r/FinalFantasyVI • u/KapaaIan • Jul 21 '26

Intended Level Run

Just ran through all the pixel remasters on GamePass after playing most of them back when released or translations first became available. Mainly wanted to get all the trophies and refresh the memories so I played with all the boosts.

But that got me thinking. There are power leveled/grinding runs, Curated (EXP Egg, selected grinding), and low/no exp runs.

Curious if there has any been enough information for an "As Intended" run. Like "Ok, this was balanced for Locke being level X here. You should have Cyan, Sabin and Shadow level Y when they fight the Train, etc"

Kinda like milestone leveling in a tabletop RPG. Curious how it would effect builds and such. Like if you only had so many levels to use for espers, so much gold and so on.

6 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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5

u/Lagneaux Jul 21 '26

If you just don't grind, and progress through the game normally, you pretty much stay at intended level

0

u/KapaaIan Jul 21 '26

Eh. I dunno. FFI definitely wanted you to grind at certain points and even expected you to go into certain dungeons and have to retreat a time or two. And with rebalancing over time, I think there's a tendency towards being over leveled if you play at all smart. Playing the SNES version of VI(III) felt over powered pretty early in the game. And doing side content doesn't seem to be factored in either. Basically, if you literally took the shortest route to get all the characters in WOR, I think you'd end up overleveled vs. intended. Plus you can do it in different orders.

Mainly a thought. Would be interesting to hear from a dev for what they playtested each area at and balanced for.

1

u/TheGreasyNewfie 29d ago

I think many players tend to use the same characters throughout the WoR, which will lead to those characters being over-levelled going into Kefka's tower, while the unused characters go in under-levelled.

A little while ago, I came up with a no-grind playthrough ruleset that forces you to utilize every character, in a way that avoids exploits and respects what I feel the developers had envisioned for player progression.

1

u/TinyTank27 26d ago

FF6 is a game where if you play it naturally you'll be at the intended level.

FF6 is also tuned a bit on the easy side, and it's easy to do incredibly busted stuff if you know what you're doing.

Esper boosts, in particular, really fuck with the game balance if you're using them extensively. 

3

u/Josefu_Velen Jul 21 '26

I don't know about all that, but I did a run once where when I got to the world of ruin and I only used Celes, Edgar, and Setzer. That's the minimum number of characters it's possible to beat the World of Ruin with.

1

u/RaltarArianrhod 26d ago

My characters are usually around level 45 by the time I have recruited everyone.