History Main / ForcedLevelGrinding

*** The main storyline can be beaten with no grinding, but then as soon as the postgame starts, everyone goes cuckoo for Treasure Maps. If you do a spot of exploring with your new GlobalAirship, it won't take you long to find an easy quest that gives you an interestingly-named Treasure Map. Hm, wonder who this [[VideoGame/DragonQuestIII Baramos]] fellow is, and [[BonusBoss why his name]] [[NintendoHard is on this map]]...and the false sense of security combined with the total lack of in-game warning (apart from the name alone, for ''Dragon Quest'' vets) might lead you to believe that this couldn't possibly be ''that'' hard. Also, the difficulty levels of the "normal" Treasure Map grottoes are fond of [[DifficultySpike spiking]].

* ''VideoGame/YakuzaLikeADragon'' for the most part {{Avert|edTrope}}s it, but there are two egregious points where it's played straight. The first is in chapter 12, which heralds a DifficultySpike to the tune of average {{Mooks}} being about 8 levels higher than they were in the previous chapter and ThatOneBoss in the form of [[spoiler:Majima and Saejima]]; the game recommends you go into the Sotenbori Underground Arena to strengthen yourself, but it's much more of a necessity than the game makes it out to be. After that, in the {{Post End Game|Content}}, there's the Millennium Tower Challenge which requires ''at a minimum'' that your characters be at the level cap and job level cap (both 99)-- the game can be beaten on normal difficulty around level 60 and job level 30-35, with grinding otherwise only necessary at the previous example.

** At Least with Renewal, the grinding has been drastically reduced to a some sort of ''AntiGrinding'': You are forced to move and level with mob of your same or a little more level, but mob of your level is weaker to the point that you can pretty much solo most of the game, until you get to [[DifficultySpike level 96 or so.]]

** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' it's usually possible to keep up to pace without grinding, but completing the land of summoned monsters is impossible without grinding Rosa to level 36 (40 in the DS remake), at which point she learns the spell necessary to defeat the PuzzleBoss there. The [=DS=] remake, on the other hand, is a bit less merciful to players who've been working their way straight through. Some of the monsters-in-a-box which were easy enough in the original now provide one-shot kills to a non-ground party, and heaven help you if you haven't built up at ''least'' 10 levels before you're able to survive fights at all on the Lunar Surface. This especially holds true for the [[BonusDungeon Lair of the Father]], where the average enemies tend to eat you for breakfast. Strangely, the ''BonusBoss'' is pretty easy, with the right strategy. On the other hand, the accelerated rate at which you gain levels in the [=DS=] version means that Rosa reaches level 40, and learns the spell noted above, well ''before'' reaching that part of the game. Also worth noting is a bit of forced [[MoneyGrinding gil grinding]] in FFIV -- specifically, grinding to buy armor that [[TheHero Cecil]] can wear [[GoodCostumeSwitch post-class change]] so he doesn't have to fight naked anymore (it's a bad idea to fight like that when one is the StoneWall, after all). There's only one armorer in the one town available, and the only wares he's got on offer cost about 15,700 gil for the whole offering -- roughly four times the amount required to buy the bundle in the last town. And the monsters in the few areas available to you? Conspicuously ''not'' [[MoneySpider Money Spiders]] -- as in, it doesn't really make a difference that you just went through a dungeon, the ''best'' encounters there gave double-digit gil ''tops''. While this can be partially alleviated by selling the old armor that Cecil can't use anymore, because KarlMarxHatesYourGuts, it won't be anywhere near enough to cover the cost of the new armor on its own.

** In ''Revelation'', the majority of the characters join much later than they did in other routes - only a fraction join in a relatively timely matter[[hottip:*:Azura, Mozu, Gunter, Hayato, Rinkah, Felicia&Jakob, the Ninjas, Orochi, Charlotte, Benny, Sakura, Takumi, Camilla, and their retainers]] compared to their Birthright or Conquest joining spots. Unfortunately, their starting levels and stats weren't adjusted to their new joining points - resulting in many characters being almost ''dangerously'' underleveled. It's a good thing that Revelation allows you to to scout the map for experience punching bags, as a lot of the cast requires a bit of babying ''to allow them to survive their joining maps''.

* In ''VideoGame/Legaia2DuelSaga'', there's a particular BeefGate that you ''need'' to reach a certain level to pass. Elfin is relatively easy to beat -- ''if'' you've reached Level 9, gained a fourth Art Block, and know at least one four-hit Art. If you don't, then there's just no way to pump out enough damage to kill Elfin before she kills you.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum''. Only, there's just ONE spot that requires forced grinding - the final two bosses, which are quite a leap over the best level Pokémon you can get before that. Other than that, you can avoid any sort of level grinding by just using Pokémon as you catch them, since they're actually at a level that can fight off the opponents of the area! Oh, and if you thought you could just import your Level 100 mons from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, that option isn't unlocked until ''after'' you beat said final bosses.
** Keep in mind, however, that while playing the game, your enemies will (generally) be using {{mons}} that you can obtain over the course of the game and that their stats have to (again, generally) match up. Further, you can catch 'mons with significantly better stat distributions, with usually one core legendary before the Elite Four and Champion. In order to replicate HealthDamageAsymmetry, your opponent's levels are much higher (for greater HP) and usually cursed with PoorPredictableRock (so that your attacks hit harder via ElementalRockPaperScissors); it's not impossible to take down a high-level enemy team so long as your team is naturally leveled and you can abuse type advantages. The exception to this rule is Red from ''Gold'', ''Silver'', ''Crystal'', and their remakes, who has insanely high-leveled mons that nothing else in the games come close to.
*** Even then, it's entirely possible to bring Red down with your team still in the low 50's and eligible for Stadium 2 Poké Cup (at least in Gen 2 -- HG/SS made him considerably more powerful, but level is no longer a barrier to tournament entry). The key is that most of his team is quite slow, and the ones that aren't have moves that can be negated entirely. Even in the remakes, it is possible [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukfm9PLMruo&list=SP9EEC7693971B4B37&index=78 to beat Red with a party all at level 50]], or even [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88lOfQAfXpM a party that has never gained any levels, ever]].

** ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiV'' is nice about this... for the first three regions of the game. It's relatively smooth sailing to level 55 for the Nahobino, and while demons tend to require much more EXP to level once they have all their innate skills, fusing them can help keep your roster both uncluttered and up-to-date. Unfortunately, the instant you enter the fourth region after a level 55 boss, you'll find that you have demons in the 60s and low 70s in every direction not far from your arrival point, and the next trio of bosses are all 72. This is the point you either buckle down and grind, or kiss all your [[RareCandy Gospels]] goodbye. Or both. [[spoiler:And you might as well kiss your Gospels goodbye anyway if you're aiming for the secret ending, since you have to kill the game's non-DLC superboss to unlock it.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' requires you to level grind to a certain point in order to continue the [[KillEmAll No Mercy]] path. If your level, or LV, is not high enough before you reach each area's boss, you end up permanently resuming the standard route. Fortunately, after the first area, using a save point tells you exactly how many enemies you need to kill to reach optimum LV to continue the path.

** Thankfully, the [[VideoGame/EarthBound other]] [[VideoGame/{{Mother3}} games]] in the series avert this, for the most part. As long as you don't actively avoid enemies, there's only a few places early on where grinding is really necessary.

* ''VideoGame/OctopathTraveler'': Since there is no LeakedExperience system in the game, you'll probably have to do at least some level grinding in order to keep the party members that you don't use as much strong enough for what you're facing. This is definitely true in the endgame, as the True Final Boss requires you to use all eight of your party members, four for the first phase and the other four for the second.

* ''Videogame/{{DC Universe Online}}'' very much [[AvertedTrope averts]] this. Beating up endless hordes of Mooks, while fun, only gets rewards of some cash, items (mostly VendorTrash at that), and a pittance of XP. Doing all of the missions and sidequests, however, will keep you appropriately leveled for each phase of the game, hitting the Cap of 30 just before the last of the non-postgame content.

** There was one speed-run of the first ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi Mario & Luigi]]'' where the person managed to beat the game ''without ever being hit'', completely taking away the need for any levels at all (besides attack power, of course).
* ''VideoGame/The7thSaga'' for the Super NES is an infamous example. How much grinding is necessary differs from character to character (you could choose several beginning [=PCs=]), but gaining a few levels from town to town is absolutely necessary. In some areas it's possible to find monsters that one-shot you, leading to grinding 5 to 10 levels just to stand a chance..
** In a case of DifficultyByRegion, the English version has lower stat growths than Elnard, the Japanese version. Elnard provides a increase to base stat gains for every tenth level; e.g. a character who gains +3 to a stat per level will gain +4 per level from 11-20, +5 from 21-30, and so on. The 7th Saga sticks to base stat gains forever; a level 20 character has all stats 10 less than they should be, level 30 is 30 points under par, level 40 is 60 points under par, and so on...
** The 7th Saga ALSO increases the stats of random encounters compared to Elnard. The localizers were deliberate about their DifficultyByRegion.
** The game's story has you and 6 other Apprentices all competing at a common goal. Depending on the circumstances you may have to fight one of the others, and they employ LevelScaling. The problem here is that enemy Apprentices ''keep their Elnard stat growths''. The more you level grind, the harder they become. AntiGrinding and ForcedLevelGrinding in the same game!
*** It's often said that TheMedic Valsu becomes [[{{Unwinnable}} impossible to defeat]] at too high a level, but [[UrbanLegendOfZelda fortunately this is a myth]]. His ally version learns a GameBreaker spell called Elixir that full-heals both HP ''and'' MP, but his enemy version can never cast this. That said, lack of Elixir will not stop the BadassPreacher from murdering you with his ''other'' healing, buffs, and ice magic.

* ''VideoGame/ArcTheLad'': The final boss in part 2 is so strong that, unless you have a powered up Choko in your party, you're going to have to level grind a ton if you want to even be able to scratch him. It's not recommended to take him on with a party below level 100.
** You can also expend 2-3 hours of real time constantly buffing Elc and Gruga over and over before taking a single swing each at him and then running back out of range to repeat the process until he dies.

* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireI'' had ridiculous hard boss battles at some points of the game, depending on whether or not you used MoneyGrinding to buy guaranteed critical items. Problem? Every time someone new joined the group, XP gained from monsters dropped. At the end of the game, you have 8 people in your party and the best fight in the game gives 3600 XP. It takes several ''hundred thousand'' to gain a level once you got to the 30s-40s. Trying to finish the game at the Lv30-40 range is not pretty as some of the later bosses can chew you up.

** Not to mention, how much MoneyGrinding is required to buy the equipment from the first town. 1 Defense is 1 Defense, and it IS necessary otherwise you will get your butt handed to you after the first 'plot event' that leaves your main character alone. Thankfully, [[GuideDangIt going fishing]] is the fastest way to build up said money. Catching Fish means buying all of that equipment in 30 minutes instead of ''2+ hours''.

* In the NES version of ''VideoGame/{{Crystalis}}'', you cannot damage enemies or bosses if you aren't sufficient level. The GBC version removes the forced aspect, but the boss battles will be difficult if you are underleveled.

