Topic: RPG games force excessive grinding?

I played the Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Earthbound, Golden Sun and most recently Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games and it seems most of these games force excessive grinding. I don’t make any effort to avoid battles at all, on the contrary I try to run into enemies as much as possible during normal play through to gain reasonable experience. However, it appears at some point I got to a boss, couldn’t beat it, found out I was under-leveled despite not avoiding battles. Ended up having to grind for at least 1-2 hours just to not be on par with the average level required to beat the boss. The only game I could think of that I didn’t really need to grind at all is Super Mario RPG. Maybe I’m just bad at RPG games. Anyone else had this problem with RPG games?

Usually fighting every enemy I see in an area once is good enough. But I just play the Mario rpg’s. Maybe it is different in more hardcore ones.

I can confirm that I never needed to do extra grinding for Golden Sun or Earthbound or later Final Fantasy games I've played, barring particularly difficult optional stuff.

That's definitely kind of a hallmark of early RPGs. In ones like Dragon Quest and Breath of Fire it's definitely recommended, as soon as you start, to kind of just wander around the opening castle or wherever you start battling, leveling up, and going back to rest and heal when you need to until you are at least up a couple of levels. I don't think that's as prevalent in most modern RPGs, but you still get it sometimes.

The older FF games tended to need some grinding, @Don .... Not so much with the latest ones, though

This is norm for older RPGs especially ones from the NES and SNES. Cartridges were limited in space so to make the games seem longer developers added grind sections. Whether it was to be at a certain level to fight a boss or to get enough gold to buy an item you needed to get pass a particular point in the game or even to get abilities and such for your characters.

As new formats capable of holding more memory became available it was unnecessary to pad RPGs with grinding as games could be longer in length now. So by the PSone Era excessive grinding wasn't needed.

@Don I think Final Fantasy VI onwards didn't require grinding. At least I don't remember getting stuck. I think if a game has a job system like FFV, or creature development like Pokemon, Shin Megami Tensei or Xenoblade 2. Expect a grind.

There are plenty of Modern RPGs that don't require level grinding. Final Fantasy VII Remake, Ys VIII/IX, Tales of Arise, Trials of Mana are some good ones.

Truth be told I don't really find modern RPGs to be grindy unless you're deliberately avoiding enemies. I feel like only the older ones from the 80s and early 90s required that.

Whenever I thought I needed to grind in most modern RPGs it was normally just because I didn't completely understand the gameplay mechanics. There were many times when I would hit a wall but all I really needed to do was switch up my approach.

Most modern RPGs aren't too grindy IMO, unless you're looking for one that hearkens back to the "good old days" (Octopath) or are trying for 100% completion. I do agree that some can feel quite bloated in order to extend playtime, but this tends to depend on how much of the game's world the player wants to invest themselves into.

Even those who have more classic gameplay have some welcome QoL improvements, such as an encounter slider (Bravely Default/Second on 3DS), visible encounters instead of random ones (Most Switch Pokemon titles barring the main overworld in BDSP), and in-game difficulty switching.

NBA 2K22 — it's the most game grinding rpg now, for me at least. It's cause you need to upgrade your character, physical strength, skills, overall average skills, etc.

You would have had me if you said more older rpg, but modern rpgs don’t really do this, yes there’s still grinding, but it not really as bad as it used to be.

@markmarkmark That games an rpg?

Pokémon Diamond/Pearl were damn near infuriating in that respect, with extremely drawn out battles and slow as hell damage meters. Even then, I suspected that it was their cynical way of artificially prolonging the game, which otherwise would have taken half the time (maybe even less) to complete.

Platinum improved upon Diamond/Pearl noticeably, but it was still problematic.

It's also why I didn't enjoy HeartGold/SoulSilver as much as the original Gen II games as they used the same engine as Diamond/Pearl. None of the wild Kanto Pokémon had received a level buff either, which made it incredibly frustrating to grind for the final boss. And as much as I love Gen II, I haven't completed HG/SS for that reason.

@Silly_G
And yet some peoples complaining for permanent EXP Share, the features that made the game less frustrating, but I guess some peoples are masochist, they like to being tortured by frustrating games to feel like a real gamer. Something that really uninteresting for me.

@Anti-Matter Er, I don't think that there Masochist just because they want to have an option, never said they didn't want it in the game, they wanted the option, to turn it off, for whatever reason. But are you saying that anyone who plays a hard game likes to torture them self's?

If that how the dev intended it fine, but it wasn't in the OG's, and other pokemon games let you turn it off, so I thinks its pretty understandable people would want to turn it off.

I thought EXP share was a real help but the only difference I think it made was me grinding levels faster, playing through the base game, unless your careful, you might have a knocked out pokemon or two, are are going to get no EXP.

I also think they were more so talking about how the originals had heathbars that took, forever! And if you watch a video it really does seem like forever, to go down!

@Snatcher : I agree that EXP Share should absolutely be optional. It does get annoying when one Pokémon is over-levelled, as each Pokémon has its own EXP yield, and EXP is further scaled in proportion to the recipient's level.

As glad as I am that grinding seems to be a thing of the past for the most part in the Pokémon games, we should still have the option. And hey, some people may prefer having it off simply to prolong the life of the game, and that's fine too, but others shouldn't have to put up with a more tedious style of play if that is their preference. Everybody wins.

I think Legends: Arceus is pretty balanced in that you can capture an under-leveled Pokémon and get it to where you need it to be fairly quickly, especially with Blisseys and Garchomps roaming the land.

I don't find the Pokemon games to be particularly grindy (that said, I've been playing since Red and Blue). If you play through battling only the trainers you should be able to beat all the gyms, E4 members, etc., with a little skill. Grinding acts as an option for people less experienced with the game. I do imagine this can be tedious - but I think this is better resolved by some difficulty option - as I find the Exp Share in its current state to completely disrupt all level balancing.

This! Yes! There was absolutely no reason they couldn’t mKe it optional, it was in the game, they made it optional before I believe what made this so different?, it could be a win-win situation, but nooo, for some reason they made it difficult, even tho people were asking for the most simple thing ever!

Everything you said about the grinding I agree with!

Legends definitely fixed that problem, During the final battle, and was able to go back and get Pokémon I wanted and level them up with vary little difficulty.

late reply but...
well... not in the strictest sense of the word, but yeah it's an RPG? maybe just for me, since RPG is role playing game... 😅

but yeah, I get what you mean.

With "Easy Mode" and "cheat DLCs" (that make the game even easier), compulsory JRPG grinding is a thing of the past. I only grinded in SMT because I wanted to earn my way up the ranks. I do fall into temptations and use the DLCs though when the grind gets too boring. But that just goes to show that you have options not to grind nowadays.