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  • After Armageddon Gaiden has you gain levels in each character's indivitual stats, with the maximum being 99 in each stat. You'll easily beat the game with most stats in the 20s and 30s. The only things likely to go above that are each character's main attacking stat, and even then they'll still be far from 99.
  • In Anachronox, the maximum level is 99. Reaching this level, however, is nigh-impossible. Enemies don't usually respawn, so you can't kill them over and over for experience. Add on to that the fact that the game uses Dynamic Difficulty, and it's basically a useless cap.
  • Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, with its XP cap of 8,000,000, which means level 31 to 40 depending on class. Normal finishing level is maybe a bit under thirty, and the cap is so absurdly high for 2nd edition Dungeons & Dragons rules that even the new special abilities introduced in this game can't make for meaningful content for so many levels. Wizards cease to gain any new powers at all long before the maximum.
  • In Before the Echo the Super Boss is typically beaten and the game at 100% Completion, around the mid to late twenties depending on your luck with item drops. The technical level cap is 34, after which it takes ten billion experience points to reach the next level and being insane enough to actually reach it would probably cause the game to crash.
  • The final boss of The Caligula Effect can be beaten at level 30, yet the level cap is somewhere around 300, which is much higher than what's recommended for even the hardest World Reward dungeons. The Caligula Effect: Overdose has a less severe case of this — the final boss has been raised to level 50, and the level cap has been lowered to 200, which is still much higher than any of the postgame content.
  • Chrono Cross takes this straight into Anti-Grinding territory. The level cap is 99, and you only gain a level after defeating a boss, with some minor stat growth for a few battles after each boss. The maximum number of levels you can gain in a single playthrough is 48. Meaning, if you want to hit the level cap, you'll need to beat every boss in one playthrough, start a New Game Plus, beat every boss again, beat the game again, and start over for a third time.
  • In Chrono Trigger, the level cap of 99 is impossible to reach without serious grinding, especially if you want to do it in a single playthrough. Even if you complete every single sidequest in the game, and exploit time travel to run through the Black Omen several times, your party's levels will still only be in the mid-50s. Lavos can be beaten at this point without too much trouble. Grind your way up to 99, however, and you'll be basically unkillable. New Game Plus is the most fun way to grind, but Crono will probably max out far before everyone else since he can't be switched out until late in the game.
  • The level cap in Demon's Souls, the Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne and Elden Ring is whatever your level is when all of your stats reach the maximum of 99. This ends up being Level 712 in Demon's Souls and Elden Ring, 709-713 in Dark Souls 1 (depending on starting class), 838 in Dark Souls 2, 802 in Dark Souls 3, and 544 in Bloodborne. For PvP and co-op, the generally agreed-upon Meta Game for character building is in the 90-120 range (150 for Dark Souls 2, while Elden Ring has a somewhat Broken Base where one camp insists on 125 and the other insists on 150), and without deliberately going for such a build you might beat the game without even hitting that (especially if you often die and don't manage to reclaim your lost Souls/Blood Echoes/Runes). There is also very little reason to get your character to the level cap even outside of the meta (other than just to say you did) since Diminishing Returns for Balance hits hard once a stat reaches the soft cap (usually 40; 60 for Elden Ring).
  • In Digimon World 3, the level cap is 99, but most Digimon can achieve their unnecessarily powerful top-level Digivolutions by about level 60-70. While the final boss does require massive offensive and defensive power to beat, by that point in the game you have access to items which can boost your attack power and other parameters without having to fight, so it's entirely possible to beat him at level 30.
    • In Digimon World 4, the cap is 999. Even playing through all three difficulty levels, you're unlikely to reach 300.
  • Dragon Age: Origins has a level cap of 25, which is impossible to reach without the Elfroot grind or Ostagar exploit. Getting to level 20 gains you a class-specific achievement, while new characters in the Awakening expansion start at level 18. The game's manual flat-out states that there is no level cap, and the unreachable (without cheating) programmed limit is there for design purposes only, rather than a true level cap.
  • Dragon Age II plays it utterly straight again. The level cap is 50, which has only ever been reachable through a since fixed bug exploit; in a single playthrough, you can go up to level 25, tops, which is about one fourth of the XP needed to reach the cap. The likely explanation is that the cap was set with future DLC campaigns in mind, but all planned DLC levels after Mark of the Assassin (including an Expansion Pack) were Cut Short.
  • In Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, the final boss of the story, Kid Buu, is around level 70 or so, and the hardest superbosses in the game (Bonyu and Mira) are at level 100, but you can keep grinding up to a staggering 250.
  • Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku:
    • The first game's cap is set at 25, but it's possible to get to the endgame significantly before then; reaching the cap requires loitering around completed areas to grind out kills for several minutes multiple times. Somewhat infamously, the balancing is so poor that even at the cap, everything from the Final Boss to random mooks will still kill you in a handful of hits.
    • The Legacy of Goku II has a level cap of 50, though the minimum level you need to beat the game is only 40, and even that's only because of level-locked doors which require a specific character to be at or above a level to open, one of which in the path of the main story requires Goku at level 40. Reaching the cap with everyone else anyway lets them open secret doors, which lead to tough fights that reward a statue of the respective Z-Fighter (Goku's statue is automatically granted over the course of the final battle against Cell), and getting all five unlocks a post-endgame section where you play as Hercule, with a new level-50 door for him leading to a secret ending where he does an interview and takes credit for beating Cell. If you managed to get Goku to the level cap before the finale, Hercule starts at level 40 instead of level 1, which makes getting him to the cap much easier.
    • Buu's Fury has the level cap at 200, well beyond the challenge of anything the game will throw at you. Compared to the previous games it's much easier to get to that cap, barring the sheer time commitment, because of the addition of gear that boosts experience gains.
  • The Dragon Quest series as a whole has a habit of this.
    • In Dragon Quest, the level cap is 30 at 65535 EXP, but you can curbstomp the Dragonlord well before then, around Level 24 (you need a minimum of Level 20 to have the least chance at beating him). If you reach level 30, the king will lampshade this by saying "Thou art strong enough! Why can thou not defeat the Dragonlord?" Unlike most others on this list, however, it actually becomes easier to gain levels, as the XP amount between levels is static at that point, even though you're dealing more damage and taking less in return. However, since 98% of the entire game is grinding, it's all a matter of whether you even want to bother grinding more than you have to.