** The second DBZ game actually did a complete turnaround, and made you spend most of the game with a 5-man party of powerful characters who were nearly guaranteed to win any given battle. The only point in the game where you're really at a risk is the part where Krillin needs to travel to the Eldest alone, at which point NOT running from every battle will get you killed extremely fast. After running from the 3 or so battles you end up entering, he gains a massive powerup, and you're back to dominating everything you see again. Balance was not the strong point of these games (there's also the training stages where Goku plays blackjack with his gravity machine and gets a game over if he loses, but these are pure luck and don't really count. And you can't grind to increase your chances of winning either).
** ''Dragon Ball Z''[='=]s ''[[VideoGame/DragonBallZTheLegacyOfGoku Legacy of Goku]]'' RPG trilogy for Gameboy Advance did this several times. The first game was the worst offender, as not only was the level cap {{absurdly high|LevelCap}} (requiring you to go out of your way to grind at several points to reach the cap), but that reaching the cap was ''required'' to stand a chance to beat the FinalBoss. The later two games smoothed things out significantly, as while it still had gates that required you to reach a certain level with a specific character to open them, these were closer to plot-gates, keeping you out of an area until both the story needed you there ''and'' you had a character at the requisite level to actually survive there -- the game doesn't even ever require you to open the gates for reaching a character's level cap except for HundredPercentCompletion.

*** The final boss, the Dragonlord, was believed to be impossible to defeat without grinding to at least level 17, or 18 if you don't know his entire moveset and are lucky. (A tool-assisted SpeedRun does it at level 7 with the aid of very heavy luck manipulation. It has also been achieved without tools, but level 7 is the ''absolute lowest'' level because you ''must'' have the Sleep spell) The Dragonlord's final form (both his melee attacks and his fire breath) does more damage per turn than any curative item can heal, and there are no magic-restoring items, so the only way to beat him is to hit him until you run low on life, then casting your best cure spell (Healmore). The battle is completely decided by whether or not you'll knock off all his HP before running out of MP, which again is decided by which level you're on.

*** It doesn't help that the bosses (and a few other tough monsters) secretly regenerate large amounts of HP every turn, so your really need to keep up a sustained attack for the duration of the battle if you want to win.

** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII''. You started at level one. If you weren't at least level five when you entered the very first dungeon, you died a horrible death before even making to the entrance. It continues from there.

*** However, due to the fact that you reset to level 1 whenever you switch jobs, there is a gargantuan amount of grinding needed to get yourself back up to scratch when you switch jobs, which is especially punishing if you were higher than level 30. Perhaps the most cruel example is the very powerful Sage job, which you can only obtain ''in the final dungeon''. You have to wonder if its really worth it when you have to grind all the way up when you're in the TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon. If you're the type that changes your mind frequently, grinding can become absolute hell in this game.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestMonsters'': In ''Joker'', when you have to deal with quadrilinear synthesis in order to Catch em' All, you'll have to do a ton of grinding to raise and synthesise the ridiculous requirements, many of which require high end metallic slimes (which in turn require you to get a lot of the very difficult and annoying to get lower end metal slimes). Thankfully, in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestMonstersJoker2'', it's been made somewhat easier. The english release gets Meddle Slimes, which are incredibly easy to catch post-game and turn into metal slimes when caught (allowing you to catch many of them without them becoming harder to scout). Not to mention that post-game, an entire, easy-to-access area composed of almost entirely Liquid Metal Slimes and Metal King Slimes is available, speeding up level grinding much faster.
* ''Dual Orb 2'' did this in a worst possible way. Grinding was obligatory, but too much grinding made the game boring. You couldn't beat even the first boss -- you were too weak, and didn't have money to buy enough potions. But if you spent an hour (better two) fighting the monsters around the starting town (just hold A with a rubber band and press arrows to move), the party became unstoppable until the mid-game. Another hour of grinding in the middle, and there was nothing to fear until the end. Coupled with an ExcusePlot, this made the game very forgettable despite the fairly novel outset.

** When you get [[spoiler:your uber-strong helper EVE]] though, the place is MUCH easier. Unfortunately, [[spoiler:EVE dies as soon as you get to the end]].

** Thankfully, the [[VideoGame/EarthBound other]] [[VideoGame/{{Mother3}} games]] in the series averted this, for the most part. As long as you don't actively avoid enemies, there's only a few places early on where grinding is really necessary.
* Grinding is all the random encounters are for in ''VideoGame/EndlessFrontier''. The game is loaded with bosses, some you'll even encounter a short hallway apart from each other; the normal enemies don't pose any threat, but are needed to stand a chance against the next boss. Also, it takes a long time to grind as it is, and bosses are always around [[MarathonBoss thirty-minutes]] each, so have fun.

** The entirety of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII''. Special mention must be made for [[ThatOneBoss Garuda]], whose intended tactic involves four Dragoons -- all of whom must be raised to workable job levels. In the DS remake, the best jobs were nerfed, and the bosses (and most late-game RandomEncounters) were granted double -- sometimes [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill triple!]] -- turns. Even a properly-ground-out party can be demolished by a Back Attack in the World of Darkness before a single command actually goes off. Although equipping the lowly thief with double Dark Knifes and sitting him in the front row results in hitting the damage cap at level 35. As long as you've ground your job level high enough by stealing from absolutely everything. Even in a heavily-optimized SpeedRun of the NES version, grinds in the Hidden Road; Ancient Ruins; outside of the Ancient's Labyrinth and Cave of Bahamut are needed to survive.
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' it's usually possible to keep up to pace without grinding, but completing the land of summoned monsters is impossible without grinding Rosa to level 36 (40 in the DS remake), at which point she learns the spell necessary to defeat the PuzzleBoss there. The [=DS=] remake, on the other hand, is a bit less merciful to players who've been working their way straight through. Some of the monsters-in-a-box which were easy enough in the original now provide one-shot kills to a non-ground party, and heaven help you if you haven't built up at ''least'' 10 levels before he was able to survive fights at all on the Lunar Surface. This especially holds true for the [[BonusDungeon Lair of the Father]], where the average enemies tend to eat you for breakfast. Strangely, the ''BonusBoss'' is pretty easy, with the right strategy. On the other hand, the accelerated rate at which you gain levels in the [=DS=] version means that Rosa reaches level 40, and learns the spell noted above, well ''before'' reaching that part of the game. Also worth noting is a bit of forced [[MoneyGrinding gil grinding]] in FFIV -- specifically, grinding to buy armor that [[TheHero Cecil]] can wear [[GoodCostumeSwitch post-class change]] so he doesn't have to fight naked anymore (it's a bad idea to fight like that when one is the StoneWall, after all). There's only one armorer in the one town available, and the only wares he's got on offer cost about 15700 gil for the whole offering -- roughly four times the amount required to buy the bundle in the last town. And the monsters in the few areas available to you? Conspicuously ''not'' [[MoneySpider Money Spiders]] -- as in, it doesn't really make a difference that you just went through a dungeon, the ''best'' encounters there gave double-digit gil ''tops''. While this can be partially alleviated by selling the old armor that Cecil can't use anymore, because KarlMarxHatesYourGuts, it won't be anywhere near enough to cover the cost of the new armor on its own.
** And the sequel to that, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIVTheAfterYears'', gives you a choice: You can grind at the end of each chapter/Tale, to take on the utterly murderous [[BonusDungeon Challenge Dungeons]] for items and equipment, and hopefully reach the level cap for that chapter (generally level 40-50ish). OR, if you are impatient to advance the plot, you can import data for the first PointOfNoReturn[[note]]After importing data and starting the Crystals chapter, if you want to go back and do grinding/Challenge Dungeons, you will have to restart the Crystals chapter for the benefits to carry over[[/note]], and play through the first part, collecting party members, etc... and then, you will reach ''another'' PointOfNoReturn. Where you will be stuck [[spoiler:on the moon]], where even the easiest monsters will eat a party under level 40 for breakfast. If you weren't grinding for bonuses and HundredPercentCompletion before, you get to grind for survival now.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' is a veritable grind-fest. There are very tough enemies in Zozo, so you need to grind a bit before going there. Then, [[HarderThanHard immediately afterward]], you face the Opera House. By this point you probably haven't leveled since [[spoiler:getting the Espers]], so [[ThatOneBoss good luck trying to fight]] Ultros [[ThisIsGonnaSuck without]] [[spoiler:magic]]! If you ever wanted have Gau be a useful contributing member of the party, you needed to spend an awful lot of time grinding in the Veldt, where, unfortunately, you don't receive any experience in battle (but you do get magic points at least).
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' has AntiGrinding instead, [[LevelScaling making monsters level up at the same rate as the player's party]]. Too much level grinding will actually make some bosses harder. However, like the previous three, you still needed to take time to grind for ability points on your [=GFs=]. You need to grind for one ability card mod. After that, well... not so much. The bosses and random encounters give you more than enough AP to keep very much ahead of the enemies, if you avoid levelling up. The formula for an enemy's health is (for all enemies, barring omega weapon) x*level+y. x is a number between 100 and 4000, which increases as the story progresses. You may need to grind, but if you do, it'll only be to overcome your own levelling, and the enhanced health it brings foes. It's a very forgiving game. The Grinding is more about the Magic which can be Junctioned to your stats. So you will be spending a lot of time drawing magic from enemies (Who have a limitless supply) and draw points or refining cards to make magic/items.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' also de-emphasizes level grinding but instead requires you to learn abilities from equipped gear, maxing out their AP before a character can use the skill without the item equipped. The system is not conducive to level grinding in this way, as you have to hold off on equipping the strongest new equipment so that you can first master the skills from your old stuff, or just equip items whenever you need their related skills.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', more than anything else, averts this. With a bit of good planning, you can beat the game with completely undeveloped characters. There's only one point at which doing so requires you to go out of your way (to obtain a certain item), and doing so takes maybe half an hour tops.

** Once you reach Gran Pulse in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'', you ''can'' technically go to your next destination right away... you just [[BeefGate REALLY]] don't want to. This is one of the ''very'' few case though, where this [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools actually feels like a good thing.]] You see, the entire game up until now was NoSidepathsNoExplorationNoFreedom, so being able to actually explore and do sidequests for once feels immensely satisfying.

** Squeenix is so in love with this concept that they even wedged it into their MascotFighter GaidenGame, ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy''! While LevelGrinding does make it easier to get around some bosses, the simple fact is that if you play each character's "Destiny Odyssey", you'll get them up to around Lv.12 or 15. To attempt the next step in the campaign, "Shade Impulse", you'll want them to be more like Lv.''50''. Can we say FakeLongevity? Considering it takes about four hours to get a character to level 100 on Bonus Experience day (a good chunk of that from level 1 to 30, which takes a while because of the way XP earned is determined), it's really not as bad as it seems. Level grinding isn't enough, though, you also have to grind AP to get all of the character's abilities. Then you have the equipment grind, which is subject to RandomlyDrops. The sequel also adds KP, which is the only currency the Moogles that sell unique items will take and the only way to get it is to beat gates without being over the Bonus Line (ie. level cap) and chaining together as many enemies as possible while fulfilling a battle-specific requirement: without an equipment setup that lets you kill enemies on lv1 with little effort, you'll probably get 30-50 KP per gate at most and that's assuming you chain together as many battles as possible, while the cheapest worthwhile items cost somewhere around 100 KP each and just go up from there.
* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' did this with the second generation characters. Their starting levels were fixed; and at the point in which they join your first generation units will probably be ''far'' higher and maybe even promoted.

