I never cut corners anywhere. The best part is exploring and figuring everything out.
I did that as best I could with FFVI. At the end, I was around lv. 60 the first time. Second time I was at 45.

But everybody talks about going to levels like 80 and 99.
Now... Either you're extremely stupid and can't figure anything out (Extremely stupid multiplied exponentially because you'd be leveling so high on weak level monsters if you can't progress! YIKES!).

Or you level up really high in repetitive battles against hig XP enemies for some god forsaken purpose of hitting the enemies really hard.

You're not stupid. So you're killing your valuable time doing extra leveling. You're not experiencing any extra bits of the game after lv. 60. Especially since I am a dunce and usually take longer to finish an RPG than most people.

Chances are you're not cutting corners, but you're just wasting time leveling when you should be beating the game and getting on with your life. If you can do 4000 damage and win the game, how can you stand to play for hours to do double the damage and then win. The time it takes to level uber high takes far longer than the time it takes to beat Kefka with less damaging attacks.