Did I mess up leveling to 99 on Disc 2?

[stsherma]

I think I messed up. I leveled to 99 on disc 2. I'm 80 hours in. But I tried to make a really powerful character as well.

Things I have junctioned to my characters.

Ultima to Str
Full-heal to health
Vit has meltdown
Mag has Pain

However, I missed out on giving my characters certain abilities that min max them to their full effect.

I also have 1000 triple triad cards. I got squalls best weapon on disc 1. Selphie has her ultimate weapon and Zell has his ultimate weapon. That's my party makeup.

Can anyone help me? It's my first playthrough. And if my brother is telling the truth Ultimecia is tough.

[Koby]

Honestly the best way to be powerful in this game is to junction the best stuff and not level at all. Instead using Card to prevent gaining EXP.

Enemies scale with you and so leveling doesn't help you any. You'll actually fell much more powerful than the enemies by being low level with good junctions than max level with good junctions.

[stsherma]

Originally posted by Koby:

Honestly the best way to be powerful in this game is to junction the best stuff and not level at all. Instead using Card to prevent gaining EXP.

Enemies scale with you and so leveling doesn't help you any. You'll actually fell much more powerful than the enemies by being low level with good junctions than max level with good junctions.

Makes sense... Still, I find myself blowing through the enemies. Selphie is doing 9999 and all that. I'm just hoping it won't become too overbearing lol.

[Xengre]

Your brother lied to you or does not remember correctly. Ultimecia is not tough, only being challenging to those who are severely underprepared or handle the final dungeon's locking mechanic incorrectly picking bad options.

In the final dungeon almost everything is sealed (magic, items, etc.) and you have to beat various bosses and pick what you want unsealed. The dungeon has a number of puzzles to reach the bosses, too. You don't need much though... honestly beating 1-2 bosses and being properly prepared is more than enough.

As for being prepared? Your characters are clearly prepared. You are way overkill. Even much weaker characters would be too overpowered for the final boss and anything else in this game.

Heck, just Zell could instant kill each of the boss phases with spamming his weakest combo after Meltdown on boss.

Originally posted by Koby:

Honestly the best way to be powerful in this game is to junction the best stuff and not level at all. Instead using Card to prevent gaining EXP.

Enemies scale with you and so leveling doesn't help you any. You'll actually fell much more powerful than the enemies by being low level with good junctions than max level with good junctions.

This isn't entirely correct, but it isn't entirely wrong either.

Leveling results in stronger enemies. However, stronger enemies provide stronger magic to Draw from them to make your junctioning better. Player scaling definitely outstrips enemy scaling, even at level 100. So leveling actually makes the player growth far superior to enemies. As for bosses many of them actually have a level cap unlike basic mobs, meanwhile most basic mobs are vulnerable to instant death on junction attack. The fact that you have multiple ways to gain immortality or abuse infinite limit breaks that can instant kill anything in the game, Omega weapon included, also means this really isn't an issue.

Now, you can abuse card mod and item mod among other abilities to get extreme junction stats while maintaining a low level thus keeping enemies low level but this doesn't actually matter because even if they were level 100 you would rofl stomp them.

An analogy would be the enemies are a tribe trying to grow stronger. The player, on the other hand, is modern man with the power of science. The two have completely different growth rates. Eventually modern man can use guns on the tribes who use wood and train their muscles. Guns result in near instant death. However, you could also use missiles on them which equates to guaranteed instant death. How about nukes? Perhaps blowing up the entire planet? Was there any benefit of doing 1 billion dmg to an enemy with 50k hp rather than just doing 100k dmg to the same enemy? Overkill is overkill. The shades of gray are completely irrelevant.

Originally posted by stsherma:

Makes sense... Still, I find myself blowing through the enemies. Selphie is doing 9999 and all that. I'm just hoping it won't become too overbearing lol.

The real OP stuff are going to be...

The two immortality consumables made from cards or Rhinoa's limit break Invincible Moon. Literal godmode.

The other point of power is limit breaks that hit a ton like Squall's, Irvines, etc. Zell's is annoying to use and pointless overkill so I don't use it, personally, but in reality his is actually the strongest. There is a tactic using Zell to spam his weakest 2 button limit combo because, again, there is no point in a stronger combo if the weakest fastest to spam combo does 9999 or close to it dmg. The faster the combos can be spammed the bigger the overall dmg output from his limit break chain so just spam the weakest one on a meltdown target. Can instant kill even Omega Weapon. Even Squall's, Irvine's, Rhinoa's, etc. multi-hit limit breaks can do utterly devastating damage and if a boss survived... use it again because you can spam them forever with aura / aura stone or low hp + invincible tactics. There are some other tricks to further boost them, too, like blind on Squall who can't miss (read wiki about the danger levels or whatever it was called of limit breaks if you want to know specifics).

[Flyingbrick2000]

For fighting ultimecia the only thing that is going to slow you down is whether you unseal your powers or not. especially if you are as strong as you claim. Youll see what I mean when you get there.

[0wnz0r]

heres wat u do.

now that u got 1 character to 99, get ur 2 other mains to 99 before the end of the game.

u only need 3 at 99. leave the others low.

jus make sure u get ur main 3 the best possible junctions n their ultimate weapons n u should be fine.

[Teratus]

No, not really.

Level doesn't really matter too much in this game tbh, the Junction System is by far the more dominant mechanic and your party's power will largely come from that not from levelling.

The one biggest issue with massively over levelling is if you intend to fight Omega Weapon, or any other creature that has access to levelled death abilities.
Specifically Level 5 Death.

If your party hits level 100, anything with Level 5 Death is going to be a problem.
Omega Weapon by far being the biggest of them.
It will become a necessity at that point to junction death immunity to Status Defence to avoid it.

[PENATRATOR666]

The game scales to your level best way to be strong is not through having a high level but by placing magic on your stats. There was even a glich on original to have ultimate magic on all stats have fun