i like to grind the ladies

And this is exactly why I don't play JRPGs anymore. Its not that I don't like them but I really don't have the time to invest in a JRPG. But I still want to check out Valkyria Chronicles though.

This is a fantastic rant and one I've been hoping to hear for awhile. Grinding seems like an outdated mechanic which symbolizes progression but doesn't actually entail it. It's always seemed weird to me that the gaming culture has readily accepted it as a legitimate manner of gameplay. My younger niece used to call Pokemon the A button game because she felt like all she did was push A over and over and over.

And then I realized she was right. And in a game like Pokemon it's even more noticeable because your attacks kill everything in one hit after the first hour or so.

Hate to say it.. but it definitely shows that you have no finished any JRPG's when you assume that every one of them requires you to grind in order to beat them. Take FFVII for example. I never once grinded on anything and I was able to beat the game. Now, granted, I wasn't able to defeat some of the "special" side monsters, like the Weapons.. but I didn't really care about that. I was more interested in progressing through the story.

So again, that was an example of a game that rewarded you for grinding, if you chose to, but it wasn't a requirement.

Chrono Trigger is another one that instantly comes to mind. In fact, by god, if you haven't beaten Chrono Trigger, what the hell are you doing?

can't view the video yet: work block.

But, I respectfully have two name change suggestions:

Ant Rant
Burch BAAAAWW <---self deprecation FTW

@XanderSan
"I do enjoy grinding on occasion, or rather I enjoy the aquisition of power. The satisfaction of 'aquiring' being something heightened by the amount of effort I've put into it"

But you haven't put any effort into it. You aren't solving a puzzle or challenging yourself in any way. Ultimately, grinding is just a testament to your patience.

It's like the ultimate staring contest.

I only Grinded in Pokemon for EVs, and while they didn't pay off, it felt good to see my Electrode with it's super high Speed stat.

That an E4, and I really didn't need it, the guides just made me paranoid and I soon found that that Alakazam is still fucking beast.

I also grinded in KH2 for the Final Form, but I never got it....

PS - Anthony, why're you trying to drop the Rev moniker?

Star Ocean: Till The End of Time is the single example for why I will never play (Or, at least, enjoy) another JRPG. That game was so bad, so unrewarding and so grindy that it almost seems to expect you to grind for hours JUST in case. It locks you into some places where you cannot get out to get health potions or even grind in the first place.

That point is why, after so many years, I still haven't completed it, and never will. I hate it enough that, when I played a couple bigger name JRPG's demos, I felt a little sick and scornful.

To sum it up, I hate JRPGs as a whole because Star Ocean brings them all down.

I love the mario and luigi games. I also love the Mario rpgs. Such as Paper mario 1+2 (F' super paper mario) and Super Mario RPG. 1 of the things I love the most about it is the thing I think should be in all RPG's. I should be able to go through the game beating every enemy I come across(ie all the random battles), without grinding(running around in the same area beating foo's). I hate grinding. It gets boring fast. In fact if I have the ability Ill cheat. Not by like using gameshark to level to 99, but if its a game that requires grinding I might say... "Grind" to the level it recommends in a guide. A well crafted RPG should never require grinding.

Also mario's RPGs real time elements are wonderful imo. It makes the battles so much more fun. You never feel like your just pressing the a button, but your part of the battle.

Finally THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. I noticed you moved to the right side of the video. I thank you SOOOOOO MUCH. This removed the annoying hand off the frame thing. Sure your hand goes off frame, but its not as Jaring as when half your hand used to disapear off the frame.

I don't think this even needs to be ranted about: who actually thinks grinding is a good gaming mechanic?

That said, I find grinding therapeutic, so I actually don't mind it, but fuck if I'll say it's "worth having around".

I got jigawatts for days, son!

I've never had a problem with grinding myself.

The only times I've ever had to grind was when I avoided battles for as long as possible (escaping and so on). And then I run into a boss who, if I hadn't run away as much as I did, would have been a fairly balanced fight. But because I did run from so many fights up to that point I get my ass handed to me.

Oh, I was just thinking of FFVII when it popped up on screen. I got my ass handed to me on a few of the Weapon Bosses, namely Ruby and Emerald, so I thought I should level up. In the process i figured that the end boss would be way hard if sub bosses were this difficult so I leveled up to 99. I got to Sephiroth, summoned Knights of the Round and the game was over. Thats when I realized I had wasted a lot of time. I didn't even get to enjoy the final boss fight. I pwned Sephiroth and it almost seemed trivial to me. Don't get me wrong i enjoy my JRPGs immensely and I loved FFVII but grinding isn't always your friend. I don't even blame FFVII for the triviality of the final boss fight. That was all my doing.

I think grinding has something to do slightly with that inherent gamer need to grow more powerful and stronger, faster, better than everything else in the game. I love to be powerful but I agree that games need to rely on something else.

Its funny to me because if you grind in a JRPG its normal, and you're right, people will defend it to the death. Grind in a MMO and suddenly the DEVelopers turn into DEVils for making you do it and the cry goes up "TIME SINK, GIVE ME REAL CONTENT!"