** Some characters are, by design, underleveled compared to the point in the story where you are, resulting in you having to level-grind them before they can catch up. Mozu and Charlotte are the most standout examples - Mozu joins at level ''one'' (when your characters are nearing level ten) and with stats to match, whereas Charlotte joins a whole five levels lower than her companion, Benny. However, if you take the time to grind them, [[MagikarpPower you are rewarded quite well]]. It's also worth noting that the trope is actually downplayed here. Firstly, as with Pokemon Black and White, underlevelled units gain experience and levels faster. Secondly, because Attack Stance in this game allows adjacent units to attack enemies alongside the main player/allied unit, both Mozu and Charlotte have more opportunities to safely participate in battles and gain levels without risking being retaliated by the enemy.

* Some of the doors in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' required a card -- or multiple cards -- with a specific color and number in order to go through. Trouble is, a player who hasn't been stocking up will often find that out of ALL the Map Cards they have, the only they need is the ONLY one they don't have. Cue ''numerous'' battles as the player searches for that one stinking card.

* The first ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' game had one spot where, to earn the passcodes to enter the next section of the Net, you were required to have [=MegaMan=] at a certain level and have a certain number of chips in your library. This is the only instance of this in the main story, but in the post-game areas for all the games, it's not uncommon to run into a barrier with a certain condition required to beat it.

** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'' had '''loads''' of forced level grinding. To survive the first dungeon you probably had to grind at least 10 levels, as well as buy new weapons and armour. Not to mention that whenever a new character joined up, they started at level 1, so you '''had''' to grind if you actually wanted to use them. It's worse after [[spoiler:you lose Nei]] because it's likely you'll have to train someone else up from scratch to fill the fourth party space, who will more than likely get killed over and over by robots while you're leveling him/her.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'' had ''Money Grinding''. You can survive the next area just fine without too much level grinding, provided you can afford the ungodly expensive equipment. Oh, and the next town that's five minutes away has a better set of ungodly expensive equipment that you need to buy to survive. Money grinding is almost never worth it in PSIV, though. There are some very expensive equips in the mid- to late-game, but they're generally only worth a point or two of attack or defense. There is one point about 30 to 60 minutes into the game where one could grind for some sweet gear while abusing the temporary aid of much higher-level character, but that's hardly arduous, and entirely un-forced. Doing the sidequests and not running away from battles usually provided enough money and experience to carry you through each new area.

** LevelGrinding in general is not as fruitful as properly customizing your team's skill set and resistances to beat your next challenge. Demons and Personas take a long time to level up, so the length to which you want to push a demon depends on what skill you were aiming for. As for the protagonist, their level determines the highest level of demon they can fuse or recruit, so sometimes you may find yourself grinding so that you can get to fuse the next demon that will be fantastic for the upcoming challenges.

* ''VideoGame/YakuzaLikeADragon'' for the most part {{Avert|edTrope}}s it, but there are two egregious points where it's played strait. The first is in chapter 12, which heralds a DifficultySpike to the tune of average {{Mooks}} being about 8 levels higher than they were in the previous chapter and ThatOneBoss in the form of [[spoiler:Majima and Saejima]]; the game recommends you go into the Sotenbori Underground Arena to strengthen yourself, but it's much more of a necessity than the game makes it out to be. After that, in the {{Post End Game|Content}}, there's the Millennium Tower Challenge which requires ''at a minimum'' that your characters be at the level cap and job level cap (both 99)-- the game can be beaten on normal difficulty around level 60 and job level 30-35, with grinding otherwise only necessary at the previous example.
* Happens a lot in the ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'' series, especially with boss battles, making these a form of BeefGate; eg the giant bee that guards the Bell in ''VideoGame/YsVITheArkOfNapishtim'' will annihilate you the first time you can reach it. And you need a ton of level grinding to beat Zava, the guardian at the entance to the Belltower in ''VideoGame/YsIIAncientYsVanishedTheFinalChapter''. Perhaps the worst offender is the SNES version of ''Wanderers from Ys'', where you often have to run around grinding for about half an hour before you even have a chance at beating a boss, even the early ones in Tigray Quarry. To add insult to injury, the enemy's EXP values decrease with each level, like many other games in the series. A typical ''Ys'' strategy: can't quite beat the boss? Level up one or two times. The next time you fight it you'll do a lot better. Apparently, this was unintentional in the first game. It evidently didn't have a level cap, and Internet walkthroughs for it recommend reaching level 40 before the final boss fight. In the remake, you're capped at level 24, leading to one ''[[MarathonBoss long]]'' final boss fight.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive was another game where the whole point was level grinding, or to be specific, money grinding. All the good upgrades cost tons of money. This is especially egregious in Matrix runs, which are the most profitable runs in the game, the reason being that cyberdeck upgrades will cost you an arm and a leg. To actually beat the game though, it's not necessary to upgrade everything because the main plot quest isn't that difficult and the final boss is a pushover. (More specifically, the final boss can be defeated by your allied shadowrunners with you not doing much of anything.)
** That said, karma grinding is important if you're specializing in Acquisitions and want to run Renraku.

* ''VideoGame/DarkCloud'' had weapon grinding, which was necessary if you didn't want using a particular character to be painful. What made this irritating was the fact that leveling up without the proper attachments on your weapons did virtually nothing, with some attachments being hard to come by. You also had to level up the weapons of six characters individually -- characters who started out with their weapons at rock bottom each time you met one. [[note]] ''VideoGame/DarkChronicle'' (aka ''Dark Cloud 2'') was somewhat better about this, with only two characters who could each wield two weapons, but getting those weapons to be powerful enough to fight bosses still took some doing. [[/note]]

* This is also a major criticism of Creator/ZenStudios's [[VideoGame/ZenPinball virtual pinball tables]]: Their obsession with the SpellingBonus means that to start any modes, you have to shoot something specific a certain number of times. On tables like ''Guardians of the Galaxy'' or ''Portal'', this means everything at the start is locked away and it'll take a long time for things to start happening. This was worse on earlier ones like ''Spider-Man'' or ''Fantastic Four'', where multiple modes could not run simultaneously, meaning there was a lot of nothing going on with one thing happening from time to time.

** Some characters are, by design, underleveled compared to the point in the story where you are, resulting in you having to level-grind them before they can catch up. Mozu and Charlotte are the most standout examples - Mozu joins at level ''one'' (when your characters are nearing level ten) and with stats to match, whereas Charlotte joins a whole five levels lower than her companion, Benny. However, if you take the time to grind them, [[MagikarpPower you are rewarded quite well]].

* Happens for a reason not mentioned above in the second ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'': characters frequently leave your party, and often don't return for a long time. Characters who aren't in your active party gain new abilities less quickly, and characters who aren't in the party at all get almost nothing. Being as this is the usual NintendoHard Mega Ten game, in which specific abilities (especially elemental blocks) are all but necessary to win certain fights, expect to spend a lot of time bringing characters up to speed. Unless you play through the game with three specific characters [[spoiler: Serph, Gale, and Cielo]] out of six, you'll spend anything from five to ten hours grinding on top of the amount of time you already spent grinding. It's about as fun as it sounds.

** ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' enforces ''and'' punishes the player for grinding. A number of quests require you to spend plenty of time dungeon crawling for either a rare creature or a ''specific'' one, but stay in Tartarus too long and the AI will unleash The Reaper, who [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin will kill you dead]]. Any persona holding a heart item will also require grinding before the item will be released, and if you were unlucky enough to fuse an item-holding persona with most of its skills in place, the usual "last skill = item drop" rule becomes "last skill + one more level = item drop." Grinding is also inevitable if you're a level or five away from being able to fuse the next persona in the arcana -- and you can see that its skills will be perfect for that sub-boss that keeps putting your party through a murder-suicide pact. God help you if you attempt to take on the Natural Dancer without Kusi Mitama, the lowest-level persona that will completely nullify the otherwise fatal attacks. You don't have to be high-level to beat the ''boss'', just high-level enough to get the persona that will shield you ''from'' it. In the end, you wind up grinding not because it significantly increases your HP (though that helps) but because you've maxed out your current arsenal and need to trade up. Leveling up tends to attract The Reaper, which returns you to where you were before, allowing you to level up again and, if you're lucky, make an escape in time to keep the level. [[EarnYourFun This is part of the game's appeal.]]
** ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor'' averts this for the most part, but plays it straight if you want to even think of standing a chance against Lucifer. Your team will be around level 50 by the time you can fight him - which is also immediately before the final boss - and will be utterly crushed if you do so without grinding, since he's ''level 99'' and has three phases. His attack range is large to make up for the fact that he doesn't move, and he has a skill called Megidoladyne that hits your entire party on the map every so often. It also gets stronger with each casting, so it will eventually wipe you if you take too long. His final form reflects physical, meaning that if you decide to bring a party member that fights with that instead of a party of spellcasters, your damage will decrease, too. "Fortunately", you only need to grind to the mid 70s to be able to win with the proper strategies and demons, so it's not as awful as other bonus bosses in the series.