      • The remakes on mobile and Switch change this to an even 70,000 XP, but changes the curve so that level ups beyond 25 take 5,000 each or so. Of course, by then you’re one- and two-shotting even the dreaded Knight Abhorrent and Red Dragon and literally walking off the damage with the HP Regen of Erdrick’s Armor, so your approach to the Dragonlord plays like a Mook Horror Show at that point.
    • In Dragon Quest IV, the level cap is 99, but players are likely to beat the game before they hit level 40. The game implicitly recognizes this in the original release by having every character learn all of their spells and abilities by then. Come the remake, however, the hero now has a new spell at level 50, and a Secret Character can learn spells all the way up to level 60! Even with the Bonus Dungeon and new Final Boss, however, players are quite capable of beating everything with levels in the low-to-mid 40's.
    • In Dragon Quest IX, the level cap is 99; you'll be needing over 65535 XP per level when you get much past 50! Oh, and XP is not shared between vocations (classes), so you could be a level 99 warrior but only a level 1 mage. And you can reset back to level 1 if you want, in order to get more skill points and a "special" item related to the vocation.
  • In EarthBound Beginnings, the level cap is 99. It takes over 100,000 Exp. points to get to this level in a game where an enemy that gives 500 Exp. is a Metal Slime, and you can beat the game at levels 25 to 30. Also, Ninten and Ana learn their final PSI moves at level 35.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • In Morrowind, the absolute highest level you can achieve without cheats or exploits is 78, as at that point, all of your Major and Minor skills will be maxed out, which prevents further leveling up. For an efficiently leveled Player Character, it is possible to beat the main quest in the level 20-30 range, while the expansions require only about 10 levels more.
    • Oblivion, like Morrowind, doesn't have a hard level cap, but you are unable to level up if all your favored attributes are already at the maximum of 100. You are also unable to gain further experience if all your skills are at maximum level, although this can be worked around by spending time in jail which lowers skills.
    • Skyrim:
      • Like its predecessors in the series, vanilla Skyrim's effective level cap is 81 as, to reach it, you will need to max out all of your skills. And even the cap of 81 is absurdly high; you can finish most of the game's quests long before that, after level 40 or so that level-up bar moves at a snail's pace, and the enemies' levels usually cap somewhere between 40 and 50. The highest level character in-game is the Greybeard Arngeir, who has a set level of 150.
      • Patch 1.9 adds a new feature that basically removes the cap altogether. Once you've got a skill to 100, you'll have the option to reset it to 15 (and get all your perk points in that skill refunded), allowing you to level the skill up again and ultimately increase your character's level past 81. The game even keeps track of how many times you've done this with each skill. With this change, you would need to reach level 255 to acquire every single skill perk. And you can still level up beyond that, though it has no benefit whatsoever apart from paltry (at this point) increases to magicka/health/stamina. In theory, there's no level cap, but enterprising players have discovered that having more than 255 unused perk points crashes the game, making the effective level cap 510. For a game in which the highest-level killable enemy (the Ebony Warrior in the Dragonborn DLC) is level 81. The final level-related achievement is added by the Dawnguard expansion for killing a Legendary Dragon, which only start spawning at level 78.
  • You're likely to end Emerald Dragon somewhere around level 125-135, but you can continue to level up further into the hundreds, long past what would be reasonable.
  • Etrian Odyssey:
    • Etrian Odyssey: Played with. The player's level cap is 70, but beating the main story's final boss can be done at slightly lower than 60. However, its Bonus Dungeon demands you to use all those 70 levels due to the numerous enemy encounters, and said enemies (plus the True Final Boss at the end) being merciless.
    • Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard: The level cap has been increased to 99, but not only you should be able to beat the main game at 50-60s, your characters' level cap is also 70 at natural. It can be increased by retiring those characters which resets their levels but ultimately increases their level cap by 1 per retiring. Yes, you need to retire your characters 29 times plus one last time to give a maximum stat bonus to finally reach their level cap.note 
    • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City: Starting from this game, the standard cap is still 70 and the minimum level recommended for the Final Boss is 60 (65 in the case of the fifth game's), but defeating each of the Superboss dragons (or, in the absence thereof in the fifth game, other hidden superbosses) during the Playable Epilogue increases your level cap by 10 (or 9 for the third). But then again, even with grinding someone to lv 99, retiring them and doing it again to get the maximum number of skill points possible, you still can't max out every skill.
  • Fairy Fencer F has a level cap is 99, in a game that can be beaten comfortably sometime in the low-40s. The player can also purchase some DLC that increases the level cap all the way to 999, complete with three separate Bonus Level of Hell stages just to give them something to conceivably reach this new cap with.
  • Most Fallout games have an Absurdly Low Level Cap, but 2 and 4 are the exception:
    • The level cap in Fallout 2 is set to 99. That is outright impossible to reach by normal means without a character geared to do it (high Outdoorsman skill and all related perks) because of the in-game time limit of 13 years. Without Level Grinding, it's entirely possible to finish the game before reaching level 24 where the two best perks become available — or if you go for Sequence Breaking, you can finish the game at level 2 (not counting the tons of XP gained during the final mission). Oh, and all skills max out at 300% which is Awesome, but Impractical as nothing in the game have skill checks above 150. Finishing the game has one NPC rewarding the player with a cheat item that maxes out all skills and gives you a massive amount of XP as many times as you want to use it.
    • Fallout 4 surpasses Fallout 2 in absurdness by merit of the revamped perk system. Like Skyrim, there's an effective level cap (above which there is no gain from leveling up but a small HP increase), in this case 318 (lower if you find the items that increase your base stats), and a hard level cap of none — unless you count level 65535, above which the game will literally break due to overflow.
  • Familia: Most players will likely beat the game at levels 10 through 20, but the level cap for non-master classes is 50, which is probably only necessary for Mother Superboss and the New Game Plus versions of some bosses. However, once a character reaches level 50, they can attain a Master class that allows them to level up indefinitely, albeit with stat growths only every 100 levels. However, each new level in the Master Class allows the character to manually allocate AP to their stats.
