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Not to be confused with random "leveling" found in many RPGs, predominantly in the SaGa series, random level-up bonuses are another level-based pet peeve of mine, especially when they show up in Tactical RPGs.
Random level-up bonuses have been around in games forever, but I feel it has become antiquated at this point in time. I could be wrong about this, but I believe the most likely explanation I've heard is that it was used to save space in RPGs such as Final Fantasy that came about before it was feasible to hardcode bonuses for every level and every class. If this explanation is correct, and even if it isn't, why use luck-based growth when we have so much storage space in modern times?
But why is it so bad? There is no game in which I have seen a worse leveling balance than Shining Force. After noting a bizarre trend in the growth of certain characters, I started keeping track of how a random character grew. He gained absolutely no bonus whatsoever the first level I started keeping track. It was as if all his training was for nothing. Upon gaining the next level, he attained one HP. Well, at least it's something to reward his hard work. His third level once again yielded no bonus. Finally, his forth granted him eight HP and three attack. Clearly, this was severely unbalanced. This sheer reliance on chance would make me shake my head at any game, but this is a Tactical RPG, a game that should be designed to test the player's ability to use clever tactics to defeat foes, not rely on luck to become overpowered rather than underpowered. The version of this game I played was a remake, and they could have at least added a little more balance to it in the process.
Another Tactical RPG series that suffers from this problem is Fire Emblem. At least it has some safeties included to prevent it from being anywhere near as unbalanced as Shining Force. For example, statistics are generally limited to increasing by one per level and have caps to prevent a very lucky player from ending up with an absurd amount of power. It is also exceedingly rare for any hero to gain zero benefit from leveling up. Nevertheless, leaving important things such as this up to chance is not without the potential for problems. On my last playthrough of Sacred Stones, the princess ended up with so few increases in her attack power that she was unable to deal any damage whatsoever to some of the later enemies without using a legendary weapon.
Perhaps I am simply very unlucky in cases such as these, but I feel that this level of unbalance should not be present in the RPGs of today, or, at the very least, it should be removed from Tactical RPGs. We certainly have the means to hardcode leveling data into games these days, and, if developers don't want to use that, there are many games such as Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories that allow players to select their desired level-up bonus with minimal hardcoding. There are so many options out there that it almost seems silly to rely on such an antiquated system for something so important.
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