Leveling 14 characters evenly?

[Sinathor]

Yo!

I'm a diehard FF fan and I've been trying really hard to get into Type 0 but I have hard time doing that. My "problem" is that the game straight off the bat hands you 14 characters and expects you to level them up evenly. See, I'm all for a bit of grind but... Leveling 14 characters evenly rubs me in all the wrong ways. I'm not far into the game (I've started the game twice from the beginning. Only like 3 - 4 hours in) but the looming feeling of a ridiculous grind makes me exhausted and I don't feel like launching the game :D

So I guess my question is.... How is this handled in the longterm? Throughout the game I mean. Do I really need to grind all characters constantly to keep them leveled up, or should I just get a few levels for everyone here and there, or what? I hear this game is on the tougher side so I don't know when the game is supposed to be tough and when I just should have everyone leveled up.

I dunno. A motivational speech to help me get into the game would be greatly appreciated :D

[EmpiricalWord]

mine advice you keep up the grinding and keep them all the same lvl !! i can't tell you about the late becuase for some reason i can't play it anymore but some of the char are bound to the mission and the best is the use the ccharacters that are bound and to do that you can keep it best al the chars the same !!!!

[Netto]

You shouldn't worry too much about leveling in this game. Leveling actually gains you very small stat boosts, with most stat boosts actually coming from the classes you can take during your free school time (always do ALL classes). Equipment is also a lot more important than your level, but most of the equipment does come from meeting specific milestones (such as killing a set number of enemies).

As for how you should level though, I'd recommend just sticking with your favorite characters, and switching to the others when needed. Leave some in the training in the arena when you're not using them, and try to have at least ONE character lower than all the others. The way this game is set up is so that anyone can beat it with enough skill, and specific parts of the game actually scale to your lowest level character. I don't say which moments these are, but just know that keeping one "weak" will help you in the long run. (But again, classes and equipment will be what matters most, so even your weak character won't actually be weak.)

[Sinathor]

Originally posted by Netto:

You shouldn't worry too much about leveling in this game. Leveling actually gains you very small stat boosts, with most stat boosts actually coming from the classes you can take during your free school time (always do ALL classes). Equipment is also a lot more important than your level, but most of the equipment does come from meeting specific milestones (such as killing a set number of enemies).

As for how you should level though, I'd recommend just sticking with your favorite characters, and switching to the others when needed. Leave some in the training in the arena when you're not using them, and try to have at least ONE character lower than all the others. The way this game is set up is so that anyone can beat it with enough skill, and specific parts of the game actually scale to your lowest level character. I don't say which moments these are, but just know that keeping one "weak" will help you in the long run. (But again, classes and equipment will be what matters most, so even your weak character won't actually be weak.)

Thanks a lot for your helpful reply! I'll definitely take a better look at the game now. Getting 14 characters right off the bat is a very weird design choice and it's just extremely intimidating when the game just tells you to deal with it. But again, thanks!

[Daikatan]

I had a problem like that in Shining Force (Sega Genesis), thankfully in FF Type-0 you have more air to breathe.

[~Adri~]

The optimal first run through for new players should be around 3 parties. Without spoiling too much, some characters are unavailable to select at certain stages so realistically you want to be sure to have 2 full parties and a spare team of replacements.

Team comp wise, obviously 1 range and 1 support + 1 tank/melee is optimal. Ice and Electric elemental attacks/spells are also best since Ice do well or ok against most physical resistant enemies and electric is good against machines. Do not stack micro intensive characters in 1 party. Realistically speaking, you're not going to be swapping over and over again.

For example, one of my party is Deuce, Cater, Queen. I don't touch Deuce often and let her do support stuff in the background. Some characters like Deuce/Cinque have pretty good AI so they don't really just run in an die if you don't control them. Most of the time, i control Cater but swap to Queen for some quick lightning spells. That way i can spread out my perferred champs across multiple parties while maintaining a balanced comp.

Another example, if you play Rem, you will need a low maintenance melee because Rem is a very fragile melee herself and can die when you don't control her. Since you always need a ranged character and you probably don't want to spend time in the middle of fighting as Rem to heal, you will want a melee character that's tanky to draw some aggro from you and have decent defense magic to help heal. Machina, Cinque, and Queen fits the bill.

Objectively, a bad team comp will be Rem+ranged+Sice. Sice ramps up a lot of damage if she can combo but loses the buff if she gets hit. Therefore, you want to control her. As mentioned above, Rem is also very powerful if controlled and incredible flimsy if not. That is why you have to be mindful of who you will likely spend the most time controlling when making comps.

[~Adri~]

Originally posted by Netto:

You shouldn't worry too much about leveling in this game. Leveling actually gains you very small stat boosts, with most stat boosts actually coming from the classes you can take during your free school time (always do ALL classes). Equipment is also a lot more important than your level, but most of the equipment does come from meeting specific milestones (such as killing a set number of enemies).

As for how you should level though, I'd recommend just sticking with your favorite characters, and switching to the others when needed. Leave some in the training in the arena when you're not using them, and try to have at least ONE character lower than all the others. The way this game is set up is so that anyone can beat it with enough skill, and specific parts of the game actually scale to your lowest level character. I don't say which moments these are, but just know that keeping one "weak" will help you in the long run. (But again, classes and equipment will be what matters most, so even your weak character won't actually be weak.)

Leveling is important because it unlocks skills and upgrades. Equipment upgrades are hard to come by unless you do SP. Overall i agree though in that character comp doens't matter too much unless you like to min/max