  • Most high-level challenges in Fantasy Life can be beaten with a level 50 character, yet the standard game has a cap of 100 and the DLC pushes it up to 200. There are still benefits in higher levels as each give the player extra HP and skill points. Given the game has a Job System and no real ending, both become handy at some point. Some challenges also require beating a high-level boss several times to get item drops; if the player needed an hour to beat the boss the first time while being assissted by Physical God twins, it won't hurt to reach a level that will make the same battle only last half an hour.
  • The Final Fantasy series tends to play this straight, with the exceptions of Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy XIII, as they don't have the traditional level-up system. Otherwise most games have a Level cap of 99, and can mostly be completed fine by a party at Level 50.
    • The original Final Fantasy applies if you're using an average-strength party. The final boss can be beaten at level 25 or so well before the level cap of 50. If you're playing with a weaker party (say, all mages) or playing a duo or solo run, you're grateful for the ability to level. Even at level 50 a solo Thief or Black Mage has a hard time beating the final dungeon.
    • Final Fantasy III has a particularly silly case of this with the Onion Knight class, a Magikarp Power class that starts out terrible but undergoes massive stat growths starting at level 92. Even if you're doing a Solo-Character Run, you probably aren't going to go over level 70.
    • Final Fantasy X
      • The Sphere Grid plays this trope straighter than most traditional level-up systems. And that's not even considering if you want to start replacing nodes with stronger versions. There's nowhere enough stat nodes on the entire grid to max all stats including HP and MP, even if you go through the hundreds of hours of effort of clearing all nodes and replacing them with optimal versions and activating them with every character. Depending on if you count the practical level cap or the theoretical, it's either absurdly high or impossibly high.
      • It also plays the trope straight with blitzball players' levels. The cap is 99, but you can easily win all of the important items that blitzball has to offer by a much lower level. Players only gain XP by performing actions (passing, shooting, making a save), and considering the length of blitzball games, few players will gain that much each match. Higher-level passing and shooting abilities increase the amount of XP per action, but they require substantially more HP to perform, and since HP goes up with level, low-level players can't abuse the highest-level abilities to level up quickly.
    • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance had its max level cap to 50, so the average level for an end game party was about 30 to 35. The sequel had the level cap to 99, so most parties would be around level 50 by the final boss.
    • Final Fantasy XIII capped the Crystarium (essentially a skill tree whose nodes have to be purchased by spending Crystogen Points) and expected you to have unlocked all available nodes by the time you unlock the next Crystarium stage after a specific plot event. On the other hand, it eventually opened up side portions of it that you weren't expected to use until the post-game, and the post-game complete cap removal requires grinding to take advantage of.
    • In Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the other hand, you will max out your characters in the process of getting 100% Completion without ever needing to grind for it.
    • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII seems to be all over the place with this: while there's no traditional levels to speak of, your stats naturally max out at 5000 Strength, 5000 Magic and 50000 HP. These are also your permanent maximum base stat values, which you can increase by completing quests multiple times in New Game Plus. However, all equipment directly increases your stats and thus counts towards your normal maximum stats, but even with that, you're lucky to reach 2000-3000 in either stat with every quest completed and endgame equipment on your first playthrough: this is where the said New Game Plus comes in, which gives you an option to double your maximum stats to 9999, 9999 and 99999 respectively and greatly strengthen your equipment, but even with those benefits, it'll take a good while to max out even a single one of your stats by finishing said quests multiple times, especially since every one of them gives you a smaller stat increase after the first time you finish them.
    • Final Fantasy XV's final boss can be beaten at around level 30, in a game where the maximum level was 99 before a patch raised it even further to 120. This is in part due to the AP/ability mechanic that could make up for a lot of levels if the player invested the time, though all that really does is replace one kind of grinding with another.
    • Final Fantasy XVI: Averted with this game as the only character who can be leveled up in this game is the sole playable character Clive Rosfield. In this game, Clive can take on the final boss comfortably at the levels around 40 to 42 and the cap is at 50. This is mainly due to how the game is more action oriented, requiring players to dodge and parry attacks while attacking freely themselves. However, the game has a hidden hard difficulty called “Final Fantasy Mode”, which is achieved after beating the game once and is a new game plus. This mode changes enemy placements and gives them more aggressive AI but it also doubles Clive’s level cap to the traditional 100. The DLC expansion “Echoes Of The Fallen increases the level cap by 5 but that depends on whether the game is played at new game plus or not with the cap set at 55 for normal playthroughs and 105 for those at new game plus. Another expansion, “The Rising Tide” raised the cap by five more levels, capping out at 60 for the normal game and 110 for new game plus.
    • Final Fantasy VIII played with this trope. The maximum level is 100, but the game discouraged Level Grinding, as junctioning spells to your characters' stats was far more efficient overall, encouraging a Low-Level Run which still resulted in hours upon hours of using Draw and Card.
    • Final Fantasy Legend III races other than humans and mutants cap out at level 31 and receive no further benefits. That's enough to defeat the final boss. However, if you really want to put in the effort, you can grind up to level 99, allowing humans and mutants to have 99 in all stats and well over 999 HP.
    • Final Fantasy Adventure can be beaten at level 40 with some effort and the best equipment. If you took the time to level up to around 50, the final boss becomes much easier. At level 60+, you can win with your eyes closed blindly swinging your sword. However, the level cap is 99, which requires an absurd amount of time to reach given the EXP gains of the enemies in the last area. (Although there is an earlier Peninsula of Power Leveling.)
  • Each of the twelve kids in Fuga: Melodies of Steel can reach Level 99, but it's incredibly impractical to reach that point as you'll most likely have everyone at around level 40 by the last chapter, and trying to hit the cap requires multiple repeat playthroughs. God forbid if you try to get Britz to his maximum level...
  • In Golden Sun, the highest-tier spells are learned at around level 54 and you can go up to 99, but you only need to be about level 30 to defeat the final boss of the first game, while level 40 is enough for the final bosses of The Lost Age and Dark Dawn.
  • The level cap in GreedFall is 90. Doing every single quest in the game won't even get you to level 40.