* The first ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' game had one spot where, to earn the passcodes to enter the next section of the Net, you were required to have [=MegaMan=] at a certain level and have a certain number of chips in your library. This is the only instance of this in the main story, but in the post-game areas for all the games, it's not uncommon to run into a barrier with a certain condition required to beat it.
* The ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series started in 1987 and there are currently fifteen games in the main series alone. Due to its long history, the series is all over the map on this trope, with some games practically requiring grinding and others [[AntiGrinding actively]] [[LevelScaling discouraging]] it.
** The epilogue stage in the GBA remake of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'', starring all the game's dead characters, is made up of two dungeons, a BonusBoss, and a final boss. Needless to say, since the characters are nowhere near as strong as the main heroes were at the end, you have to do a ''lot'' of grinding to be able to even get near the boss, let alone beat him.
** The entirety of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII''. Special mention must be made for [[ThatOneBoss Garuda]], whose intended tactic involves four Dragoons -- all of whom must be raised to workable job levels. In the DS remake, the best jobs were nerfed, and the bosses (and most late-game RandomEncounters) were granted double -- sometimes [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill triple!]] -- turns. Even a properly-ground-out party can be demolished by a Back Attack in the World of Darkness before a single command actually goes off. Although equipping the lowly thief with double Dark Knifes and sitting him in the front row results in hitting the damage cap at level 35. As long as you've ground your job level high enough by stealing from absolutely everything. Even in a heavily-optimized SpeedRun of the NES version, grinds in the Hidden Road; Ancient Ruins; outside of the Ancient's Labyrinth and Cave of Bahamut are needed to survive.
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' it's usually possible to keep up to pace without grinding, but completing the land of summoned monsters is impossible without grinding Rosa to level 36 (40 in the DS remake), at which point she learns the spell necessary to defeat the PuzzleBoss there. The [=DS=] remake, on the other hand, is a bit less merciful to players who've been working their way straight through. Some of the monsters-in-a-box which were easy enough in the original now provide one-shot kills to a non-ground party, and heaven help you if you haven't built up at ''least'' 10 levels before he was able to survive fights at all on the Lunar Surface. This especially holds true for the [[BonusDungeon Lair of the Father]], where the average enemies tend to eat you for breakfast. Strangely, the ''BonusBoss'' is pretty easy, with the right strategy. On the other hand, the accelerated rate at which you gain levels in the [=DS=] version means that Rosa reaches level 40, and learns the spell noted above, well ''before'' reaching that part of the game. Also worth noting is a bit of forced [[MoneyGrinding gil grinding]] in FFIV -- specifically, grinding to buy armor that [[TheHero Cecil]] can wear [[GoodCostumeSwitch post-class change]] so he doesn't have to fight naked anymore (it's a bad idea to fight like that when one is the StoneWall, after all). There's only one armorer in the one town available, and the only wares he's got on offer cost about 15700 gil for the whole offering -- roughly four times the amount required to buy the bundle in the last town. And the monsters in the few areas available to you? Conspicuously ''not'' [[MoneySpider Money Spiders]] -- as in, it doesn't really make a difference that you just went through a dungeon, the ''best'' encounters there gave double-digit gil ''tops''. While this can be partially alleviated by selling the old armor that Cecil can't use anymore, because KarlMarxHatesYourGuts, it won't be anywhere near enough to cover the cost of the new armor on its own.
** And the sequel to that, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIVTheAfterYears'', gives you a choice: You can grind at the end of each chapter/Tale, to take on the utterly murderous [[BonusDungeon Challenge Dungeons]] for items and equipment, and hopefully reach the level cap for that chapter (generally level 40-50ish). OR, if you are impatient to advance the plot, you can import data for the first PointOfNoReturn[[note]]After importing data and starting the Crystals chapter, if you want to go back and do grinding/Challenge Dungeons, you will have to restart the Crystals chapter for the benefits to carry over[[/note]], and play through the first part, collecting party members, etc... and then, you will reach ''another'' PointOfNoReturn. Where you will be stuck [[spoiler:on the moon]], where even the easiest monsters will eat a party under level 40 for breakfast. If you weren't grinding for bonuses and HundredPercentCompletion before, you get to grind for survival now.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' is a veritable grind-fest. There are very tough enemies in Zozo, so you need to grind a bit before going there. Then, [[HarderThanHard immediately afterward]], you face the Opera House. By this point you probably haven't leveled since [[spoiler:getting the Espers]], so [[ThatOneBoss good luck trying to fight]] Ultros [[ThisIsGonnaSuck without]] [[spoiler:magic]]! If you ever wanted have Gau be a useful contributing member of the party, you needed to spend an awful lot of time grinding in the Veldt, where, unfortunately, you don't receive any experience in battle (but you do get magic points at least).
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' has AntiGrinding instead, [[LevelScaling making monsters level up at the same rate as the player's party]]. Too much level grinding will actually make some bosses harder. However, like the previous three, you still needed to take time to grind for ability points on your [=GFs=]. You need to grind for one ability card mod. After that, well... not so much. The bosses and random encounters give you more than enough AP to keep very much ahead of the enemies, if you avoid levelling up. The formula for an enemy's health is (for all enemies, barring omega weapon) x*level+y. x is a number between 100 and 4000, which increases as the story progresses. You may need to grind, but if you do, it'll only be to overcome your own levelling, and the enhanced health it brings foes. It's a very forgiving game. The Grinding is more about the Magic which can be Junctioned to your stats. So you will be spending a lot of time drawing magic from enemies (Who have a limitless supply) and draw points or refining cards to make magic/items.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' also de-emphasizes level grinding but instead requires you to learn abilities from equipped gear, maxing out their AP before a character can use the skill without the item equipped. The system is not conducive to level grinding in this way, as you have to hold off on equipping the strongest new equipment so that you can first master the skills from your old stuff, or just equip items whenever you need their related skills.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', more than anything else, averts this. With a bit of good planning, you can beat the game with completely undeveloped characters. There's only one point at which doing so requires you to go out of your way (to obtain a certain item), and doing so takes maybe half an hour tops.
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', if you do not level grind, you ''will'' be killed by the random encounters. It's very annoying, particularly as the quests already take long enough that you can forget what your objective is before you've reached it. And you'll need to grind for Gil and License Points as well (though there are accessories that make the latter much easier to acquire). Still, since you don't get the GlobalAirship until ''very'' late in the game, you might as well take advantage of the long walks to grind.
** Once you reach Gran Pulse in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'', you ''can'' technically go to your next destination right away... you just [[BeefGate REALLY]] don't want to. This is one of the ''very'' few case though, where this [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools actually feels like a good thing.]] You see, the entire game up until now was NoSidepathsNoExplorationNoFreedom, so being able to actually explore and do sidequests for once feels immensely satisfying.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' forces you to grind levels in most early stages. The '''fourth''' scripted fight in the game (Dorter Trade City) is an especially big offender. JustForFun/{{Egregious}} because you have precisely one grinding spot available prior to it, and despite this, many players won't attempt it until they've got at least one character to a terminal class.
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsA2'' grinding is necessary to be able to take on certain bosses. Thankfully, since they have levels just like you do, you'll always know what range you should shoot for. There's ''long'' grinding periods before any fight with Illua, for example. To even take on the five kings or the [[BonusDungeon Brightmon Tor]], you'll have to level grind up the ass. Luckily, some repeatable dispatch missions give enough EXP to level up units and is quicker this way instead of fighting. The worst part is HundredPercentCompletion though. Beating the game is doable at about level 60. Most of the endgame challenges involve powerful level 99 opponents.
** Squeenix is so in love with this concept that they even wedged it into their MascotFighter GaidenGame, ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy''! While LevelGrinding does make it easier to get around some bosses, the simple fact is that if you play each character's "Destiny Odyssey", you'll get them up to around Lv.12 or 15. To attempt the next step in the campaign, "Shade Impulse", you'll want them to be more like Lv.''50''. Can we say FakeLongevity? Considering it takes about four hours to get a character to level 100 on Bonus Experience day (a good chunk of that from level 1 to 30, which takes a while because of the way XP earned is determined), it's really not as bad as it seems. Level grinding isn't enough, though, you also have to grind AP to get all of the character's abilities. Then you have the equipment grind, which is subject to RandomlyDrops. The sequel also adds KP, which is the only currency the Moogles that sell unique items will take and the only way to get it is to beat gates without being over the Bonus Line (ie. level cap) and chaining together as many enemies as possible while fulfilling a battle-specific requirement: without an equipment setup that lets you kill enemies on lv1 with little effort, you'll probably get 30-50 KP per gate at most and that's assuming you chain together as many battles as possible, while the cheapest worthwhile items cost somewhere around 100 KP each and just go up from there.
* ''VideoGame/RecordOfLodossWar'' for Dreamcast. If you proceed to the BigBad's lair as soon as it opens, you will be unable to cause any damage to him at all. You're supposed to run around killing dragons to build up your levels and equipment first.
* ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'':
** ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld3'' would probably win the award for Forced Grinding. And the blasted critters give so little EXP compared to the effort spent in killing them. Want a hint? Fight Numemons.
** ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld4''. You'll need specific weapon types to get through areas. Didn't use the type for your first run through the area, or regularly switch your weapons? Prepare to spend a very, ''very'' long time beating the shit out of things to get enough skill to use anything decent. It takes an ANNOYINGLY long time to get any skill for a while-- at least your technique goes up very fast after it gets past a certain point. You'll still spend hours at a time beating up the respawning enemies even then, though.
** ''VideoGame/DigimonWorldDawnDusk'' for Nintendo DS require huge amounts of level grinding in order to tackle some bosses (ironically, once you take down the boss, the battles in the area you were grinding will have more and stronger enemies so you can get way more Exp.) Also, after the last story boss, you can accept a mission to take several bosses in a row, and even if your Digimon were strong enough to beat the story boss without much trouble, you'll be unable to scratch the two later bosses unless you spend a few hours grinding in the new area. There is a trick to bypass this though. Sidequest/non-story quests normally can only be done once, and during said quest, usually there is a boss in the mission which basically is a slightly boosted mook with higher EXP. There is a trick to abuse this. The game identifies a quest being completed when you have finished the task, and reported to the client. To do this, after facing the mission boss, simply return to the city and cancel the quest (since you technically haven't completed it yet) and retake the quest. This is especially useful in the post-game since there is a boss that gives 10,000 Holy EXP and fairly easy, making getting Seraphimon (need 77777+ Holy EXP) and leveling easier.
* ''VideoGame/TheGreatGaias'': There are over 16 characters, but the inactive party members won't gain any LeakedExperience. Since some events will force you to use certain party members or prevent you from using specific ones, it's necessary to grind everyone sufficiently.
* ''VideoGame/SepterraCore'' does this after you get Lobo's ship.
* The final areas in ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' are brutal about this. Forget grinding and just ''run'' from every battle until you reach the final boss.
** When you get [[spoiler:your uber-strong helper EVE]] though, the place is MUCH easier. Unfortunately, [[spoiler:EVE dies as soon as you get to the end]].
** Earlier in the game, you are literally forced to level-grind, as you cannot wake up the sleeping Dragon [[spoiler:who holds one of the Eight Melodies]] without being Level 25 or higher.
** Thankfully, the [[VideoGame/EarthBound other]] [[VideoGame/{{Mother3}} games]] in the series averted this, for the most part. As long as you don't actively avoid enemies, there's only a few places early on where grinding is really necessary.
* This can happen in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou''. The majority of enemy encounters are player-initiated, and you can play through the story without refining your combat skills, making the FinalBoss and the ''final'' FinalBoss (not to mention the BonusBoss) fights almost impossible to win. The game encourages grinding, but it also rewards players with evolved items for ''not playing the game.''
** Leveling up only increases (and restores) your HP, but your attack, defence, and bravery stats remain static. The only way to increase ''those'' is by "feeding" your characters, who digest the food by fighting battles. One item requires the bravery stat to be maxed at 999 points, which would seem to be this trope but for the fact that by the time you acquire said item, you've already unlocked numerous boosters (e.g., you can eat something that boosts the bravery stat by 50 points). Pin value also operates independently from player level, so you can avoid leveling up and still have access to the game's equivalent of the instant death bullet, which makes battle-grinding a breeze.
** You can beat story mode with zero grinding. However, post-game is all about the grinding. Arguably intentional, given the nature of the game -- you're required to beat bosses on "hard" difficulty or higher in order to unlock the "secret reports," which is the game's AllThereInTheManual. If the first playthrough is about the story, then the NewGamePlus is ''all'' about mastering combat mechanics -- in order to finish the story.