I just can't handle grinding anymore. I tried to do it in FFXII and got bored and stopped playing. Grinding now ruins games for me. I just don't have that kind of time.

Grinding has kept me from finishing a lot of jRPGs. It's the tediousness of it all. I would say it kind of depends though. The battle system the jRPG provides is crucial. If I'm having fun grinding for hours on end, then why the hell not? I'm down for it. I also find that if my grinding is helping me complete a side task or chore, such as a quest or learning new abilities, then it helps soften the inevitable feeling of not wanting to grind. One example is Final Fantasy IX, where the abilities you learn comes from whatever armor or weapon your possessing. Being the OCD gamer I am, I want my characters to learn every possible thing they can. The only way you can learn these abilities is by filling its meter through battles, so I'm killing two birds with one stone, leveling my characters and learning them new abilities.

I'm not a huge fan of grinding, but I don't always mind it. For example, I'm playing FFVI Advance, and so far haven't had to resort to heavy grinding. On the rare occasion that a boss has beaten me, I've found that adjusting my battle strategy has worked. And I didn't even have any trouble with Ultima/Atma Weapon on the Floating Continent. Maybe I just leveled up a lot without having the intention of "must battle for EXP?" I don't know. Also, someone mentioned Pokémon. When I played it as a kid, I nearly always used my starter, so it ended up a good 20 levels or so higher than the rest of my team. Later on, I started working on balancing my team, using different Pokémon in different situations. It makes the grinding experience a little more interesting and a little more strategic. Plus, in the later areas of the game, you can level up easily by setting a low-level monster at the front of your party. Twice the results with half the work!

If anything, I think random battles are my least favorite RPG mechanic, which is partly why I love the Mario RPG games so much.

"[...]who actually thinks grinding is a good gaming mechanic?"

Anyone who pays to play an MMO.

:\

Fantastic rant that I wholeheartedly agree with. The idea of grinding as a necessary part of the gameplay is something I've hated for a long time, It's one of the main reasons I've never been able to get into the JRPG genre. Now and again I'll play some Disgaea and I picked up FF: Tactics A2 which are more to my liking. I thought Valkyria Chronicles had some good moments, particularly when the levels felt like the 'skirmish' modes in RTS games. However, when it took a more prescriptive tone that required a very specific sequence of events to take place in a certain order I stopped enjoying it. I would actually have preferred them to go much further down the raw strategic route, although that's mainly a personal preference because I much prefer strategy games.

And yet, millions of people are impatiently awaiting Diablo.

I completely agree with everything in this rant, excellent.

I haven't played all that many JRPG's, but I can say that in my 3 playthroughs of Final Fantasy VII, I never needed to grind once. I never tried to tackle the WEAPONs or anything, but I could beat the entirety of the main quest without having to run around in a circle on the main map before I could beat the next boss. I did lose to bosses, many times, but when I did I realized that my failure wasn't due to a low level, but rather a poor strategy. I went back to Demon's Gate, por ejemplo, and decided to set up Barriers and whatnot, or whatever. Eventually, somewhere between the 2nd and 10th try, I'd get it. No grinding.

Also, never grinded (ground?) in Diablo either.

Plenty of RPGs have absolutely no grinding in them. Take the Suikoden series, for example. The experience system is weighted, meaning you'll that you only need to win one or two fights in whatever dungeon you're in at the time before you're ready to take on the boss. The only way you wouldn't be able to tackle a boss in a Suikoden series would be if you ran away from practically every single fight in the entire dungeon.

That being said, I get that you're actually complaining about grinding and not necessarily about JRPGs as a whole, but I still don't understand where you're coming from. I've completed every main Dragon Quest game (except for VI and IX) and never did any grinding in any of them. Although, I was so taken with the original Dragon Quest that I was probably doing a whole lot of grinding without realizing it. I was just having so much fun exploring the world and discovering new monsters and towns that I never stopped to think about how totally OP my hero had become.

I've played a ridiculous number of RPGs, but I've never really had this problem where I had needed to grind in order to continue (optional bosses notwithstanding). I find that if you're not constantly running away from fights, you're not going to have a problem advancing. If I feel like tackling Unlimited Idalecio or Gabriel(le?) Celeste, however, that's another matter altogether. That would take like a year and a half of grinding. Thank God it's optional.

I'm pretty surprised this topic hadn't been brought up ages ago.
I have lot of friends who are rabid JRPG fans, and I just watch in awe as they willingly endure endless level grinding. I don`t get it at all. The only JRPGs I like are Final Fantasy, Golden Sun, and the Mario RPGs, mainly because I have never felt the need to take a few hours just to grind in any of these games (the first 3 Final Fantasy games not included). If I get trounced in a boss battle, it is often a matter of fine-tuning my strategy or finding a boss`s weakness rather than trudging through a horde of easily defeated monsters over again for all eternity. Anthony, you totally rattled my brain when you expressed your dislike of Metroidvanias in your last rant but I am in total agreement with you for this one.

i like grinding. its a feeling of accomplishment when i get to that goal level.