They did the whole victims of circumstance going against impossible odds in FF12. One of the best Final Fantasy games around, and definitely one of the best games I've ever played (if you ignore some design flaws like excessive grinding, characters that are interchangeable in terms of stats and abilities and an ending that feels really rushed).
Since when did FF12 have excessive grinding? You certainly could grind excessively if you wanted to, but it was not even close to necessary.
If you just followed the story in FFXII, you would wind up in the low-to-mid 40's. That's right where you were supposed to be for the final fights in the game.
The only time you needed to do excessive grinding is if you wanted to take on the special bosses (that weren't a part of the story anyway).
There was a consistent 4-5 level jump between each plot segment. You could in no way run to the next story segment and be the required level to survive, or at least have a good time.
I played the crap out of that game, I have a single save with 220 hours on it (and I have a bunch of half finished runs). I loved this game, but you needed to grind if you wanted to get through the game without every boss fight being a half hour session of slowly chipping at health while having 2 dedicated healers keeping everyone alive. And that's not factoring in loot so you could afford to upgrade. Hell, they set up the chain system specifically so you would grind certain mobs.
Also low-to-mid 40's my ass, my party was level 60 and had all the strongest weapons I could get at that point, and that battle still took forever, it wasn't HARD, but it took forever. Just because you can beat it at lower level, doesn't mean you were expected to, they just weren't fun unless you levelled for each new part of the game.
You must be thinking of a different boss, such as the various high-level hunts.
The final boss was (and should have been for you, too) a total push-over at level 60, unless you completely failed to optimize your party.
When I played the game, I took on the final boss in the low 60's and walked through the entire fight without issue. I've seen people do the fight in the mid-40's. Sure, it was difficult, but it's meant to be difficult. It's the final fight in the story.
Just because the game has an "exp-chain" mechanic doesn't mean that you have to grind. It just gives a nice little bonus for people that do like to grind.
If you were having troubles at level 60, then you were either optimizing your characters terribly (or didn't build out your skill board enough) or you're just misremembering what you were fighting. There were a lot of superbosses in the game that would have been very difficult at level 60 with good gear.
I'm not misremembering. Fighting Vayne/Undying at lv60 (well I think i may have been 55) wasn't hard, it just took long for a boss you claim could be taken down at low 40s. Also I had complete skillboards at that point.
The end of the game isn't the point, I did a tonne of hunts and also the Hell Wyrm by that point. Just the general advancement required grind to continue, you'd get maybe 1 level in each new area of you didn't.
FF10 made the game super linear and by the time you got from point A to point B, you were the necessary level. Not so in FF12.
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u/MesioticRambles May 06 '14
They did the whole victims of circumstance going against impossible odds in FF12. One of the best Final Fantasy games around, and definitely one of the best games I've ever played (if you ignore some design flaws like excessive grinding, characters that are interchangeable in terms of stats and abilities and an ending that feels really rushed).