* Nippon Ichi's strategy {{RPG}}s from ''Videogame/LaPucelle'' forward use this heavily, especially when optional bosses are included. There is usually some sort of bottomless dungeon full of monsters of increasing power available to help. Because facing a boss with HP and stats in the hundreds of thousands (or possibly millions) is just not done in a low level game.
** This is even lampshaded in ''VideoGame/{{Disgaea 3|AbsenceOfJustice}}'', where Mao complains about the loss of his 4 million hour save file (a little over 456.6 years) of gameplay necessary to challenge "Level 9999 Baal" when his console and memory card are accidentally crushed.
** However, in the case of the ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' titles, there are usually certain facilites around to make the grinding go by much faster (Thank you, Item World and Statiticians}.
** Disgaea usually has a point in the game where you can with stronger enemy bills through the dark assembly(or Cheat Shop in Disgaea D2) modify enemy levels to 99, which thanks to a quirk with the exp formula they give as much exp as killing a level 320 unit. the level this usually occurs on also has exp modifying Geo Effects which further boosts the exp the enemies give. From here you can quickly enough get to a level where you can easily run roughshod through the rest of the main story, or take a bit of extra time and grind up to take on the bonus dungeon and prep for the post game bonus bosses.
* ''VideoGame/SecretOfMana'' for the SNES, though arguably this is more or less weapon/spell grinding. You can ignore spell/weapon grinding entirely for most of the game. Any enemy can be beaten with melee attacks and a knowledge of how to dodge. But the exception, the final boss of the game can only be beaten if both mages in your party cast mana sword on the main character. You got this spell about 15 minutes before the final boss fight if you didn't grind. Spells you just acquired start at level 0, and last about 10 seconds. So either you have to go through a whole final dungeon and a BossRush without using any spells, so you have every single available MP for the final boss, or you need to grind out levels for that last spell set. This is not as bad as it initially appears: using the Mana spell to unlock the Mana Sword requires that both spell-casting characters synchronize their casting so that the second spell hits while the first spell is still active. While the ''effects'' of the Mana spell only last for a few seconds at level zero (reducing the time available to synchronize), once they successfully synchronize, the Mana Sword sticks around for a couple of minutes, more than enough time to land several hits on the final boss. Combined with the relatively low cost of the Mana spell itself, and the fact that the final boss is functionally immune to any form of damage that's not the Mana Sword, and the fact that the previous boss fully heals you after victory, means this battle doesn't ''require'' level grinding, though that does make it easier.

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar'':
** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'' had '''loads''' of forced level grinding. To survive the first dungeon you probably had to grind at least 10 levels, as well as buy new weapons and armour. Not to mention that whenever a new character joined up, they started at level 1, so you '''had''' to grind if you actually wanted to use them. It's worse after [[spoiler:you lose Nei]] because it's likely you'll have to train someone else up from scratch to fill the fourth party space, who will more than likely get killed over and over by robots while you're leveling him/her.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'' had ''Money Grinding''. You can survive the next area just fine without too much level grinding, provided you can afford the ungodly expensive equipment. Oh, and the next town that's five minutes away has a better set of ungodly expensive equipment that you need to buy to survive. Money grinding is almost never worth it in PSIV, though. There are some very expensive equips in the mid- to late-game, but they're generally only worth a point or two of attack or defense. There is one point about 30 to 60 minutes into the game where one could grind for some sweet gear while abusing the temporary aid of much higher-level character, but that's hardly arduous, and entirely un-forced. Doing the sidequests and not running away from battles usually provided enough money and experience to carry you through each new area.
%%** Same for the original ''Phantasy Star''.
%%** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarNova'': while the original game doesn't really require you to grind (levels come fairly quickly up to level 100) the post game content starts at level 110 and the only way to go from 100 to 110 is to ''grind''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Vay}}'' more or less requires the player to take time out to level grind between every single dungeon. This despite the game's comparatively high encounter rate - the enemies generally don't give much EXP, at least compared to the amount needed to advance a level at the stage in the game when you start fighting them.
* ''VideoGame/EternalSonata'' has an extreme example in [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Mysterious Unison]], more related to money-making. In order to obtain one piece of Claves' soul, you have to raise ''99,999,999'' gold to buy it from a spirit that found it. Although you can obtain it a little easier by fighting the dungeon's tougher creatures, which drop 600,000-1,500,000 gold each, keep in mind that these are some of the toughest monsters in the game.
* Used interestingly in ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey'', you can only level up as much as the game allows you to in a given area. Once you hit the level cap for the area, any further grinding becomes multitudes more tedious, as the exp gains bottom out to one or two points per fight, even if those same enemies were giving out hundreds of points one level prior, making your party perfectly leveled throughout so long as you keep hitting those caps. What you ''can'' grind is getting your immortals to learn skills, much like the aforementioned ''Final Fantasy IX''.
* The ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' franchise can be quite notorious for this:
** In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Diamond and Pearl]]'' you could beat the last Gym Leader, get to and through Victory Road, and challenge the Elite Four pretty easily without having gone out of your way to grind prior to that. But ''beating'' the Elite Four/Champion is much different from ''challenging'' them; you might have to spend a couple nights grinding in Victory Road before you could actually do anything effectual against the Elite Four. Note, however, that 80% of the Elite Four's Pokemon have a weakness to either the Flying or Fighting type. The Starly family, who are among the most common Pokemon in the game, just happen to learn powerful attacks of both elements. They can nearly single-handedly wipe out the entire Elite Four when underleveled. Let's just hope you bothered to train one. ''[[UpdatedReRelease Platinum]]'' fixed this by lowering the levels of the Elite Four and made their teams less unpredictable, but at the same time increased the overall leveling curve, making the game simultaneously easier and harder than the originals.
** [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Generation II]] is arguably the easiest generation... until you get to Silver Cave. The strongest trainer prior to this is Blue, with his highest-level Pokémon being level 58. But then, we've got [[TrueFinalBoss Red]] whose LOWEST-level Pokémon is level 73! If you are playing with a 6-Pokémon team, this part of the game is a nightmare even if you caught the Level-70 legendary (Lugia in ''Gold'', Ho-Oh in ''Silver''; both of them in ''Crystal'', provided you get the wings from Pewter City) to save time. Not to mention that the highest-level Pokémon you can powerlevel against repeatedly are level 50, so the exp. yield is not awesome.
*** In the remakes, Red is in the upper eighties with all his mons. However, the pain is somewhat eased by the rematch system, where, not only can you rematch Kanto trainers, you can also battle former Gym Leaders with buffed-up teams, so there's not as much grinding on mons 20+ levels below you. Plus, you can always transfer high level mons you may have from other Gen IV games or use Pal Park to bring them up from GBA games.
** ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum''. Only, there's just ONE spot that requires forced grinding - the final two bosses, which are quite a leap over the best level Pokémon you can get before that. Other than that, you can avoid any sort of level grinding by just using Pokémon as you catch them, since they're actually at a level that can fight off the opponents of the area! Oh, and if you thought you could just import your Level 100 mons from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, that option isn't unlocked until ''after'' you beat said final bosses.
** Keep in mind, however, that while playing the game, your enemies will (generally) be using {{mons}} that you can obtain over the course of the game and that their stats have to (again, generally) match up. Further, you can catch 'mons with significantly better stat distributions, with usually one core legendary before the Elite Four and Champion. In order to replicate HealthDamageAsymmetry, your opponent's levels are much higher (for greater HP) and usually cursed with PoorPredictableRock (so that your attacks hit harder via ElementalRockPaperScissors); it's not impossible to take down a high-level enemy team so long as your team is naturally leveled and you can abuse type advantages. The exception to this rule is Red from ''Gold'', ''Silver'', ''Crystal'', and their remakes, who has insanely high-leveled mons that nothing else in the games come close to.
*** Even then, it's entirely possible to bring Red down with your team still in the low 50's and eligible for Stadium 2 Poké Cup (at least in Gen 2 -- HG/SS made him considerably more powerful, but level is no longer a barrier to tournament entry). The key is that most of his team is quite slow, and the ones that aren't have moves that can be negated entirely. Even in the remakes, it is possible [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukfm9PLMruo&list=SP9EEC7693971B4B37&index=78 to beat Red with a party all at level 50]], or even [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88lOfQAfXpM a party that has never gained any levels, ever]].
** Basically, you know you need to grind when you run into a boss with one guy that is faster than everyone in your party, and KO's each one in a single hit, including the one that resists his attack. Even then, later generations can give some sort of workaround, usually involving the Focus Sash or Choice Scarf, and a properly-placed Reflect/Light Screen.
** In [[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite the fifth generation]], the Elite Four only have four Pokemon each, the highest being only level 50. The champion replacement battle pits you against two tough battles in a row with the Pokemon around level 55, including a Legendary and a pseudo-legendary [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard ten levels below the evolution threshold]]. Besides this, all the trainers right after the E4 have Pokemon starting at level 65, though most of these said Pokemon are unevolved.
*** [[VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2 The sequels]] are kinder on this. The highest leveled mon in the Pokemon League is level 59, that belonging to [[FinalBoss Iris]]. The rest of them average 56 to 58 (on normal mode), and they still only have four mons apiece on normal mode (except Iris, who has six). And there's no trick battles afterwards. But much like before, the postgame trainers' Pokemon start in the 60s. Thankfully, there are plenty of places to help train up your team; there are the stadiums in Nimbasa City that have daily trainer battles, and there's also the Black Tower and White Treehollow, which are great places to grind up (provided you can beat all the levels, of course).
** Utterly averted in [[VideoGame/PokemonXandY Gen VI]]. If you don't turn off the Exp. Share after you get it (it defaults to on), by the time, you're halfway into the game you're done facing serious challenges. By the time you hit the Elite Four, your starter will outlevel them by around twenty levels. Interestingly, the opposite is true as well: if you decide you ''do'' want to turn off the Exp. Share, the game ends up becoming one of the hardest in the ''series''.
** The optional rival battle against Blue on Route 22 in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue Red and Blue]]'' basically requires you to grind. He has two Pokémon at Level 9 and Level 8, which is pretty high for that early in the game. If you want to obtain the [[PermanentlyMissableContent 5 Poké Balls]] from Oak, you'll have to beat him ''without buying any Poké Balls'', forcing you to use your lone starter. Good luck!
* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireI'' had ridiculous hard boss battles at some points of the game, depending on whether or not you used MoneyGrinding to buy guaranteed critical items. Problem? Every time someone new joined the group, XP gained from monsters dropped. At the end of the game, you have 8 people in your party and the best fight in the game gives 3600 XP. It takes several ''hundred thousand'' to gain a level once you got to the 30s-40s. Trying to finish the game at the Lv30-40 range is not pretty as some of the later bosses can chew you up.
* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireII'' starts with two of your main characters as children. After a short sequence, you begin the meat of the game with those same characters as adults. However, the lazy bastards didn't see fit to level at all in the intervening years, so you start the game still at level 1. The first area you have to visit outside of your hometown is full of monsters that are really much better handled at level 5 and above. It only takes 30 minutes or so of grinding to get high enough to be comfortable in that area, but it seems like it would be offputting to a casual gamer to have to spent your very first hour in the game ''bringing your party up to speed with chapter 1.''
** Not to mention, how much MoneyGrinding is required to buy the equipment from the first town. 1 Defense is 1 Defense, and it IS necessary otherwise you will get your butt handed to you after the first 'plot event' that leaves your main character alone. Thankfully, [[GuideDangIt going fishing]] is the fastest way to build up said money. Catching Fish means buying all of that equipment in 30 minutes instead of ''2+ hours''.
* ''VideoGame/LegendOfLegaia'' is this the entire way through the game. The bosses (especially [[ThatOneBoss Berserker, Xain, and Gaza]]) do NOT pull any punches, and will likely murder you in the first few rounds if you even THINK of fighting them under the recommended levels. The fact that equipment is expensive and that normal enemies don't give a lot of experience OR money doesn't help matters either. The Berserker in particular is a combination of ThatOneBoss and a WakeUpCallBoss that shows that level grinding alone won't cut it, requiring both grinding and solid strategy (or using an OutsideTheBoxTactic via Nighto abuse) to proceed.
* In ''VideoGame/Legaia2DuelSaga'', there's a particular BeefGate that you ''need'' to reach a certain level to pass. Elfin is relatively easy to beat - ''if'' you've reached Level 9, gained a fourth Art Block, and know at least one four-hit Art. If you don't, then there's just no way to pump out enough damage to kill Elfin before she kills you.

