extra cash (the good stuff you find) or experience. Not only do you save yourself hours of being bored to death, you get to have more fun playing the game, with some fun tactics sometimes (thanking i90 once again for his job in making a harder version of the ROM, too bad tools, throw, swrdtech, blitzes and god knows what else ignores dodge %, then you'd have a fun game to play with).

Try and finnish the game below level 30 or 25. Go around at those levels, then see how useful the oh so precious offering and atma weapon are. Plus every now and then the enemies might get a good smack in on you and make life interesting during battle for a change.

30 is challenging. I've tried it and I've climbed the tower (level 35). It was pathetic, no Life 3, no Cure 3 (can't learn them without leveling up unless I meet 10 Cactuars in a row...). I have to rely on those 99 potions AND tonics (no kidding). I have to scrap all my Ethers and Tinctures and realized how expensive Tinctures really were.

Then I came in front of Kefka at level 35 exactly and I went all the way up with only Sabin (god knows how he survived, maybe because I liked him), Celes, Gau without Catscratch and Edgar (yeah, yeah, I'm biased). In the end...I died. Gonna try again tommorrow. Damn Fallen One + Train :(

If you want that magic, get it in the Vedlt, no experience gains there. That's how I did it when going for super low levels. Takes a bit longer though, but I guess that's all you can do.
Have some one ready with cure3 for fallen one before he casts it (ie just skip their turn till it happens). Also, get a Snow muffler for Gau to make him near invinsible with 255 defense. Try again, you'll find it easier.

Nah, I can't stand the Veldt. The monsters are too random for my taste :P

Maybe we aren't looking at the important issue here people. Playing ff6 until you hit level 99 with all characters, How LONG did that take. It's time for you to go outside and climb a tree or something.:)

Actually, it's not that bad. If you have an emulator, and tune the speed on the emulator up, you can kill 6 squads of t-rexes in one minute.....no joke.

yeah im level 23 i think and im on that floating island, and im stuck. my characters are very strong, its just i never equipped the magic. im sorry i just forget so much becuase i gave up

It's fun raising my characters to Lvl. 99. That's what I am working on right now.

u could probably do the majority of the game at like lv 10. joyus vanish doom combo!

but yeah, i got completly ff6ed out by getting everyone to lv99. if there is one flaw in the second best ff, is there are no super bosses to test your powers. after ff5 shinryu and omega, u would expect doom gaze and atma 2 do sumthin.

however it ff6 2 me was never about the fighting, bosses or battle systerm. it was always about the atmosphere, story and characters.

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Originally posted by LingaringBell
Maybe we aren't looking at the important issue here people. Playing ff6 until you hit level 99 with all characters, How LONG did that take. It's time for you to go outside and climb a tree or something.:)

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actually not long at all. ff7, ff8, ff9 all took longer to reach max lv 4 me. that forest with the bracosaur that casts ultima and the t-rex's gives so much exp. i did a twelve hour stint and got from lv40 or so to lv 99 with all characters. i dont think my mastered ff 6 has reached 99 hours, and thats with 255 fights to remove the curse to get that paladin armour is it? cant remember but it gives me ultima.

so honestly, ff 6 is quite short to master. its not like ff7 or ffx since you cant reach max stats.

http://www.geocities.com/chadmonkey/edit.jpg

Way to be visual, Chad.

I beat the game at around Level 60. THEN I went back and mastered it.

Well they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I didn't feel like typing a thousand words. :p

It seems to me that it would take more time to make a picture and host it than to say "Don't double-post" though. xD

I appreciate that, Mr. Mimic. I wish I could do something like that to my manager.....

Getting back on track....

Wanna make FF6 harder? Try using no strategy in your fights. "FIREDANCE!!! Oh wait, that heals fire monsters..... SUPLEX!!!! Oh wait.... that doesn't work on ANYTHING.... Scew it.... PUMMEL!!!!!"

Hmm. I suppose they could have made the game differently, so that level 99 characters are no stronger than, say, level 30 or 40 in the game we're used to... but then millions of nerds would swamp the internet saying "omg gaem r teh liek total sux0rz!!11111!!! U canut hev teh strong char cuz da limit iz da 2115 hp N da 1214 dmg!!!111!!! WTF da gaem r da cr4pz0r!!!"

Bascially, people wouldn't like a game where you can't become overwhelmingly strong, either...