  • Guardian's Crusade had a level cap of 65535, even though you'd probably be facing the Final Boss at around level 50. This limit is likely due to it being the maximum value representable by a 16 bit integer.
  • Hyperdimension Neptunia gives you the option of this. The default level cap is 99 and you'll have opened up every purchasable item and be strong enough to pound all the foes if you hit it. DLC gives you the option of bumping it up to 999, so you can max out every stat for every character and improve your odds at the DLC dungeons.
  • In the Kingdom Hearts series, the level cap is usually level 99, with players expected to finish the story at around level 50. There are usually a few Superbosses that require you to level grind a bit, however.
    • Birth by Sleep takes this even further. The game is split into three storylines, in which each protagonist has to start at level one whenever you start their story, regardless of how many playthroughs you've already finished. In order to avoid having to grind back up whenever you start with a new character, the storyline is meant to be finished by the time you're in your low 30's, even though the maximum is still 99 like the previous games. Even then, one of the game's optional bosses can be beaten quite comfortably at level 50.
    • Kingdom Hearts Re:coded has a level cap of 99, as usual. However, getting there requires a ludicrous amount of EXP—10,000,000 EXP is required to get all the Level Up chips. That said, it is possible to double the effectiveness of each Level Up chip, effectively allowing the player to reach level 99 when he has accumulated the experience to approximately reach level 50.
    • In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, it's possible to beat Sora's story at level 40, and Riku's story at level 25. The level cap for both characters is 99, but it's only there for bragging rights since there are no Superbosses to use all that power on.
      • HD 1.5 ReMIX adds trophies for getting both characters to level 99. Sora's is easier since he has plenty of sleights for crowd-clearing, but Riku's is just a grind since he always has a fixed deck.
    • Kingdom Hearts III has Sora's level capped at 99 as always, but Gummi ship levels are also absurdly high. The level cap for Gummi ships is also 99, but they're mostly Empty Levels since all leveling up does is increase the amount of parts you can have on custom Gummi ships. The strongest ships in the game use blueprints that ignore the part limits anyway, and completely outclass anything a player can conceivably create.
    • Kingdom Hearts χ continuously raises its level cap through patches. At level 301, the amount of Lux required to gain a level jumps from a few million Lux to about half a billion, while going up past level 450 requires fifty billion Lux. All in a game where the hardest encounters might give a few million Lux each. In early 2019, the level cap was raised to level 600, and early 2020 raised it again to level 850. Finding any player who's even close to level 600 is incredibly rare, and by that point, even doing all of the hardest challenges will make a player go for months without leveling up. Even then, leveling up is largely pointless past level 301; gaining a level only restores your AP to full and gives you a few Avatar Coins. By level 301, you've most likely unlocked all of the Avatar Coin rewards anyways. Milestone levels (like 400, 450, etc.) provide minor stat gains and a repository of free Jewels, but beyond that, a player's level rarely reflects their power past level 301.
  • Klonoa Heroes: Densetsu no Star Medal: Character levels peak at 60 for lots of HP in the Extra Visions, but the main game can be comfortably beaten with the trio in the mid 40s. In fact, both attack stats and agility can be maxed out at level 45.
  • Knights of the Old Republic had a level cap of 20, which could easily be reached halfway through the game if no experience was missed. Complaints of this probably led to the second game having a max cap of 50. Of course, it was very rare for players to hit 30 before the end of that game, making the extra twenty somewhat superfluous (it is possible the level cap was set with some of the Dummied Out content in mind, especially as the developers were quite willing to finish up some of it and release a patch re-adding it), though its possible to exploit a glitch that spawns infinite enemies and (tediously) reach that cap. In fact, KotOR II was advertised as not having a level cap, which for all practical purposes is true. It probably would be literally true if the game engine supported it, but levels can't be procedurally generated; all information on leveling up is stored in (obviously finite) tables.
  • Legasista has a straight-up hellish level system. You can beat the game at around level 40 to 50, if you find some good equipment in the random dungeons. Those same random dungeons are the best way to grind exp, and getting to the level cap of 99 is hard, but doable. Then the curveball hits you: the actual level cap is at 999, but the level curve increases a hundredfold after 99. Why? According to the game itself, "so that you wouldn't feel like the EXP you gain at max level isn't wasted." Oh, and there's six classes for each character to max out, as well. And you'll likely want to run a three-man party for the most of the game.
  • In The Legend of Dragoon, the level cap is 60 but virtually all leveling up will come from fighting bosses so if you defeat every single Optional Boss, you'll be 40-42 by the time you reach the Final Boss and in the upper 30s if you ignore the superbosses. While difficult at the intended level, if you actually spend the insane amount of time it will take to reach 60, you'll probably kill the Final Boss in 3-5 turns.
  • Legend of Grimrock
    • In the first game, reaching the skill cap of 50 requires over 100,000 experience points, with monsters giving around a thousand at most. It's reachable with normal endgame stats, but only if you put every level-up into a single skill, and every class has 6 skills.
    • It's unknown what the level cap of the sequel is, but it's at least in the quadruple digits. Even a completionist playthrough will only get enough xp to reach level 14 by the end of the game.
  • In the original The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, level 99 is the maximum level for any character. Level 68 is generally the recommended level for fighting the final boss, and that's on Nightmare Mode. The are no optional bosses and therefore no practical need for anything close to level 99. Reach Level 80 or higher with Rean will grant you a bonus in Cold Steel II, but that's it. Furthermore, gained EXP is relative to your current level, so after a point, even fighting the toughest enemies will grant only a pittance of EXP. You can even things a bit by taking advantage of easy multipliers, but it's still a grind.
    • Its sequel, Cold Steel II has Rean already starting off at level 40 and can potentially end the game at level 200. The Final Boss is at level 150.
  • The level cap in Legend of Legaia is 99. Even with extreme grinding, the levels granted are stingy, and you'll probably beat the game somewhere between levels 35 and 40. If you want to beat the obnoxiously difficult Superboss, you'll want another ten or twenty levels on that. If you want to complete the sidequest to get usable Juggernaut magic, you are required to be at level 99. Even grinding every single day for a few hours, that will take a long time note 
  • In Lennus II, the level cap is at its usual 99. However, it is possible to finish the game in the mid 30's due to its absurd experience requirements for the next level. Made even worse when you realize that the game splits experience among your party members. Even good battles will give Farus and his party not enough experience as the endgame was designed to be beaten around those levels.