* ''Lightning Warrior Raidy'' has this in spades. First, every new level of the dungeon has much tougher monsters. Second, you have to battle and/or beat sadistic puzzles to find new, better gear (with a literal InfinityPlusOneSword needed to go further). Oh, and don't get us started on third or fourth level monsters with sure hit attacks - to even think about fighting them for long, you have to return to the previous level and grind for healing potions, a rare drop. Without grinding, you can progress as much as about ~1/3 of the game, then you'll hit a brick wall.
* The ''VideoGame/StarOcean'' series generally requires little if any grinding for the main game; for the most part, keeping your equipment up-to-date is much more important. However, even if you use the proper strategies and equipment against the bonus bosses, if you're not at max level they will ''end'' you. On the normal difficulty setting. And even when you ''are'' at max level, said bonus bosses still tend to be pretty damn hard.
** The grinding is played straight for the Skill points to level up in battle skills (Motormouth (Faster spellcasting), parry, etc) or item creation skills (Cooking, Crafting, Metalworking, etc). Battle skills make some of the bosses more bearable as you can parry certain attacks and do damage more quickly/increase medicine efficacy to heal more HP and MP, and item creation allows for better items and weapons one cannot normally get to increase your odds of survival.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/ValkyrieProfileCovenantOfThePlume''. There are a set amount of enemies in the game, and same with experience, with a small number of optional battles...but you ''can'' get more experience if you manage to rapidly attack the enemy while they're in the air or stunned so they drop gems that increase the amount of experience you get by up to 100%.
* Most ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' [=RPG=]s for the NES are like this, but none as bad as the first one. You start the game with Goku and Piccolo at around 400 BP (Power Level) and you're going to fight the first boss Raditz at 1500 BP. First of all, this game takes the power levels seriously, meaning that an army of characters at 800 BP wouldn't even be able to touch him. Second of all, unlike other instances of this battle there won't be any miracles, penetrating Special Beam Cannons or Gohans around to save your hide, so unless your BP is around 1500 you don't stand a chance. The fastest way to increase your BP is by splitting up in two and fighting yourself in a normal battle, each netting you around 10 BP. Meaning that in order to stand a chance against the first boss, you need to fight ''100'' battles, ''200'' if you want Piccolo to become strong as well. And when you've beaten Radtiz? You lose both characters, get 5 new ones that you have to train all over for the next, even stronger boss. And if you know the original, you know that it NEVER GETS ANY EASIER.
** The second DBZ game actually did a complete turnaround, and made you spend most of the game with a 5-man party of powerful characters who were nearly guaranteed to win any given battle. The only point in the game where you're really at a risk is the part where Krillin needs to travel to the Eldest alone, at which point NOT running from every battle will get you killed extremely fast. After running from the 3 or so battles you end up entering, he gains a massive powerup, and you're back to dominating everything you see again. Balance was not the strong point of these games (there's also the training stages where Goku plays blackjack with his gravity machine and gets a game over if he loses, but these are pure luck and don't really count. And you can't grind to increase your chances of winning either).
** ''Dragon Ball Z''[='=]s ''[[VideoGame/DragonBallZTheLegacyOfGoku Legacy of Goku]]'' RPG trilogy for Gameboy Advance did this several times. The first game was the worst offender, as not only was the level cap {{absurdly high|LevelCap}} (requiring you to go out of your way to grind at several points to reach the cap), but that reaching the cap was ''required'' to stand a chance to beat the FinalBoss. The later two games smoothed things out significantly, as while it still had gates that required you to reach a certain level with a specific character to open them, these were closer to plot-gates, keeping you out of an area until both the story needed you there ''and'' you had a character at the requisite level to actually survive there - the game doesn't even ever require you to open the gates for reaching a character's level cap except for HundredPercentCompletion.
* Some of the doors in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' required a card - or multiple cards - with a specific color and number in order to go through. Trouble is, a player who hasn't been stocking up will often find that out of ALL the Map Cards they have, the only they need is the ONLY one they don't have. Cue ''numerous'' battles as the player searches for that one stinking card.
* ''VideoGame/ArcTheLad'': The final boss in part 2 is so strong that, unless you have a powered up Choko in your party, you're going to have to level grind a ton if you want to even be able to scratch him. It's not recommended to take him on with a party below level 100.
** You can also expend 2-3 hours of real time constantly buffing Elc and Gruga over and over before taking a single swing each at him and then running back out of range to repeat the process until he dies.
* Depends on the game, but mostly averted with ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei''. You ''could'' just grind to hell; however, it's much better to simply fuse an EliteTweak to beat whatever boss.
** The game that spawned the series, ''VideoGame/MegamiTensei'', plays this trope very straight. The gameplay can be summed up as "dungeon crawl, get destroyed by the area boss, grind for hours until you can beat him, repeat." Demons don't level up this early in the series, so you're forced to raise the MC's level to fuse strong enough Demons to stand a chance.
** All the {{Bonus Boss}}es play it painfully straight, however. Don't even ''think'' about entering a BonusBoss fight in a ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' game without a party of 99ers.
** ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' enforces ''and'' punishes the player for grinding. A number of quests require you to spend plenty of time dungeon crawling for either a rare creature or a ''specific'' one, but stay in Tartarus too long and the AI will unleash The Reaper, who [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin will kill you dead]]. Any persona holding a heart item will also require grinding before the item will be released, and if you were unlucky enough to fuse an item-holding persona with most of its skills in place, the usual "last skill = item drop" rule becomes "last skill + one more level = item drop." Grinding is also inevitable if you're a level or five away from being able to fuse the next persona in the arcana -- and you can see that its skills will be perfect for that sub-boss that keeps putting your party through a murder-suicide pact. God help you if you attempt to take on the Natural Dancer without Kusi Mitama, the lowest-level persona that will completely nullify the otherwise fatal attacks. You don't have to be high-level to beat the ''boss'', just high-level enough to get the persona that will shield you ''from'' it. In the end, you wind up grinding not because it significantly increases your HP (though that helps) but because you've maxed out your current arsenal and need to trade up. Leveling up tends to attract The Reaper, which returns you to where you were before, allowing you to level up again and, if you're lucky, make an escape in time to keep the level. [[EarnYourFun This is part of the game's appeal.]]
** ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor'' averts this for the most part, but plays it straight if you want to even think of standing a chance against Lucifer. Your team will be around level 50 by the time you can fight him - which is also immediately before the final boss - and will be utterly crushed if you do so without grinding, since he's ''level 99'' and has three phases. His attack range is large to make up for the fact that he doesn't move, and he has a skill called Megidoladyne that hits your entire party on the map every so often. It also gets stronger with each casting, so it will eventually wipe you if you take too long. His final form reflects physical, meaning that if you decide to bring a party member that fights with that instead of a party of spellcasters, your damage will decrease, too. "Fortunately", you only need to grind to the mid 70s to be able to win with the proper strategies and demons, so it's not as awful as other bonus bosses in the series.
* Any game where [[HeKnowsAboutTimedHits you know about timed hits]] and ActionCommands averts this to some degree, as the difficulty is a combination of levels and skill.
** There was one speed-run of the first ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi Mario & Luigi]]'' where the person managed to beat the game ''without ever being hit'', completely taking away the need for any levels at all (besides attack power, of course).
* ''VideoGame/SailorMoonAnotherStory'', especially since stat changes between levels are so huge and the enemies are very strong as the game progresses.
* ''VideoGame/RivieraThePromisedLand'' has the training mode, which is purely used for grinding weapons and items usage as learning abilities from them is the main way to gain stats. Thanksfully, your items [[BreakableWeapons won't break]] and you won't get a game over during a training, proving it less annoying aside from the fact that you'll have to waste loads and loads of time doing it whenever you get a new item in a very limited inventory.
** However, slimes ''will'' eat uses with their unique attacks. This means that one use weapon that gives amazing bonuses? Gone before seeing use in a real battle.
* In ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean'', LevelGrinding isn't particularly useful, since your decks matter more than your level...but then you have to grind for magnus drops to improve your decks, so it's the same effect. And if you want the best healing items, then you have to grind [[ItemCrafting recipes]]. ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosOrigins'' averts this.
* In the NES version of ''VideoGame/{{Crystalis}}'', you cannot damage enemies or bosses if you aren't sufficient level. The GBC version removes the forced aspect, but the boss battles will be difficult if you are underleveled.
* Happens for a reason not mentioned above in the second ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'': characters frequently leave your party, and often don't return for a long time. Characters who aren't in your active party gain new abilities less quickly, and characters who aren't in the party at all get almost nothing. Being as this is the usual NintendoHard Mega Ten game, in which specific abilities (especially elemental blocks) are all but necessary to win certain fights, expect to spend a lot of time bringing characters up to speed. Unless you play through the game with three specific characters [[spoiler: Serph, Gale, and Cielo]] out of six, you'll spend anything from five to ten hours grinding on top of the amount of time you already spent grinding. It's about as fun as it sounds.
* Grinding is the entire backbone of the gameplay in ''VideoGame/{{Widenyo}}''. Thankfully it's made much less annoying since you manually distribute the XP among your characters.

* ''Dual Orb 2'' did this in a worst possible way. Grinding was obligatory, but too much grinding made the game boring. You couldn't beat even the first boss — you were too weak, and didn't have money to buy enough potions. But if you spent an hour (better two) fighting the monsters around the starting town (just hold A with a rubber band and press arrows to move), the party became unstoppable until the mid-game. Another hour of grinding in the middle, and there was nothing to fear until the end. Coupled with an ExcusePlot, this made the game very forgettable despite the fairly novel outset.
* While the later games in the ''VideoGame/{{Lufia}}'' games weren't heavy on grinding, you'll need to build up levels early in ''VideoGame/LufiaAndTheFortressOfDoom'' to get the Hero's healing spell and to survive [[ThatOneBoss Those First Three Bosses]]. The need to grind lightens up further on, especially if you manage to take down a lot of {{Metal Slime}}s in the Arus Cave.
** At one point, you'll need to go to the fifth level of the Old Cave to find someone. You can only access the fifth level if you're at least Level 25. Your party would likely be past Level 25 at that point, but if you're doing a LowLevelRun...
* The last dungeon in ''VideoGame/SoulBlazer'' requires you to use the best weapon and armor of the game, since without them, you can't use the the spell necessary to defeat the BigBad. However, since the game has level requirements for using weapons and armor, it's possible, your level is too low to wear them and you're stuck at the boss without a way to damage him.
* ''VideoGame/RakenzarnTales'' has one significant instance of this early on, in the first forest. You have little in the way of new armor and no new weapons, so you need to grind up from level 3 to somewhere around level 8 in order to get past the bosses at the end. Past there, new gear starts becoming available, which means you can build your levels at a more reasonable pace from then.
* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' requires you to level grind to a certain point in order to continue the [[KillEmAll No Mercy]] path. If your level, or LV, is not high enough before you reach each area's boss, you end up permanently resuming the standard route. Fortunately, after the first area, using a save point tells you exactly how many enemies you need to kill to reach optimum LV to continue the path.