Attaining maximum levels is by no means a necessity, so it's kind of reserved for those who feel like a fun but time-consuming side quest, or who're curious about just how strong they can become.

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Originally posted by Big D
"omg gaem r teh liek total sux0rz!!11111!!! U canut hev teh strong char cuz da limit iz da 2115 hp N da 1214 dmg!!!111!!! WTF da gaem r da cr4pz0r!!!"

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Reminds me of a friend who told me that FFIX was the worst because, as he put it, the summons were "nerfed." I asked him why, and he said because they can only do 9999 damage.

Haha. FFVIII and FFX are the only games where any attack can do more than 9999, in a single hit, that is. Incidentally, they are also the two most critiziced conventional FFs.

In FFI, your HP was capped at 999, and you could rarely (if ever) do more than a thousand damage. Of course, the final boss only had 2000 HP, so doing that much damage would be overkill. See, it's all relative to the game. If you've monsters like Penance with 25 million HP, then you're probably going to need attacks that can do more than 9999. But in FFIX, where Ozma has only 65,535 HP, you're not going to need anything in excess of 9999. So why do we need these ridiculously high values? Emerald Weapon would be just as hard (or easy) if its HP was only 600,000, as long as you could only do 999 damage.

Exactly. It's like saying football is more boring than handball because there's only two or three goals per match, rather than fifty.

I never ever level up when I play RPGs unless I'm getting trashed by every single creature around. It makes for a more challenging game.

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Originally posted by Bernhard
I never ever level up when I play RPGs unless I'm getting trashed by every single creature around. It makes for a more challenging game.

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yeah but surely u should lv up right at the end to finish the mastering process? and u have no choice in certain ff's like ffx if uwant to beat the hardest boss's.

Clearly, that's not what he wants to do. I don't blame him, either.

Sometimes I'll power-level on a replay. The first time I play an RPG, I'm usually playing it for the story, though.

Funny. I found this game highly challanging. Of course, I only beat it once, and I only got about 80% of all the relics in the game. And the fact that my esper bonuses never really saved themselves after I loaded up a save file, which may or may not have something to do with the fact that I played FF Anthology on a PS2.

If's not hard enough for you, make it harder. Try only playing it with about 1/2 of the espers and relics. It's a worthy challenge.

I dunno - for me, FFVI - like all the other RPGs - was always about the story, not some crazy psycho leveling up scheme. Every time I did that with a game, it ruined it and I wouldn't play it for a year or two.

Bah! Leveling up forever! Personally, I adore the satisfaction of watching Locke take his two atma weapons, offering, and genji glove and evicerating kefka in one move. Not just one turn, but one move

i find that kind of ruins the impression of kefka being some sort of all-powerful god, thus reducing my enjoyment of the game. compare that to something like suikoden ii, where it's impossible to kill luca blight in one turn or even in five minutes of gameplay, and there's a world of difference in how satisfying each battle is. suikoden ii wins.

Kefka isn't godlike though. He's a nincompoop. A nitwit. A ninny. And various other words starting with n that convey nitwit-ninnyness
what makes VI good is the protagonists, their struggles and their growth. Kefka's stagnating stupidity shows what evil truly is: It can go deep, but ultimately compared to good it is shallow and one sided. It wants destruction only: to quote Neo-Ex-Death from V, "and then I [ evil ] will destroy myself"

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Originally Posted by Clyde Arronway

Kefka isn't godlike though.

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Yes he is. He's even described as such in the text of the game.

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Originally Posted by Some guy in Tzen

Kefka's up there, 'n' he's using the power of the Statues... He's like a god...

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Yes, he acts like an idiot and he's blatantly insane. But he's described, many times, as having godlike powers, which only makes sense given the fact that he, y'no, controls the source of all magic. Therefore, the fact that he's such a pushover in the last battle severely demeans a large amount of his character development.

Compare this to Luca: An entire army is unable to capture him by surrounding him in battle, so the forces of good are forced to use stealthier methods, essentially resorting to treachery in an attempt to defeat him. After being shot full of arrows, viciously attacked by eighteen party members, and shot full of more arrows, Luca still isn't dead; it takes a one-on-one confrontation with the lead character of the game to still him. All this takes up about an hour and a half of gameplay. You could argue that the Statues, the Guardian, and the tier of bosses you fight immediately before Kefka also constitute a long time in gameplay, and indeed they do. But they're not Kefka. You're fighting Luca, and almost Luca alone, for approximately ninety minutes in Suikoden II before he falls for good.

