Quote (TheNextBestThing @ Thu, Jan 29 2009, 09:49am)
Some people enjoy grinding in order to have that feeling of vast superiority over their enemys..I myself am that way.
On a ton of rpgs I'll grind a lot longer than necessary just so I can stomp the upcoming foes with little effort.
Just feels good to be able to decimate opponents without trying to me ^^
The thing about VIII is that it's unlikely you will overpower your characters on your first playthrough (unless you read a guide first). When I first played through it, it was actually the most challenging FF game I'd played to date. I didn't spend any unnecessary time playing cards or drawing magic, and I didn't avoid leveling up. I just used the magic and items I acquired along the way and leveled up along the way. I was really struggling by the time I got to Ultimecia's Castle (losing all your abilities is evil
) and had to really play around with the junction system to manage through the game.
On my second playthrough, I just did the same, but the game was a lot easier because I learned a lot of things from my first playthrough.
It wasn't until my third playthrough that I actually experimented with some of the other aspects of the game (cards and the refinement system) and powered my characters up a bit.
The fourth playthrough was the first time I went through *specifically* for overpowering my characters (Lionheart in Disc 1, 100 Tornadoes to Strength, completely killing the X-ATM (w/ 100 Thundaga's to Elem-Atk), refining the Kiros Card for Auto-Haste in Disc 1, and so on).