Overshooting the Endgame

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Recently I've come to remember a chapter in my life where I had received a new game for PSX called Final Fantasy 7. I was a huge fan of the NES/SNES releases (I did not have access to Japanese ports at the time nor would I have touched them since I was all of 16 and couldn't read Japanese anyway... still can't).
Anyway I put the game in and spent hours on it. Now I'm not going to fanboy out or say it was the best game ever. My opinion of the game really doesn't matter, what does is what happened when I reached the endgame.
Prior to the final boss battle, I remembered FF1, FF2 and FF3 all weren't easy fights and all of those games I needed to level my toons a little more prior to fighting the endboss. So when Sephiroth was first available, I skipped that part and started level-grinding. In this time I also took on the extra bosses (of which I didn't know were optional at the time, I didn't use FAQs or Strategy Guides) and found those SoB's to be tough as hell. I thought to myself "if these guys are this hard, Seph is gonna kick my ass!!" So I went back to leveling.
By the time I felt ready to take on the Goth God, I was L99, fully stocked on everything minus one or two e. skills, all other materia was maxed out and all toons had all the maxed out gear.
Time to take on Seph... A few KotR later and here I am looking at the game credits.
I figured out then that I did way too much work to take on Seph, and the endgame was anticlimactic. I still enjoyed the level grinding and finding of all the other secret stuff, but as an endboss I thought Seph was just way too toned down....

TL;DR: Anyone ever get to the end of a game and decide to power up your character more to ensure victory only to find you could have won with ease without the work?

 

[Vern5]

Truthfully, I don't finish a lot of games when I encounter the "Grind before entering" problem. In the games I have finished, I usually end up just running in without any prior training or preparation and see if I have what it takes. Fallout 3 was a good example of this but I managed to overshoot expectations by having stolen Advanced Power Armor and powerful energy weapons.

On the other hand, I have to thank ATLUS for providing me with a repeatable Quicksave when I finished SMT: Devil Survivor. It took me three tries to beat the final Boss (It was a giant tower covered in eyes and a mouth that contained the endless void) and I only narrowly defeated the damn thing.

I think that a final Boss should test everything you have learned from playing the game, much like a Final test in school, rather than check to see that you've ground yourself retarded. A Final Boss should have attacks that check to see if you've built up the right kinds of defense, countermeasures and attack abilities to efficiently kill it before it kills you.

 

[Skoldpadda]

Man, if the game makes it in any way possible to grow some more muscle before the finale, either by grinding or finding secrets, I will always overshoot the end fight. I'm insecure about my end bosses like that.

 

[GiglameshSoulEater]

Generally, I play through a game like that unil I hit a wall. When that happens, then I grind for a while until I run out of patience. I don't mind grinding, but I prefer moving onwards i na game.

Its odd I love Etrian Oddyssey, because that game is horrendously difficult.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Oh wow that describes my Persona 3 endgame perfectly... Easy mode in Persona 4 is way harder than easy mode in Persona 3 XP (i played P4 first btw)


The only reason i ever died was because 3 out of 4 of my party was weak to electricity... I have to keep Aigis with me at all times, she has an "oh fuck this" mode for gods sake!

I never even felt threatened by Nyx. I saved every single Soma (full HP and SP regen item) for the end boss... Folks weren't kidding when they said he had 13 forms, just too bad they all suck against my 11 Somas and 10 full SP regen items (something Egg?)

Really the only way I could have possibly lost was if Yukari's AI bugged out and decided to heal the wrong person 3 times in a row. I would not put it past her. The annoying party AI is basically the only thing stopping me from replaying Persona 3.

Since in Persona 4 the only reason I beat the last boss was because I came across one Soma in the final dungeon that allowed me to actually stand a chance with my underleveled party.

Underleveled is just more fun. I love the antigrind system in Persona 3 and 4, i only had to grind for half an hour in the second to last dungeon in Persona 4. I doubt I needed to grind at all in P3 but people were all "omg Nyx is soooo hard!11!" hence the 11 Somas...