Luca isn't even described as being godly, although he does have seemingly superhuman strength (obviously, given how many people it takes to fell him). Some might say that the Luca battles are overkill (they aren't really; finally defeating him was one of the most blissful videogaming experiences I've ever had), but even if they are, Kefka's battle is sorely underwhleming.

Luca > Kefka.

Nuff said.

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Well they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I didn't feel like typing a thousand words.

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Brainwashing is evident... :tongue:

I don't recall what level I was the one time I beat it, but it sure as hell wasn't 99. I know Kefka beat me more than once, he was pretty hard. I don't like being over-powered like that. That was one of my big beefs about FFX...the fact that you were so rediculously powerful you could kill things like the weapons in a hit or two...it just ruins the fun IMO.

The thing is, some people may be turned off by the fact that the final boss requires ages and ages of levelling up to be even possible to beat. Not all people have the time nor motivation for this, and so they'll never see the end of the game, which will ruin their experience.

I mean, come on, it's not hard to make Kefka difficult. Just remove all your equipment and don't learn any magic. I can agree to making the battle last longer, because final battles are supposed to be long, but they don't have to be near-impossible.

Which is why, in the end, I prefer optional challenges, like the Weapons in FFVII and Penance in FFX. So that you can test your insane levelling-up antics at the game if you like, without people who aren't that keen on levelling not being able to complete the game. FFVI didn't have anything of the kind, which may have been a letdown to some.

if you're going to have a final boss who's described as having godly strength, he should actually have godly strength. luca doesn't take levelling up to defeat so much as he takes strategy. in fact, in suikoden levelling up beyond a certain point is physically impossible, since each enemy stops giving experience beyond a certain level. the only reason luca should pose a challenge is because you didn't use all your characters enough or because you don't have a good enough strategy. the true challenge in the battle is enduring long enough to defeat him.

you don't have to make kefka a terribly impossible boss either, you just have to give him more HP and maybe let him use fallen one and goner slightly more often than he does to add a decent amount of challenge. as things are, even at level 50, to which a player can get with very minimal amounts of leveling up, he doesn't really pose too much difficulty.

Kefka is described as using the statues to get godlike strength. The statues were destroyed. He gained at least as much strength as needed to keep magic around, but he himself did not have such strength necesarraly. And if you have learned anything about me, you'd know I trust a wooslyism as much as bigfoot with a chainsaw. Any godlike powers come from the statues.

Anyhow, it makes sense that leveling up could render kefka a pipsqueek. If kefka absorbed power from the godesses, he's like an esper. Having learned all the espers, the party should be able to thus make short work of him

the absence of the statues could feasibly weaken him, but I distinctly recall the game saying that kefka had absorbed all/most of their energy to become, himself, the source of all magic, which should have rendered the statues more or less dispoasable.

besides, even if the story writes him off as weakened due to the statues' absence, it's still a cop-out. someone strong enough to absorb the source of all magic should be largely immune to genji+offering+atma. even without genji+offering at all, even without overpowered characters, he's still pathetically easy. hell, I was able to beat him using just level one spells (except for Cure 3) and characters equipped with Imp Halberds (and no, they weren't Imps, which means that they had less attack power than they would have if they'd had no weapon equipped), and no one in my party even broke a sweat. pathetic.

at least he wasnt as easy as vegnegun or ultimecia or chaos. and there is a SUPER boss in the game! hes a bracosaur in a forest who casts ultima 4 6000 damage and disaster, one hell of a status move.lol.

well at least kefka is immune to the vanish doom combo lol!

As if you'd need Vanish-Doom to defeat Kefka with Genji Glove, Offering, and two Atma Weapons.

Yes but you can't unless your level is +90 and hp +9000. Understand that because the atma is the sword version of the atma weapon, one of the worst bosses in VI for the strength you are at when you fight him. Atma himself being much worse. Two should dispach anyone with speed.

If you use the right armor on your characters, I believe you can exceed 9000 HP by level 50. atma weapon generally deals more than adequate damage to off kefka in one round with eight hits by level 50 anyway, I think, although I haven't tested this out.

Also, even if it takes four or five rounds of attacks to defeat Kefka, that's still a disappointingly short boss battle. You can't deny that it's highly possible to do that even at level 50.