  • In LISA, the level cap is 99. Every party member learns their final skill at around level 25 (and in the case of Buddy in Joyful, she learns her final skill at level 22) and you'll probably be in that range by the time the game is over.
  • In Live A Live, the level cap is 99 — for a game where each character's final skill is learned at level 16 and the hardest bosses can be comfortably beaten in the mid twenties.
  • If Lords of Xulima even has a level cap, it won't be found without combing through the source code. Enemies do not respawn, ever, and there's no repeatable xp gain. Depending on how early and how high you stacked xp bonuses, you'll end up somewhere in the 60s to 80s if you kill everything.
  • Mass Effect trilogy:
    • Mass Effect has a level cap of 60, which is impossible to achieve in one playthrough (because levels 51-60 are unlocked by beating the game) and difficult to achieve in two (because of the ridiculously high amounts of experience needed to gain the last 10 levelsnote ). The Legendary Edition remaster makes it a bit less absurd by giving you the full level cap on the first playthrough, although you will still only reach level 57 if you do everything possible in one playthrough.
    • Mass Effect 2 has a level cap of 30, which is easily reached in one playthrough. Plus, if you import a level 60 character from the first game, you restart at level five, making it easier to hit the cap, especially if you have the DLC.
    • Mass Effect 3 increases the level cap back to 60 (once again impossible to achieve in one playthrough), but with a twist. Your Mass Effect 2 levels carry over into Mass Effect 3, meaning that a max-level character from the second game will start the third game at level 30. However, this trope still applies; a level 30 import Shepard who does everything possible in the vanilla game will end up somewhere in the mid-50s, meaning you either have to start a New Game Plus or get at least two of the four story DLC packs (From Ashes, Leviathan, Omega, Citadel) to reach the cap. There is an achievement for that, but it can also be unlocked by reaching level 20 in multiplayer, which does not take nearly as long if you focus on leveling a single class.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda has no level cap for Ryder, and one can buy every upgrade around level 120, and a single playthrough usually gets a player on 50-60. On the other hand, the Nexus maxes out on level 20 (You can't get every upgrade for it, something the game doesn't tell you beforehand.), until the 1.06 patch which raised the level cap for the Nexus, as do multiplayer characters and strike teams.
  • Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes: Depending on the campaign, you'll be around level 7 to 9 when you reach the final boss after completing all the sidequests, out of 10 possible. If you want to get experience, you'll have to find an area with random encounters and walk around until you trigger them. Random encounters rarely are higher than 7, so this takes a while. Better yet, you might have to do this for your units as well if you need to use one you haven't used much before (or simply haven't had access to yet).
  • Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra has an unknown level cap (likely one based on memory space, like 255, 32767, or 65535) and an exorbitant gold cost to get there. It is possible to get that much gold by repeatedly duplicating and selling a high-value item and/or taking advantage of compound interest, but the toughest monster in the game can be defeated at level 70ish, if you have a good weapon.
  • Might and Magic IV and V: World of Xeen uses a very similar structure to Might and Magic III and likely has the same level cap. However, the duplication spell no longer exists, so your only source for unlimited gold is by gaining interest on banked gold. (On the other hand, it is said that the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.)
  • Likewise, Might and Magic VI-VIII have level cap of 200 at least, but the games can be comfortably beaten with party at level 50, or even lower with correct equipment. There is no item duplication spell either, though you can get theoretically infinite money by enchanting them, or, in case of VII, by exploiting a certain well if you have Cleric with grandmaster Body Magic.
  • In Miitopia, the caps for levels and relationships are 50 and 99 respectively. You'll get about halfway for the levels by the end, but unless you dedicate yourself to building relationships, your Miis probably only have one relationship over 20 each by the time you reach the final boss, let alone having three of them. Though it is possible to be level 50 even before you leave the first world, along with relationships being 99 with all members amongst themselves. (Though this leads to this kind of battle) Your allies are boosted because of you, too!
  • In Mother 3, you'll likely finish the game with most of your party around level 60 when Lucas and Kumatora learn their final PSI. The level cap here is also 99.
  • Mugen Souls has a level cap of 9999, similar to Disgaea. However, it's not made by Nippon Ichi but instead, it's from Compile Heart in collaboration with G Crest.
  • For NetHack, the experience level cap is 30. This sounds reasonable for a fifty-floor dungeon, but around experience level 12 the conventional methods of level-gaining — killing stuff — are no longer efficient. A more regular interval emerges for experience levels 20+ but getting from 12 to 20 looks daunting on paper. A wily player has to develop other strategies to compensate for the growing violent horde while scraping together whatever other experience levels they can for the endgame. The way the game's monster-scaling algorithm works means that avoiding leveling past the minimum required (you have to be level 14 to unlock part of the main quest) is a viable strategy, as being a lower level means weaker monsters will be generated.
  • Installing Neverwinter Nights' final expansion Hordes of the Underdark makes it possible to reach level 40, but even if you complete every last sidequest and kill every last enemy, you should expect to finish somewhere between levels 25-30. The rest is left up to community modules to make up the difference.
  • The original campaign of Neverwinter Nights 2 averts this (cap is 20, you'll probably hit it in the final act), as does the Mask of the Betrayer expansion (cap is 30, but you start at 18, or you can export a level 20 from the original campaign; you'll usually hit it, again, in the final act). Storm of Zehir, on the other hand, falls right into this — the cap in that game is 40, and your character starts at 4th level. Even if you slaughter every random encounter you come across and fill out every companion sidequest, you'll have a hard time going over 20, and the Final Boss can be killed by a party in the high teens without much trouble.
  • Octopath Traveler: The maximum is 99, when the final chapters of each character's story are balanced for level 45. In addition, the True Final Boss, which is the game's most difficult fight, is balanced for level 55.
  • Odin Sphere: The level cap is 99, but you can reasonably complete the game at a level much lower than that. If you do well enough to conserve your HP and understand the attack patterns, a level 40 Psypher level would be sufficient.
