Dude... that's OVERKILL. [mild spoilers perhaps? :d]

[Puu]

Though I am going to give Final Fantasy XII as an example, this thread will not be limited to talk of Final Fantasy XII overkilling only <3

So, today, I went on to play Final Fantasy XII again. It must be noted that currently... I alternate between replaying Suikoden III, and my first playthroughs of Suikoden V and Final Fantasy XII whenever I get on the PS2 with bits of Dance Dance Revolution sprinkled all over... See, I'm currently just at Bhujerba, shortly after finally getting all of my playable charas. My next area would be King Raithwall's tomb but... I'm not going there... yet :)

I mentioned to my friend that, at this point of time, I have all my techniques, gambits, and magicks available at that point of the game bought. Also, Ashe and Penelo have nearly maxed their accessories and techniques licenses respectively... aside from getting quite a lot of their augments taken. :D

She had this to say to me;

"Dude... that's OVERKILL."

And I don't even feel like stopping there yet. Must. Get. Forgotten Grimoires. And more Licenses. Has anyone else felt this disturbing need to OVERKILL?

I remember doing this for Thousand Arms -- since there were no restrictions for a certain cave you don't enter until much later in the game, I tried my luck with it (it reminds me of the Matilda Glitch)... the result is an 0-10 physical damage from bosses for the rest of the game.

...sooo~ Anyone? :D I'm sure we've all done this. Too much time on hands = deadly XD

[Admiral Ackbar]

I've been doing this in FF12 too actually. I refuse to move on with the story until I have ever spell, weapon, item, and piece of loot at the first opportunity. I also train like mad. Golden Amulets help.

I'm currently at the point where I'm supposed to head south of Giza, when it first starts to rain there, but you can sneak up into Mosphoran / Salika / Nabreus / Nabudis when that happens. My party is level 45 (end-game level) and I have the Zodiac Spear. My characters have 70-80% of their license boards completed.
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[Seraphblade]

I do that in every rpg. I did it in Thousand Arms too, the final boss never did more than 15 damage to me per turn.

In Final Fantasy X, well...lets just say every character has 99,999HP, 9999MP, 255atk, and so on. Sure, it did take me 160 hours to fill up the entire sphere grid with every character and customized the perfect armors for everyone, but it was pretty fun.

Probably in my 6th or so run through of suikoden II, I tried the Matilda glitch and and dragon armor glitch. I haven't tried the instant level 99 glitch yet though.

In Castlevania SOTN, one of the greatest PSOne classics, I managed to get Alucard to level 98. I'm on my way to 99 but it's taking forever because everything is giving me 1 exp point.

I'm still working on suikoden III, but the potch limit is making it difficult to buy the best equipment for every character.

I guess I'm too persistent. I remember spending 200 turns in a boss battle in FF9 just to steal one measly item, in which I was able to buy later in the game. All that frustration for nothing...

I spend way to much time beefing my characters. Maybe I need a new hobby XD

[Yvl]

o.o;;

I specifically take measures AGAINST things like that on my first playthrough. What fun is it if you are already at god status before you even get past the second or third level? FFs are way too easy as it is, too.
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[The Chizen Star]

I did this on my last play through of Star Ocean 2. Before the end of the first disc, I had the sword Eternal Sphere, and all my characters about 10-20 levels higher than would be required to defeat the enemies at that point. Through the rest of the game, I would just spend hours and hours levelling in each dungeon. I believe I also got the reaction 'Wow, that's overkill!" from a friend :D And it was. I massacred each of the ten wise men in just a few seconds.
I usually don't spend a lot of time beefing my characters in RPGs; at least not on the first play through. I'm always too excited about moving the plot along, but get hung up on difficult battles. On the second play though, I usually spend so much time in preparation that I own every enemy I come across.

EDIT: Um...why did my post appear in the middle of the thread and not at the bottom?
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[Puu]

[Archy]

I do that for anything beyond the first playthrough. I use the first playthrough to gauge how much I need to beef up to kick insane ass in the following playthroughs.

.... Makes me want to pick up FF12 again and play, although I'm incredibly poor on cash and underleveled.
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[Yvl]

[Himuro]

Level whoring makes games boring. I find them much more fun, and far more strategic if I just get spells/levels/whatever as I play the game, as in, don't run away from battles and such.
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She knows stuff.

[Puu]

[Yvl]

There are also a couple of people I know that will restart their game if they find that they've missed something, no matter how small it may be, and no matter how far in the story they may be. And there are people who put limits on themselves (mostly in FF games cuz they're so easy alot of the time) to make the game more challenging. There are many ways of playing RPGs.
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[Oppenheimer]

Yeah I can't say I've ever wanted to spend that much time on a game. I go for the plot more so than the levelling up. However, I do like to be a bit ahead of the game if I can help it, so that it's rather easy. I dislike excessive challenge, but there's a big difference between being a few levels above the enemies and doing 99 999 999 damage with every hit. In fact, I don't like bosses to die in one hit. That kind of happened on FFX when I got the legendary weapons and had Ultima on quatra and mimic. The final boss died in like 2 rounds :(
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[Inko]

I'm with Himuro on this one, power-leveling is kind of boring to me. It's like taking all of the stratagy out of the combat and such, and stratagy is something I emensly enjoy. It's like saying "oh, watch as I push this one button and blow up the world".

[Arenegeth]

I tread carefully in this thread since it has a lot of spoilers about Final Fantasy XII and the game just got released in Europe…

But I don’t agree with “overkill” if I want to actually play the game as it was meant to be, doing that makes it well pointless and technically cheating…

So if you like to cheat your way through things you can “overkill” if you want to do things properly you don’t…

If you want to cheat and since these games are solo there’s nothing wrong with that but please recognize it as such…

However I will not consider this as cheating if this is not the first time you’re playing the game since you already did things the right way I suppose you deserve a faster easier way through second time around if you are there for the story or sidequests…
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"I am ye who walks his own path and thus I walk alone"

[Ujitsuna]

If you put in the time and work, why shouldn't you be able to beat enemies more easily? That and the fact that no one's being forced to spend time levelling up and getting stronger.