This is simply called the 'insanity factor'
It's very difficult to surpass level 50-ish without some interesting tricks. That said, the 'insanity factor' is what most game makers do or should include, an option for psycho's who have no life to perfect their charectors. One of my major problems with IX, though I only hold VI above it, is that no matter how many abilities and skills you master, you can only have X many on at one time. VI does not have this problem; in it one can at extreme cost of time to the player make their charectors invincible. This should always be an option. In real life when excersizing little computers don't fly out of the sky and state: "this is the strongest we will permit you to get. You must stop now."

And also with the offering the damage atma makes is cut in half for each strike, so at level 50ish it will still do 4999 damage per hit, not 9999. Also, atma is based both on the Hp and Level of it's user

One of the things I like most about the Suikoden series and Chrono Cross is that there is no so-called "insanity factor." It's impossible to level up beyond a certain point in Suikoden because monsters stop giving experience to your players after they pass a certain level (it varies per monster, obviously). In Chrono Cross, there's no actual experience system; you gain levels each time you successfully defeat a boss. Allowing a player to level up insanely takes most of the challenge out of playing an RPG; you don't have to formulate a strategy, you can just plow right through by power-leveling your characters to insanity.

Of course there's no artificially imposed limit when you're exercising, but doing the same exercises over and over, after awhile, isn't going to make you stronger; it's just going to keep you at the same strength. Similarly, fighting the same monsters over and over shouldn't make you a better fighter after you pass a certain point, but nonetheless, in Final Fantasy VI you can nonetheless go to Dino Forest and whack out as many dinosaurs as you want and you'll eventually end up with superhuman strength. (Of course, you could argue that you'd need superhuman strength to defeat a bunch of dinosaurs with just a sword, but I still can't imagine it being as superhuman as the person who controls all magic in the world, yet that's exactly the way it goes in FFVI).

I distinctly remember the Atma Weapon doing well over 4,999 damage per hit with Offering at level 50. It's been awhile since I played, though, so I can't give you exact specifics.

continuously doing the same works after a point will still cause strength increse, just very little. That fits with leveling up: levels grow in required exp. exponentially

Also, terra is after all (spoiler) half esper. She is magic incarnate. the rest are as powerful as all the espers the party recieved. Absorbing all the magic doesn't mean much. Remeber also, unless you use the espers to increse stats at level up, your charectors, unless they are using the innately supernatural atma, cannot do very much damage singlehanded.

The strength gained by repeatedly fighting dinosaurs in Final Fantasy VI is more than the strength that would be gained by repeatedly fighting dinosaurs in real life. After a given point, repeatedly doing the same exercises will yield negligible strength gains, even if you spend all your free time doing them. Lifting a 25-pound weight over ten repetitions will only do so much for you, no matter how often you do it. The gains from fighting the same monsters over and over in FFVI are far from negligible, although they are time cosnuming.

Terra is not magic incarnate. She's not even half magic-incarnate. (SPOILER)Espers are given magic by the privilieges of the Statues; without the statues; or some similar equivalent, the Espers die off. And look at how easily Kefka neutralises the powers of all the Espers in Thamasa. He shouldn't even have to break a sweat to deal with her.

The strength gained by repeatedly fighting dinosaurs in Final Fantasy VI is more than the strength that would be gained by repeatedly fighting dinosaurs in real life.

Fighting dinosaurs? In real life? Anyways, have you lifted weights before? 25 lbs is not very much... If you do increase your reps you feel the same burn as when you increased the weight. The build up of lactic acid in the muscle is envitable if you lift more or if you lift for longer. As a result the muscles get the same work out, but it just takes longer if you're doing less weight. So it is exactly like training in the dinosaur forest. Couldn't you also increase the weight by killing off all your other characters letting one take all the exp? As for suikoden I can't comment because I can't find it... :(

I agree that the leveling up system is not realistic but if games were realistic they would suck. Getting to a point where you can't get any stronger takes a lot of the fun out of it. Go dinos!

What are espers except humans who have been turned to magic. anyhow, the espers in thamasa are peaceful espers that have been sitting around doing nothing violent for 1000 years. they've lost their edge. Also remember that kefka was beaten to a pulp when the sealed gate was opened.

The Espers in the mountains near Thamasa are the same Espers that escaped from the Sealed Gate.

