Level grinding (ConceptTopic, 4)

From Compile Worlds

Level grinding is a pretty dumb idea thought up by the guys who made Dragon Quest (probably) and then copied in every single RPG ever made thereafter (and many games of other genres too). It means you have to spend hours doing the same boring battles over and over while earning puny amounts of experience points each time, kind of like trying to make a living off of a lemonade stand. But make sure you don't grind too much, or you'll make the rest of the game boring by being too strong!

The Pokémon series kind of gets round this with its trade features, allowing anyone with at least two Pokémon games in the same generation and the required consoles and accessories to move your Pokémon from one cart to another, restart the first, and then move them back to level everyone up nice and quickly through the main story-based gameplay, which is actually fun. But this is pretty much the exception that proves the rule.