* ''VideoGame/MindZero'' can hit you with this if you don't use the right characters at a certain point. Decided to use only one (or even worse, neither) of the first two party members that join you? Hope you're on the easiest difficulty setting, because you can't use any other characters due to the urgency of the situation. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Even if you leave the dungeon to visit where they'd normally be at.]] Even more frustratingly, finishing that chapter automatically puts everyone at the same level of your strongest character, showing that there wasn't any need to do this to begin with.
* ''VideoGame/TheiaTheCrimsonEclipse'': The Extremordeal has barriers that require a specific party in order to cross. However, all extra characters join at level 50, except for [[spoiler:Neval at Mishra]], who will likely have their levels in the 60s and 50s respectively. This means that for some barriers, the player will have to grind those extra characters to catch up with the main party.

* In ''VideoGame/UltimaI'', the granddaddy of them all, grinding is almost ''the entire point of playing''. Reaching the level cap is in fact a requirement for finishing the game. Later games in the series de-emphasized that aspect of play.
* ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}} VII'', right at the beginning. You have to get up a level or two just to get to next area, be it the first town, local dungeon or the beach where you find the map system.

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Diablo}} Diablo 2]]'' can be beaten without any level grinding at all. On the first difficulty setting. But if you haven't been, then good luck with [[IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels Hell]].
* Grinding becomes more necessary from the middle of Nightmare difficulty in ''VideoGame/HellgateLondon'', as the greater the level difference to opponents, the higher the penalty to damage and resistance; the level gains slow to a crawl. Since engame opponents are all higher than your max level, [[FakeLongevity hours of grind become crucial to win]]. Because level difference also reduces experience gain, you gain most efficiently by replaying the same level range of maps, over and over.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', particularly on Very Hard mode, requires you to build up your skills for many parts of the main quest line, where the concentration and power of the enemies is liable to obliterate you if you haven't leveled up by doing sidequests. Luckily, higher difficulty levels give more experience points. ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' plays this even straighter due to the many Skill Check dialogues and {{beef gate}}s, and adjusting the difficulty no longer affects the experience points earned.
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'' has a form of this, most of the major story quests have a fixed level cap and require you to complete some sidequests to accumulate enough Power to even start them... which will probably also provide enough experience for your party to be within the recommended level range.
* ''VideoGame/{{Nethack}}'' requires your character level to be at least 14 to do the role-specific Quest to obtain one of the Invocation Artifacts, required to enter the lowest dungeon level and obtain the [[MacGuffin Amulet of Yendor]]. While you aren't required to do the Quest immediately (and for some roles like the Monk, waiting until you're prepared is far more advised), and doing other areas may provide enough experience points to allow you to enter when you want to, some characters ''will'' need to grind (or find potions of gain level), and it's one of the few areas of the game that cannot be skipped in any way.

* ''VideoGame/AtlanticaOnline'': New mercenaries always start out at Level 1 (with the exception of a few base classes that can be hired from wandering [=NPCs=]), even if the questline to get them (and the main character level requirement) is 100. There are other ways to get Exp than only in battle, but most of them translate to grinding in one or another form.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' really works at averting this. Questing is much more effective than plain grinding for leveling purposes (though the [[TwentyBearAsses nature of the quests]] incorporates some grinding), and if you don't want to do that, PVP'ing and running dungeons also give good XP, so you can pretty much do what you like in order to level. And the various factions have [[AntiPoopSocking Daily Quests]] instead of a plain reputation point grind. The old content was pretty bad, though; one particular grind (the [[http://www.wowpedia.org/Ahn%27Qiraj_War_Effort Ahn'Qiraj War Effort]]) required the player to kill ''fourty thousand'' {{Mook}}s in addition to having the entire server's population grind-crafting ingredients to open a pair of new dungeons.
* In ''VideoGame/BillyVsSNAKEMAN'', prior to the addition of the [[Franchise/DotHack r00t]] plotline, it was possible to attain OneHundredPercentCompletion by [[NewGamePlus Season 5]], even reasonable (barring the deeply [[LuckBasedMission Luck Based]] [[InfinityPlusOneSword Runed Gear]] and [[MinigameZone Party House]] rares). The game's creator has gone on record as saying that he doubts anyone would be able to beat r00t before Season 15. To put the amount of grinding needed here into perspective, completing a Season takes a week of grinding, more if you're looking for runes or focusing on money rather than speeding through Seasons.
** "Completing" a Season is a misleading phrase. [[OneHundredPercentCompletion Doing everything]] that can be done in a particular Season takes months to accomplish, as there are six major sections to the game ([[Franchise/DotHack r00t]] is the seventh), each with its own subplots, to do. "Speedlooping" is finishing the Ninja (Naruto) section as fast as possible, and takes roughly a week- less if you abuse some game mechanics. A normal game involves finishing everything you can reach in the first three seasons, partially completing S4 and S5, speedlooping to S20 or so, and completing everything, including r00t, when you get there.
* New characters in ''VideoGame/RagnarokOnline'' used to have to grind up a few levels by killing eggs before being able to fight even the weakest monsters. It has since gone far to enable new characters to kill things, where it gives them 'novice' gear instead of a knife. The rest of the game is still a grindfest, though.
** At Least with Renewal, the grinding has been drastically reduced to a some sort of ''AntiGrinding'': You are forced to move and level with mob of your same or a little more level, but mob of your level is weaker to the point that you can pretty much solo most of the game, until you get to [[DifficultySpike level 96 or so.]]

* ''Videogame/{{Elsword}}'' has no less than '''THREE''' instances of forced level grinding. First, you need to be a certain level to enter each city (starting low at only needing to be level 6 to enter Elder, but increasing as you go), then you need to have a certain average armor level to enter dungeons (meaning you need to grind to get to a high enough level to wear better equipment), and if you're doing the story, some quests will be locked until you reach a certain level. While this isn't bad for the first half or so of the game, you'll want to do every side quest and repeat quest you find.
* ''Videogame/{{DC Universe Online}}'' very much [[AvertedTrope averts]] this. Beating up endless hordes of Mooks, while fun, only gets rewards of some cash, items (mostly VendorTrash at that), and a pittance of XP. Doing all of the missions and sidequests, however, will keep you appropriately leveled for each phase of the game, hitting the Cap of 30 just before the last of the non-postgame content.
* This hit ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' twice and it infuriated the player base:
** When the game first hit, the Klingon Defense Force was an ''unlockable'' faction that started off at Level 20... but held nothing else of value except for the missions that both sides could play and they were late game. It was initially lessened with the appearance of a set of KDF-centered missions and the Duty Officer System, but it wouldn't be fully fixed until the first Expansion Pack, ''Legacy of Romulus''.
** When the second Expansion Pack, ''Delta Rising'', was being tested, players discovered that Cryptic pulled this stunt ''again'', but for ''everybody''! Cryptic's idea was to prevent what happened with ''Legacy of Romulus'', where players tore through all the missions and had nothing else to do, by upping the amount of XP needed to earn to level up incredibly, with Cryptic telling players to not rush through the missions - play other things while you level up! Sadly, playing missions over again gave pittance in terms of XP gains, Duty Officer System missions rewarded pathetically and the PVE missions were made so much harder that players refused to go into them! A stopgap was discovered by players when one of the Sector Blocks had an unintended XP Boost and players grinded there, only for it to be taken away when too many people took advantage of it. Ultimately, it would be a change of hands with the Executive Producer to get things fixed with the leveling.

* {{Downplayed}} in ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}''. The Cobweb Duster, necessary to get through certain areas later in the game, costs 800 arrowheads and becomes available at rank 20. However, it is very easy to reach that rank long before the Duster is needed, and the arrowheads can be collected in about 15 minutes with the Dowsing Rod. Additionally, the Pyrokinesis, Telekinesis, and Invisibility powers are all necessary to beat the game, and unlock at ranks 10, 20, and 30 respectively. Again, it's easy to reach rank 30 before any of these powers are necessary, as long as you're good at collecting figments and PSI cards.
* ''VideoGame/DarkCloud'' had weapon grinding, which was necessary if you didn't want using a particular character to be painful. What made this irritating was the fact that leveling up without the proper attachments on your weapons did virtually nothing, with some attachments being hard to come by. You also had to level up the weapons of six characters individually - characters who started out with their weapons at rock bottom each time you met one. [[note]] ''VideoGame/DarkChronicle'' (aka ''Dark Cloud 2'') was somewhat better about this, with only two characters who could each wield two weapons, but getting those weapons to be powerful enough to fight bosses still took some doing. [[/note]]

* Bizarrely, ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianTwilight''. New units are rewarded for XP, and you'll probably only get about a ''quarter'' of the way to unlocking everything by completing the single player campaigns (and that's assuming you can complete the single player without grinding anyway).
* The Total War series rewards experienced units with stat buffs. In battle, tactics and a superior infrastructure can beat better stats, in most games in the series, your agents in the 4X strategic section of the game will be murdered willy-nilly by enemy agents if they don't raise their stats. If you want to use intrigue, whether it's metsuke in Shogun or merchants in Medieval, you better start training them early and keep the XP flowing. Additionally, well-trained leaders can be a huge boon, but generally require you to keep them busy doing whatever you want them to get good at.

* ''VideoGame/TheGodfather'' the game for Xbox. Intentional or not, you'll have to simply wait for game-time to pass to earn enough protection money to buy the Infinity Plus One machine gun to clear out the last nest of bad guys.

* Grinding is the entire backbone of the gameplay in VideoGame/{{Widenyo}}. Thankfully it's made much less annoying since you manually distribute the XP among your characters.

* ''Franchise/Digimon'':

* The first VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork game had one spot where, to earn the passcodes to enter the next section of the Net, you were required to have [=MegaMan=] at a certain level and have a certain number of chips in your library. This is the only instance of this in the main story, but in the post-game areas for all the games, it's not uncommon to run into a barrier with a certain condition required to beat it.

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'' does this via having enemies gain a bonus to all of their parameters for every level higher they are then you, though it applies to you, as well. If something is more then two levels higher, it'll be difficult, but beatable, but for anything five levels or above, you're not likely going to win unless you resort to specific tactics [[note]]Ether attacks are more accurate then physical attacks, which makes them essential to pulling off a successful LowLevelRun[[/note]] or have extremely good gear to compensate for the level difference (Which is only really available in the endgame).

* ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld3'' would probably win the award for Forced Grinding. And the blasted critters give so little EXP compared to the effort spent in killing them. Want a hint? Fight Numemons.
* ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld4''. You'll need specific weapon types to get through areas. Didn't use the type for your first run through the area, or regularly switch your weapons? Prepare to spend a very, ''very'' long time beating the shit out of things to get enough skill to use anything decent. It takes an ANNOYINGLY long time to get any skill for a while-- at least your technique goes up very fast after it gets past a certain point. You'll still spend hours at a time beating up the respawning enemies even then, though.
* ''VideoGame/DigimonWorldDawnDusk'' for Nintendo DS require huge amounts of level grinding in order to tackle some bosses (ironically, once you take down the boss, the battles in the area you were grinding will have more and stronger enemies so you can get way more Exp.) Also, after the last story boss, you can accept a mission to take several bosses in a row, and even if your Digimon were strong enough to beat the story boss without much trouble, you'll be unable to scratch the two later bosses unless you spend a few hours grinding in the new area.
** There is a trick to bypass this though. Sidequest/non-story quests normally can only be done once, and during said quest, usually there is a boss in the mission which basically is a slightly boosted mook with higher EXP. There is a trick to abuse this. The game identifies a quest being completed when you have finished the task, and reported to the client. To do this, after facing the mission boss, simply return to the city and cancel the quest (since you technically haven't completed it yet) and retake the quest. This is especially useful in the post-game since there is a boss that gives 10,000 Holy EXP and fairly easy, making getting Seraphimon (need 77777+ Holy EXP) and leveling easier.