Exactly. Kefka may have defeated them in the end, but he was first evicerated by them. And rememver kefka was imbued with magic from the statues and the espers, but that same power is in the espers and in the charectors. He may be compared to a god once but the story overall states otherwise.

So, since they all have the same power, could any of the individual Espers or characters besides Kefka have also twisted the fortress city of Vector into an enormous tower, commanded the Light of Judgment, and spontaneously grown a monstrous living monument to himself and then sprouted wings?

Maybe they could and just didn't feel like it.

If the power of the goddeses can make men into espers, which are quite more drastic changes than just wings, it's most likely that because espers have the same power in their veins, they could if they wished. If Ragnarok can change enemies into consumable objects, it's fairly reasonable.

in response to the point about it not being realistic the lving up and it would become negliable after a certain point...

it does anyway! thats why after each lv it takes more exp to lv up and u stop at lv99!

of course u realise u r playing very unique individuals as well. the average person would get above lv 2 while bruce lee would,nt be higher then lv 15. i compare my charaacters to dbz which explains why bullets do like 100 or sumthin weak instead of death and u can become demi-gods.

You're completely right. This is based origionally off of FFI, which is a fantasy game, which is based out of legend and myth. In these, men and wizards train all their life for combat and make a habit of killing gods and demigods. Thus in response to my longstanding bicker with the man, don't compare this to medieval european warfare, it isn't an attempt to be. Don't compare it to Greek Myth, it isn't supposed to be. Fanatsy stems out of Celtic and Norse Myth, in which man habitually overthrows the supernatual because the line between man and god is very thin indeed. In celtic myth for example, which is really the basis of almost all fantasy and thus the FF series, the man Eremon and his army evicted every supernatural being in ireland from the surface of the earth! The human can well become the superhuman in these stories.

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Originally Posted by Clyde Arronway

You're completely right. This is based origionally off of FFI, which is a fantasy game, which is based out of legend and myth.

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One more middleman: FFI was based primarily upon Dungeons & Dragons, much more so than upon any actual cultural legends.

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Originally Posted by Kawaii Ryûkishi

So, since they all have the same power, could any of the individual Espers or characters besides Kefka have also twisted the fortress city of Vector into an enormous tower, commanded the Light of Judgment, and spontaneously grown a monstrous living monument to himself and then sprouted wings?

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I certainly don't think so, which is why the Luca Blight battle is a lot better than the last Kefka battle. Kefka is able to defeat the Espers at Thamasa without lifting a finger; the only reason he's trounced by them at the Sealed Gate is because he's not prepared for their emergence. It's not like he's not able to get back up and walk out long before the party leaves, anyway; where the heck is he when you're leaving the cave? He's already long-gone. And Thamasa is *before* he obtains the power of the Statues.

Kefka *was* human, and he became superhuman thanks to obtaining the powers of the Statues and a tremendous number of Espers. There's nothing in the story to suggest that any other character becomes superhuman throughout the course of the game, so the final battle should be a challenge no matter what level the player is at. Perhaps having the challenge of the final battle change alongside the player's level would have been an appropriate adjustment; regardless, Kefka needs more HP. A lot more. Like, 200,000 more.

if he changed strength as your level progresses, it would destroy the concept of an rpg. the point is not to strategize or get lucky, it's to find a way to become stronger than the enemy.

The point *is* to strategize. In games like Final Fantasy V and Suikoden II, blind leveling up *isn't* enough to defeat many bosses. I always felt that the point of an RPG was discovering a way to survive a fight and annihilate the enemy, not necessarily get stronger than them. Blind levelling up takes all thought and strategy out of the game; it feels a hell of a lot more rewarding to win a fight when you're underleveled than to win a fight when you're so ridiculously overleveled you barely have to lift a finger to defeat the enemy.

And would that mean you don't consider Final Fantasy VIII, in which enemies level up with the party, to be an RPG?

it really all depends on what you play the game for. if u play to simulate killing things, then blind levelling up is good. more importantly, it depends on how you want to go through the story. some people (like me, sometimes) prefer to get to an uber-high level so we can take as much as we can from the storyline without having to worry about dying. others prefer the challenge of having to level up naturally, as the game progresses, and focus more on an equilibrium between storyline and gameplay.

yes, exactly. Who want's to kill things randomly in VI or VII or IX when you can see all the wonderfulness at once.