Absurdly High Level Cap: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

* [[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.

* ''[[Last Scenario]]''. You end the main storyline around level 70, though you'll likely have a hard time defeating the final boss at that point. However, there are ''tons'' of endgame [[Bonus Dungeon|Bonus Dungeons]], and you'll always be at the proper level to do them linearly. For example, there's one that you're at the perfect level for by the endgame, and after that buffs you up to level 75 or so, you'll be ready to do another one, etc. If you do all of them, you'll have no trouble getting to level 95.

** In ''[[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night]]'', the hardest respawning enemies in the game, the Guardians, only give 1 exp when you get to about level 70. After that, there's no point in grinding anymore. You take out the last boss in a few hits way before you reach 70.

** In ''[[Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance|Harmony of Dissonance]]'', once you hit level 53, all non-boss enemies are worth 1 exp (and all bosses get to this point at level 59).

* In ''[[Diablo (series)|Diablo]] II'', the pace of experience slows down to a crawl by the mid-80s. A handful of people do reach 99, but it takes an insanely long time. Most characters will have attained optimal skills long before this.

** This is because shortly after it was released, ''Diablo II'' ended up with hundreds of Level 99 Hardcore Barbarians on Battle.net, much to the chagrin of the game designers who were certain reaching level 99 in Hardcore (where dying even once permanently ended your game) was impossible. Several nerfs to the signature Barbarian skill (Whirlwind) were applied, only for other game-breaking abilities to be uncovered in other character classes. Finally, they simply applied a patch that set all experience gains for level 80 or higher characters to be 1/10th normal, all past level 90 to be 1/100th normal, and past level 95 to be 1/1000th normal (most non-boss enemies, even on Hell difficulty, give only one experience point per kill at that level). By mathematically guaranteeing that players would need to kill 10 enemies per second, 24 hours a day, for nearly a year to go from level 98 to level 99, they finally succeeded in killing off interest in attaining the maximum level.

** ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep|Birth by Sleep]]'' takes this even further. The game is split into three storylines, in which each protagonist has to [[Restart 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 bonus bosses can be beaten quite comfortably at level 50. [[That One Boss|The other, not so much.]]

** ''[[Kingdom Hearts coded|Kingdom Hearts Re:coded]]'' has a level cap of 99. While that's not unusual, the amount of EXP required for higher levels is. In total, about ''10,000,000 EXP'' is required to get all the Level Up chips.

* The ''[[Tales (series)]]'' usually has a level cap of 255. Game content typically lasts you till level 50-60, [[New Game+|EXP modifiers notwithstanding.]]

* 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.

* ''[[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).

* Gauntlet Dark Legacy had a level cap of 99, even though the game could be beaten by level 60 or so.

* If there's a level cap in ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]],'' no one's found it yet. At around level 130 even the [[Hopeless Boss Fight|Hopeless Boss Fights]] are doable. Of course, generally players with levels that high have automated level-grinding.

** For those who think 130 is on the low end? The game was originally designed to be beaten at level ''eleven'', with a major overhaul in 2007 increasing that by a whopping ''two''. As for actual ability, let's just say a properly-prepared player could beat Her Naughtiness well before level 13 if the game let them try.

* ''[[Etrian Odyssey]]'' played with this trope just a bit in its first game; The player's level cap is 70, but beating the story final boss can be done at slightly lower than 60. However, its [[Bonus Dungeon]] pretty much demands you to use all those 70 levels. However, this is played even straighter in the sequels: 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, but 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.<ref>If you want to do the math, that means you need to raise your character to 69 + (29 x 55) + 69 levels...... that's '''''1733 LEVELS'''''</ref> The third game is ''slightly'' more merciful - defeating each of the [[Bonus Boss]] dragons increases your level cap by 10 (or 9 for the third).

* Played straight in the story mode of the ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]'' series, but averted for many of the optional areas. Just like in the main series Pokemon games, your level cap is 100. It's entirely possible to beat the main story at level 40 or lower, and the post-credits storyline doesn't require you to be much higher than level 60. But there are still a lot of dungeons even after that, and you ''will'' need to be at or near the level cap for some of those.

* ''[[Zoids]] Legacy'' has a level cap of 99 despite the game being easily finishable ''in the low 20s''.

* 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) ...