* ''VideoGame/SecretOfMana'' for the SNES, though arguably this is more or less weapon/spell grinding.
** You can ignore spell/weapon grinding entirely for most of the game. Any enemy can be beaten with melee attacks and a knowledge of how to dodge. But the exception, the final boss of the game can only be beaten if both mages in your party cast mana sword on the main character. You got this spell about 15 minutes before the final boss fight if you didn't grind. Spells you just acquired start at level 0, and last about 10 seconds. So either you have to go through a whole final dungeon and a BossRush without using any spells, so you have every single available MP for the final boss, or you need to grind out levels for that last spell set.
*** This is not as bad as it initially appears: using the Mana spell to unlock the Mana Sword requires that both spell-casting characters synchronize their casting so that the second spell hits while the first spell is still active. While the ''effects'' of the Mana spell only last for a few seconds at level zero (reducing the time available to synchronize), once they successfully synchronize, the Mana Sword sticks around for a couple of minutes, more than enough time to land several hits on the final boss. Combined with the relatively low cost of the Mana spell itself, and the fact that the final boss is functionally immune to any form of damage that's not the Mana Sword, and the fact that the previous boss fully heals you after victory, means this battle doesn't ''require'' level grinding, though that does make it easier.
* In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' you can fight the final boss very early in the game; but you have virtually no chance of winning unless you play the rest of the game in order to grind up enough levels. This essentially makes the whole rest of the game a giant series of {{Side Quest}}s, which is much more fun than random mob farming.

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'' had ''Money Grinding''. You can survive the next area just fine without too much level grinding, provided you can afford the ungodly expensive equipment. Oh, and the next town that's five minutes away has a better set of ungodly expensive equipment that you need to buy to survive.
** Money grinding is almost never worth it in PSIV, though. There are some very expensive equips in the mid- to late-game, but they're generally only worth a point or two of attack or defense. There is one point about 30 to 60 minutes into the game where one could grind for some sweet gear while abusing the temporary aid of much higher-level character, but that's hardly arduous, and entirely un-forced. Doing the sidequests and not running away from battles usually provided enough money and experience to carry you through each new area.
** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'' on the other hand had '''loads''' of forced level grinding. To survive the first dungeon you probably had to grind at least 10 levels, as well as buy new weapons and armour. Not to mention that whenever a new character joined up, they started at level 1, so you '''had''' to grind if you actually wanted to use them. It's worse after [[spoiler:you lose Nei]] because it's likely you'll have to train someone else up from scratch to fill the fourth party space, who will more than likely get killed over and over by robots while you're leveling him/her.
** Same for the original ''Phantasy Star''.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarNova'': while the original game doesn't really require you to grind (levels come fairly quickly up to level 100) the post game content starts at level 110 and the only way to go from 100 to 110 is to ''grind''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'' does this via having enemies gain a bonus to all of their parameters for every level higher they are then you, though it applies to you, as well. If something is more then two levels higher, it'll be difficult, but beatable, but for anything five levels or above, you're not likely going to win unless you resort to specific tactics [[note]]Ether attacks are more accurate then physical attacks, which makes them essential to pulling off a successful LowLevelRun[[/note]] or have extremely good gear to compensate for the level difference (Which is only really available in the endgame).

* Happens a lot in the ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'' series, especially with boss battles, making these a form of BeefGate; eg the giant bee that guards the Bell in ''VideoGame/YsVITheArkOfNapishtim'' will annihilate you the first time you can reach it. And you need a ton of level grinding to beat Zava, the guardian at the entance to the Belltower in ''VideoGame/YsIIAncientYsVanishedTheFinalChapter''. Perhaps the worst offender is the SNES version of ''Wanderers from Ys'', where you often have to run around grinding for about half an hour before you even have a chance at beating a boss, even the early ones in Tigray Quarry. To add insult to injury, the enemy's EXP values decrease with each level, like many other games in the series. A typical ''Ys'' strategy: can't quite beat the boss? Level up one or two times. The next time you fight it you'll do a lot better. Apparently, this was unintentional in the first game. It evidently didn't have a level cap, and Internet walkthroughs for it recommend reaching level 40 before the final boss fight. In the remake, you're capped at level 24, leading to one ''[[MarathonBoss long]]'' final boss fight.

* {{Downplayed}} in ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}''. The Cobweb Duster, necessary to get through certain areas later in the game, costs 800 arrowheads and becomes available at rank 20. However, it is very easy to reach that rank long before the Duster is needed, and the arrowheads can be collected in about 15 minutes with the Dowsing Rod.
** Additionally, the Pyrokinesis, Telekinesis, and Invisibility powers are all necessary to beat the game, and unlock at ranks 10, 20, and 30 respectively. Again, it's easy to reach rank 30 before any of these powers are necessary, as long as you're good at collecting figments and PSI cards.

* Happens a lot in the ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'' series, especially with boss battles, making these a form of BeefGate; eg the giant bee that guards the Bell in ''VI'' will annihilate you the first time you can reach it. And you need a ton of level grinding to beat Zava, the guardian at the entance to the Belltower in ''II''. Perhaps the worst offender is the SNES version of ''Wanderers from Ys'', where you often have to run around grinding for about half an hour before you even have a chance at beating a boss, even the early ones in Tigray Quarry. To add insult to injury, the enemy's EXP values decrease with each level, like many other games in the series.
** A typical ''Ys'' strategy: can't quite beat the boss? Level up one or two times. The next time you fight it you'll do a lot better.
** Apparently, this was unintentional in the first game. It evidently didn't have a level cap, and Internet walkthroughs for it recommend reaching level 40 before the final boss fight. In the remake, you're capped at level 24, leading to one ''[[MarathonBoss long]]'' final boss fight.

* In ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' you could beat the last Gym Leader, get to and through Victory Road, and challenge the Elite Four pretty easily without having gone out of your way to grind prior to that. But ''beating'' the Elite Four/Champion is much different from ''challenging'' them; you might have to spend a couple nights grinding in Victory Road before you could actually do anything effectual against the Elite Four. Note, however, that 80% of the Elite Four's Pokemon have a weakness to either the Flying or Fighting type. The Starly family, who are among the most common Pokemon in the game, just happen to learn powerful attacks of both elements. They can nearly single-handedly wipe out the entire Elite Four when underleveled. Let's hope you bothered to train one...
** ''[[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Gold, Silver, and Crystal Versions]]'' are the easiest generation... until you get to Silver Cave. The strongest trainer prior to this is Blue, with his highest-level Pokémon being level 58. But then, we've got [[TrueFinalBoss Red]] whose LOWEST-level Pokémon is level 73! If you are playing with a 6-Pokémon team, this part of the game is a nightmare even if you caught the Level-70 legendary (Lugia in ''Gold'', Ho-Oh in ''Silver''; both of them in ''Crystal'', provided you get the wings from Pewter City) to save time. Not to mention that the highest-level Pokémon you can powerlevel against repeatedly are level 50, so the exp. yield is not awesome.
*** In the remakes Red is in the upper eighties with all his mons. However, the pain is somewhat eased by the rematch system, where, not only can you rematch Kanto trainers, you can also battle former Gym Leaders with buffed-up teams, so there's not as much grinding on mons 20+ levels below you. Plus, you can always transfer high level mons you may have from other Gen IV games or use Pal Park to bring them up from GBA games.

** In [[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite the fifth generation]], the Elite Four only have four Pokemon each, the highest being only level 50. The champion replacement battle pits you against two tough battles in a row with the Pokemon around level 55, including a Legendary and a pseudolegend ten levels below the evolution threshold. Besides this, all the trainers right after the E4 have Pokemon starting at level 65, most of these said Pokemon are unevolved though.

** Utterly averted in [[VideoGame/PokemonXandY Gen VI]]. If you don't turn off the Exp. Share after you get it (it defaults to on), by the time you're halfway into the game you're done facing serious challenges. By the time you hit the Elite Four your starter will outlevel them by around twenty levels.

* In ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey'', a good deal of grinding is quite necessary.

** ''[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19281 Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul]]'' is a GameMod for ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' that removes LevelScaling. It also significantly reworks the gameplay, and many of the overhauled gameplay features make the player character initially weaker than in Vanilla. The combination of those two changes makes wandering Skyrim far more dangerous upon low levels. Bleak Falls Barrow, which is one of the dungeons encountered very early in the main quest, has been made to be far more difficult.

** ''[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19281 Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul]]'' is a GameMod for ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' that removes LevelScaling. It also significantly reworks the gameplay, and many of the overhauled gameplay features make the player character initiall weaker than in Vanilla. The combination of those two changes makes wandering Skyrim far more dangerous upon low levels. Bleak Falls Barrow, which is one of the dungeons encountered very early in the main quest, has been made to be far more difficult.

** [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19281 Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul]] is a GameMod that removes LevelScaling from ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]''. This makes wandering Skyrim far more dangerous upon low levels. Bleak Falls Barrow, which is one of the dungeons encountered very early in the main quest, has been made to be far more difficult.

*** The final boss, the Dragonlord, was all but impossible to defeat without grinding to at least level 17, or 18 if you don't know his entire moveset and are lucky. (A tool-assisted SpeedRun does it at level 7 with the aid of very heavy luck manipulation.) The Dragonlord's final form (both his melee attacks and his fire breath) does more damage per turn than any curative item can heal, and there are no magic-restoring items, so the only way to beat him is to hit him until you run low on life, then casting your best cure spell (Healmore). The battle is completely decided by whether or not you'll knock off all his HP before running out of MP, which again is decided by which level you're on.
*** Also, in the first game, in order to survive in the Grave of Garin, you have to grind to about level 13 (damn Wraith Knights in the lower levels). Then, there's the swamps south of Hauksness, home to the strongest overworld enemies in the game, including the dreaded [[DemonicSpiders Star Wyverns, Green Dragons, Demon Knights, and Wizards]]. Not to mention the even more demonic enemies in the FinalDungeon.
** In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII'', even the enemies near the first town will pwn you if you don't level up around the starting castle first. At least you get the Copper Sword at the beginning of the game -- the PlayerCharacter of the previous game didn't even have that; he had to buy a club and spend several hours earning enough gold to work his way up to the Copper Sword.

* ''VideoGame/LegendOfLegaia'' is this the entire way through the game. The bosses (especially [[ThatOneBoss Berserker, Xain, and Gaza]]) do NOT pull any punches, and will likely murder you in the first few rounds if you even THINK of fighting them under the recommended levels. The fact that equipment is expensive and that normal enemies don't give a lot of experience OR money doesn't help matters either. The Berserker in particular is a combination of ThatOneBoss and a WakeUpCallBoss that shows that level grinding alone won't cut it, requiring both grinding and solid strategy [[note]]Or exploiting a NonObviousWeakness via Nighto abuse[[/note]] to proceed.