  • Okiku, Star Apprentice: 99. Where the Final Boss can be defeated at less than level 50.
  • OMORI has a cap at level 50, but you can comfortably beat the game in the low- to mid-30s. This is because at about two-thirds of the way through, the game drops the RPG elements and focuses almost entirely on the story, meaning nothing else will actually challenge you (or let you raise your level) past that point. One ending route does allow for further fights that demand you get stronger, but as far as the actual story goes all of these are completely optional.
  • Parameters: Possibly has no limit, but defeating all the enemies results in a level in the mid-40s, where more levels can only be achieved by grinding a slot machine for rare Experience Points drops, so testing for higher levels is extremely tedious.
  • While Paper Mario 64 had a sensible max level (level 27; just above what you'd end with), Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Super Paper Mario, and the Mario & Luigi series cap at 99 (100 in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time). The Amazy Dayzee in both of the pre-Wii Paper Mario games is the only enemy that will give the necessary Star Points to do so, however. This isn't hard to do in the first Paper Mario, since these creatures only appear in one predictable place and give enough Star Points to max your levels early on, but doing so in The Thousand-Year Door requires supreme patience. Just maxing out Badge Points alone (which is probably what you've been levelling up every time anyway) requires 32 level-ups; a few more than you'd typically beat the Final Boss with.
    • Bowser's Inside Story nearly halves the effect of each level up after 50, making it even more pointless. Doesn't help that you need to keep resetting the final dungeon to even find enemies worth fighting for more experience. However, once you get to "rainbow rank" you can kill most bosses in one hit.
    • In theory, the level cap in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is level 100, but in practice... not only does the effect halve as you go up, but the amount of experience required to get there means you'd have to spend an additional 60 or so hours just grinding to reach it. In a game which usually takes about 35 hours to complete. On the bright side, if you do get there, even the final boss dies in one turn.
    • In Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, you can beat the final boss in the low- to mid-thirties, and can be strong enough to fight the Optional Boss Dry Bowser at Level 50.
  • Parasite Eve has a weird case of this. The cap is 99, but you learn your last ability in the early 30s, and the high 30s require a ridiculous amount of EXP (around 200,000!). However, once you reach level 38, level requirements become far, far lower (a mere 4,500 EXP). It's also an odd case since leveling up only increases your HP and other base stats by a few points. The majority of your stats come from tweaking your weapons and armors, which they can all be capped to 999.
  • Persona:
    • Given the level of late-game enemies and bosses, and when the major persona selection starts to peter out, Persona 2: Innocent Sin sets you to reach the mid-to-high 60s out of a possible level cap of 99. There are a couple very high-level personas up near the cap, but due to the limited enemy selection it is a grind. If you're mad enough to do it, you've earned the Bragging Rights Reward awaiting you.
    • Persona 3 and Persona 4 also cap at 99. Because you can't fuse a Persona of a higher level than the main character, you're generally encouraged to go as high as you can. In 3, the easiest way to get that high is to unlock Monad, which is unlocked either by beating the Reaper or starting a New Game Plus. In 4, the options are more limited, though getting lucky with Golden Hands can help. Notably, in 3, a Level 99 character automatically has 999 HP and SP; sadly, this isn't the case in 4.
    • The level cap in Persona 5 is 99. There aren't many opportunities to grind that high, since dungeons can't be accessed after they're completed. A player who reaches the end can be anywhere from level 65 to 70, depending on how many Confidants they completed and how often they went to Mementos. And unless the player knows the Easy Level Trick to farm experience from the Reaper, it's going to take at least a few dozen hours of grinding to reach the maximum level.
      • In the Updated Re-release Persona 5 Royal, the Easy Level Trick no longer works on the Reaper, but the "Insta-kill" ability has been tweaked so that it now grants experience points if it's used to defeat weak enemies, drastically cutting down on grinding time. However, even adding on the third trimester and The Very Definitely Final Dungeon having even stronger enemy encounters, a player is still likely to be around level 80 by the time they reach the True Final Boss. Also, two new characters join the Phantom Thieves during the third trimester, and they both join at level 75, which is about where the game expects everyone else to be. Though Level Grinding is a little easier in Royal compared to the vanilla game, it's still going to take a while if a player wants to reach level 99 with everyone.
  • Like the Xenoblade example below, the level cap in Phantasy Star Nova is Level 100, but the game expects you to be high-Level 80s by the time you fight the Final Boss. Played straight after an update, which boosts the level cap to Level 150, and then played even straighter after a second update that increased the level cap to 200. Reason being those levels are practically necessary for the post-game content that got added alongside them.
  • Planescape: Torment seems to have NO level cap, though it's pretty much impossible to get an insanely high level without exploiting glitches. You're only supposed to beat the game at the high 20s (and if you don't use glitches you won't get much higher). With an hour of glitch exploitation, one can go as high as level 200. The experience for one level up caps at 250000, and very late level ups won't give much more than increased health.
  • In the Pokémon games, the level cap for any given Mon is 100. However, you'll generally find yourself beating the Elite Four and Champion with your Pokémon team in the 50s, with any postgame story content bringing them up to the 70s at most unless you're level grinding. Even the strongest Superbosses in the franchise (Red in HeartGold and SoulSilver and the rematch with Cynthia in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl) hve their best teams maxed out in the 80s.
    • In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, the Final Boss, be it Rayquaza, Primal Dialga, Bittercold, or Dark Matter, can be defeated around level 30 and 40, and like in the main series, the level caps at 100. However, post-credits storylines can usually take the player up to around level 60, and in some of the games, a couple of the bonus dungeons will require the player to be near or even at the level cap to stand a chance of beating them.
    • Pokémon GO, unlike the main series games, has levels for the player character. The cap is 40, which sounds reasonable until you look at the numbers. All items are unlocked and wild Pokémon levels are maxed out at level 30; level 40 requires ten times the total experience of level 30. Increasing your level beyond 30 allows you to level up your Pokémon slightly farther, but even that stops at level 38 which, incredibly, requires only 60% as much experience as level 40. The candy/stardust expense of Pokémon-level boosts also increases sharply after a mon reaches level 30, requiring about 1500 captures, ~50 of which must be a specific species, to get a mere 15% increase to "combat power" for a single critter. For casual players, grinding past level 30 is largely pointless, but the competitive types play several hours a day for months to get that slight edge. The only benefit of hitting level 40 is gaining the ability to nominate a real life locale to become a Poké Stop and vote to approve or reject other nominated stops.
      • As of December 2020, the cap has been raised to level 50, with even worse diminishing returns for Pokémon power levels, and there is no gameplay incentive for reaching level 50 other than being able to say you did it.
  • Cheaters in Progress Quest indicate a memory-allocation-based level cap of 2^31, possibly amended to 2^15; a lower one for non-cheaters might exist, but reaching level 99 requires over 20 real-life years of continuous "play" (in a game launched in 2001), so it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.
  • Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale has two level systems: Merchant, and Adventure. The game is designed to take advantage of the New Game Plus system that sets in if you ever finish the storyline or fail to pay the required amount of money needed each week. Each adventurer can level up to 99, which can take many playthroughs of the story, and even being level 99 is no guarantee that your adventurers will survive the Bonus Dungeon's Boss Rush mode. As a merchant, you gain more perks such as larger inventory, a larger store, and other benefits to help you make more money. The merchant level cap is 99, but the added privileges stop at level 50.
  • In Resonance of Fate, completing all the side quests and playing through the game in a normal fashion will let your characters reach somewhere between levels 80-90, which is more than enough to take on the final boss. However, the level cap reaches all the way to 300, with a maximum of 100 in each weapon (handgun, machine gun, and hand grenade). Reaching at least 200+ is vital for having any success in Neverland and the highest arena stages. Unlike other examples, though, levels have absolutely no bearing on stats other than total hit points: The game has no armor or defence mechanic, so you'll always take the same damage from a level 1 Mook at the beginning and end of the game, and increasing your characters' attack strength comes from customizing your weapons.
  • The earlier Rune Factory games had a maximum level of 99, far beyond what you needed to complete the game. Rune Factory 3 bumps this up to 10,000. The followup for the 3DS, Rune Factory 4, boosts this to 50,000, while curiously decreasing the skill level cap to 99. Given that you can eventually craft level- and stat-raising items in bulk, the only real limit to that is your willingness to craft and consume each one of them one by one.
  • Sailor Moon: Another Story has the typical level cap of 99. Hitting it without cheats takes ages, as higher levels require progressively larger amounts of EXP. However, you only need to be around level 40-45 to survive the last few battles, and anything above 50 makes most characters almost godlike (in fact, at level 48-49 some of them start to hit the HP cap, which is 999).
  • Secret of Mana does this two different ways, the first cap being with character levels. The level cap for the three playable characters is 99, in a game you can comfortably finish at level 50. Past level 60, the characters become powerful enough that the enemies in the final dungeon are generally easy even without magic spamming (but even at level 99 you are not completely save from them landing critical hits on you). The other Absurdly High Level Cap is in weapon levels. The final Weapon Orbs come in form of Random Drops from treasure chests in the final dungeon, but they are very rare and it will take hours of grinding to collect them all. You gain very little by doing so since the charged attacks past level five are Awesome, but Impractical, since in the time it takes you to charge any higher, you'll have not only hit the damage cap, but could spam the lower-level attacks much faster for greater overall damage.
  • Shin Megami Tensei:
    • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, you can beat the final boss at around level 80-90. The level cap is 99... on paper. In reality, you can still keep leveling up, but it never displays as higher than 99. For those dedicated (and crazy) enough to keep grinding that much, you can reach the actual level cap of 256. You'll run out of stats to max out long before hitting that point.
    • By default the level cap of you and your demons in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse is 99, and it's possible to beat the Final Boss (who is level 100) with a level 99 party. There is a piece of free DLC that raises the level cap to 999, but past level 99, stat growths decrease dramatically, you can't gain any more App Points, and demons cannot gain any bonus stat points from Apps. On the enemy side of things, the Fiends of Twisted Tokyo on repeat runs exceed level 99 and will continue to skyrocket in level until the final Fiend, En no Ozuno, is level 999. You will need the extended level cap to defeat these Came Back Strong versions, much less at level 999.
    • Shin Megami Tensei V: The level cap is Level 99. In the "God's Order" and "Myriad Gods" endings, the final boss is Level 85, and you're probably going to be 80-ish by the time you get there. The game enforces a level scaling mechanic where if you're over 10 levels lower than the enemy you're fighting, damage received from/damage dealt to that enemy is drastically increased/decreased. So if you were doing a low-level run you could comfortably complete these endings as low as Level 75. In the "Humanity Alone" ending, the final boss is Level 90, but to get this ending you also have to defeat Shiva, who is Level 95. Given the previously established rule, you could beat Shiva at Level 85. However, Shiva is a damage sponge in a way the combat system isn't really designed for (end game healing and buff/debuff spells go for 89+ MP per usage), so having the mega-powerful demons that become available at Level 90+ would go a long way. It's not strictly necessary, but it would help a ton. Whatever level you fight Shiva at, there's multiple bosses that yield several thousand EXP each between him and the Final Boss, so you're basically guaranteed to be several levels higher than that by the time you reach the end of the game.
  • The level cap in Simplest RPG is 1337. It'll take a long time battling to reach it, as even monsters that are hundreds of levels above you don't give that much EXP.
  • If there even is a level cap to be found in the Siralim series, no one has reached it yet. This makes sense, considering the entire premise of the game is to be an "endless" RPG. To put it into perspective, there is an achievement earned by playing a save file for at least 1000 hours! Thankfully you can rest assured that the game will have something to challenge your immensely powerful creatures, even if the main story (in 2 and 3, the original Siralim had no story to speak of) can be comfortably finished much, much sooner than that 1000 hour mark.
  • The level cap in SoulBlazer is 50. That sounds low, but the amount of experience required to get there is impractically high; you have to reach the cap of 99,999,999 (that's one less than one hundred million), when the strongest enemies give a mere 4,000. For comparison, level 25 requires a total of 150,000 experience — and at that point your attack and defense are the highest they can get without accessories, and your HP bar has already reached its maximum length and changes color instead to signify additional HP. Your Hit Points max out at level 47 (59 million XP), and after that the levels do nothing at all.
  • Star Ocean:
    • In Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the Final Boss is beatable before level 80, but levels cap at 255. There are three Bonus Dungeons containing numerous enemies and bosses that can help you get to 255. There are even battle trophies for doing this.
    • 255 is the typical level cap in the Star Ocean series. The Last Hope breaks this tradition by dropping it down to 200; however, earning half of the Battle Trophies of a character bumps it right back up to 255. Then again, when you're trying to defeat superbosses with millions of HP, and earn Battle Trophies that require inflicting max damage, you'll want every last stat point you can get.
  • Sudeki caps at Level 30. However, due to the way the game is set, the two male characters will be somewhere in low 20s and the female characters will be in high 10s before you fight the final boss, not that most of these matter. It doesn't help that each level after 17th requires 5000XP to level up, for a total of 65k (22 is the midway point to 30). For comparison, the best yielding regular monster gives out 350XP per kill and final boss gives 9999XP.
  • Present in the Suikoden series as a whole. In fact, it may be one of the more extreme examples. You see, in the series, each new level requires 1000 EXP to reach — the catch is that the amount of EXP awarded to a character after any battle is calculated based on the character's strength/level vis-a-vis that of the defeated opponents. Fairly soon, monsters that gave a good chunk of EXP required to reach a level will give out a mere pittance, and even the hardest encounters in the game will eventually yield a mere 5 EXP per encounter (the average minimum possible EXP). When, precisely, this happens depends on the individual game in the series, but it's usually somewhere in the 60s or 70s, for a game where the level caps at 99. Only the most determined Suikoden players will see characters that have reached level 99, and probably no one has done it legitly with the large number of playable characters (since not all of the 108 are playable) ...
  • Games in the Tales Series have a level cap of either 200 or 255, depending on the game. Normal game content typically lasts until your party members are around level 70, EXP modifiers notwithstanding. Even with the highest possible experience bonus, which can be up to twelve times the normal amount, you're liable to only be in the upper 100s by the time you reach the final boss, so you'll still have to grind to reach the maximum level. Even then, fighting the superbosses on Unknown or Chaos difficulty would be the only reason to reach that high, since normal enemy encounters become a joke at max level.
  • In Terranigma, the level cap is 50; the exp cap is 999,999. But you reach level 50 at 802,435XP, so the last nearly two hundred thousand experience points are purely for Bragging Rights anyway. To further add to this, most players will typically finish the game between levels 33-37 (experience range of 80,000-100,000).
    • This is made even worse by the fact that your HP caps at 999, and all other stats cap at 99. If you don't pick up any of the permanent stat-boosting items throughout the game, all Level 50 will give you is one point of defense. If you get all the stat boosts, you'll completely stop gaining stats of any kind around level 47-48.
  • Touhou Labyrinth can be beaten with characters in the 100+ range. The post game Plus Disk content will probably require a level upwards of 500. The actual level cap is far higher than that.
  • Trials of Mana and its remake have a level cap of 99, which is absurdly high in both versions.
    • The SNES version's enemies (including the Optional Boss) can be beaten at level 50, and that is the highest level that normal enemies are in the game. The player will reach all their characters' stat caps not too long after, and leveling up more will only give minuscule max HP gains.
    • The 2020 PS4/PC remake version has the characters level up quicker, but a player is still only likely to be around level 65 by the time they reach the final boss of their story. Even on New Game Plus, where the player is given an ability that quadruples the amount of earned experience, a player is only going to be around level 80 by the time they reach the last boss, so it still takes some grinding to reach the cap.
  • In Undertale, the player's maximum level is 20, which is only obtainable at the very end of a Genocide run where you have killed literally every monster, including the Final Boss. There is one more encounter after that, but it's a Post-Final Boss that gets taken out in a cutscene. Interestingly, this was invoked by game creator Toby Fox, who used the absurdly high cap to criticize power for its own sake in a video game.
  • The Vision Of The Ant has a level cap of 30, but even if you fight every enemy and do all quest your level will end up around 20. You would have to farm XP for many many hours to reach the level cap.
  • The Witcher has a level cap of 50, yet reaching this level requires far more experience than you would get from completing every quest and killing every boss. Getting anywhere above level 40 in a full playthrough is not only time-consuming, but unnecessary, since you gain less experience from killing enemies per level and you'll have gained enough talents to comfortably finish the game well before then, anyway.
  • Wizardry 8 has a level cap of 50. With heavy level grinding you'll reach maybe level 30 with your party, and this may be even lower if you have hybrid or elite classes in your party, which require more XP to level up than non-magic users or magical specialists. Though you can encounter level 50 enemies in endgame zones ...
  • In The World Ends with You, you end the game around level 50, and the max is 100. You'll probably have to do a lot of grinding to finish the post-game content, though levels aren't very important; they only increase your HP, Bravery, and ability to adjust drop rate by temporarily lowering your effective level.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has the usual level cap of 99, but the endgame level is around 80, higher than pretty much every other game with that cap. You'll also want to hit the cap for some Superbosses. (Especially since the bosses go up to around level 120, and in the case of Xenoblade Chronicles 2's challenge mode 200, and because the level difference between you and the enemy heavily figures into whether you can even hit the enemy successfully and vice versa.)
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon has two level types. Standard character level, and job levels. Both go up to Level 99. With the job levels though, it's only worth it to go up to 28 as that's when you learn the last skill. Starting with 30, every five levels simply increases your stats until you get to 99.
  • In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, the highest level is 60, but the EXP values drop to 1 for all enemies at level 55, so it takes many hours of grinding to reach the cap, which you need to do to beat the Superboss.
  • This is a constant in Role Playing Games developed by Zeboyd Games. Breath of Death VII, Cthulhu Saves the World, and the last two episodes of Penny Arcade Adventures stop granting skills to your characters at level 40, but if you keep grinding nothing prevents you from going to infinity and beyond. Penny Arcade Adventures does not have ways to reliably level up beyond 40, however.
  • Zoids Legacy has a level cap of 99 despite the game being easily finishable in the low 20s.

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