I've always liked the way JRPG's try to mix up leveling mechanics. Western games always just slightly bump my stats and ask if I'd like a perk or power. I know the effect on game play is functionally identical, but I've always been a fan of the FFX sphere grid or the Crystarium in FFXIII. It was just cool seeing the possibilities laid out for you to see and slowly activate. But I like finding new stuff I haven't seen before even more. What are some leveling systems that you thought were awesome?
JRPG fans, what was your favorite leveling system?
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Final Fantasy 6-8. Wasn't a fan of learning abilities from weapons in 9. Sometimes I just miss the level systems in older, more straightforward JRPG's like Lufia 1 and Breath of Fire. You learn new abilities at certain levels. I remember once in Lufia 1 I gained Sunder before I even saved the King from the prison in the first town. It took a long time but the game allowed you to go into dangerous areas early on to gain faster experience.
Yeah, I can't you tell how boring it is to me to gain a level and learn an ability (Looking at you Bioware) that I will likely never use.
Yeah, I can't you tell how boring it is to me to gain a level and learn an ability (Looking at you Bioware) that I will likely never use.
Final Fantasy 6 was brilliant.
It let you build your party however you wanted, and incentivized exploring the world to find new and more effective abilities for your party.
It let you build your party however you wanted, and incentivized exploring the world to find new and more effective abilities for your party.
Monster Hunter 3U:
No 'leveling' in the traditional sense. You complete a few particular quests and afterwards, must complete an 'Urgent quest' in order to reach the next rank. Each new rank has more difficult monsters, but also better ores and bugs for farming.
There are 3 different sort of tiers of difficulty:
Low rank (1-2)
Hi Rank (3-5)
G Rank (6+)
After a certain point (Rank 8), it changes to a more traditional version, where you gain points for finishing quests and must reach a number to rank up from then on. At this point no new 'tiers' can be unlocked, instead additional quests are just added to the rank 8 list.
This way you never actually get more powerful until you can kill more powerful monsters. You can't just grind your way to an obscenely high level and plow through a boss in one hit, you have to farm weapons and armor capable of dealing with the monsters you need to take care of. It keeps things challenging as long as you stay in the same tier. Lower tiers are considerably easier when you have better weapons/armor.
No 'leveling' in the traditional sense. You complete a few particular quests and afterwards, must complete an 'Urgent quest' in order to reach the next rank. Each new rank has more difficult monsters, but also better ores and bugs for farming.
There are 3 different sort of tiers of difficulty:
Low rank (1-2)
Hi Rank (3-5)
G Rank (6+)
After a certain point (Rank 8), it changes to a more traditional version, where you gain points for finishing quests and must reach a number to rank up from then on. At this point no new 'tiers' can be unlocked, instead additional quests are just added to the rank 8 list.
This way you never actually get more powerful until you can kill more powerful monsters. You can't just grind your way to an obscenely high level and plow through a boss in one hit, you have to farm weapons and armor capable of dealing with the monsters you need to take care of. It keeps things challenging as long as you stay in the same tier. Lower tiers are considerably easier when you have better weapons/armor.
FF8. Something about the draw/junction system just really clicked with me. Maybe because I had a lot of free time and grinding the drawing of spells was kind of soothing. Plus I never got bored with the FMV's and the button mashing that accompanied them.
FF8 isn't my favorite Final Fantasy, but I just loved the flexibility it gave you to customize what each character was going to be skilled in.
FF8 isn't my favorite Final Fantasy, but I just loved the flexibility it gave you to customize what each character was going to be skilled in.
I love the djinn system in the Golden Sun games, not only do you level up in the traditional way, but when you find a djinn it will increase all stats for a particular element that can be temporarily taken away to use summons. So it's not really a level up system, but it's a unique mechanic that complements your party through the game as you level up.
I should also give Paper Mario a mention, I like the idea of choosing between getting more hit points, flower points, or badge points after leveling up, nice and simple.
I should also give Paper Mario a mention, I like the idea of choosing between getting more hit points, flower points, or badge points after leveling up, nice and simple.
I mostly remember Final Fantasy VIII as the game where my brother hogged Ifrit all the time on Zel and turned the guy into the Final Fantasy version of Chuck Noris. His strength score got so high he never did anything but punch things and they would just fall over dead, and it made the prison in the desert all the more hilarious.Wyvern65 said:
My favorite leveling systems are largely the ones that handle the statistics portion themselves and let us customize what spells and abilities the characters learn. The primary reason is that the systems that do allow players to pick where they put the points are basically shooting the inexperienced in the foot: asking them to either play a few hours to get to know the stat system and restart the game, or later on use whatever stat allocation system is in the game and reconfigure the stats to an ideal state.
I did like FFX's, it looked pretty and being able to break into someone else's grid eventually was good. As well as that, the sphere's meant the game was pushing you not to grind in some areas, because the sphere's you need don't drop there, and that was cool. At the same time it preserved character individuality.
But I didnt like the Crystarium, it's pretty sluggish and offers no flexibility (and the combat system wasn't as good at preserving character individuality). I also think they didn't look as pretty or satisfying as the sphere grid.
But I didnt like the Crystarium, it's pretty sluggish and offers no flexibility (and the combat system wasn't as good at preserving character individuality). I also think they didn't look as pretty or satisfying as the sphere grid.
As mentioned, the Sphere Grid from FFX was awesome. Another that deserves a mention is the Panel system they had in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. That one offered great flexibility, the only problem with it is how limited what you can put in is.
The Crystarium could qualify as the most redundant leveling board ever implemented in a video game. In fact, I'm not convinced at all that the FFXIII team knew what they wanted to do with game given how they handled both the character and weapon power ups.BrotherRool said:
Personally, I think RPGs that involve a group of characters would be better off if they had a stronger focus on discovering new abilities and characters rather than worry about Dungeons and Dragons style character customization.
That can definitely work for some games but levelling characters up is one of the things that games do better than anything else, because levelling up can be a great way to make you care more about people, or understand them better. If you're going for an FFX esque game, finding characters all the time would weaken the characters you already have and water the narrative down a bit and 'I was weak but now I'm so much stronger' is a big part of the -going on a hard journey and maturing as a person- arc. There's definitely advantages to doing it the way FFX did.Colt47 said:
Saying that I generally disapprove of purely D&D style levelling system, party based or not, because the decisions you make aren't very intuitive or clear. FFX worked because it didn't actually ask you to make many decisions based on statistics, it presented the statistics to you, so when you levelled it up it added to the 'Oh yeah Auron gets crudloads of power because Auron is a badass', the choices were more over which character you decided to level and choosing broad arcs (and eventually characters secondary specialisations.) with a couple of moments of 'is it worth getting this ability if it slows down your levelling a bit'
FFXIII also made the choice for you I guess, but it didn't give you the other choices and the levelling it did do, didn't inform the character. The closed world aspect of it then stopped most of the feeling of getting more powerful too.
I enjoyed FFX and it's leveling system since it was more of an alternatively illustrated method of leveling up in a chosen class. My statement is more of a reaction against the continuing emergence of micro-management guides and foo-strategies that seem to be emerging left and right in most current RPGs. Forcing advancement through discovery at least means the player has to go out and interact with the game world, foo-strategy or not, and spend less time managing a spreadsheet listing scheduled times to do activities or what stats should go where at what time.BrotherRool said: