Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
XIII got it right. The most effective way to make a game like Final Fantasy challenging while at the same time not requiring you to grind to insane lengths is to implement an appropriate level cap and force people into using their brain rather than their character's overpowered statistics.
I would argue Suikoden does this better by simply lowering XP gains depending on your party level so that if you power too high (like literally two levels more than you need) then all enemies give you 1 XP until you reach a new area which I feel is abit less intrusive than just telling the player they can't level up their characters until a later chapter.

I really wouldn't have used XIII as an example as there are too many holes in the argument that it's "challenging".