[General Discussion] Completionism in RPGs....

In Earthbound I have a tendency to acquire the second PSI Special by the Happy Happy Village and the third in the desert before Fourside by fighting caterpillars. I also make sure to get the Sword of Kings on every playthrough, no matter how many Starman Supers I have to fight. Finally, I always try to have Ness at level 97 or so by the time I complete Magicant so that the final experience points take him to 99 along with the extreme stat boosts you get.

I did a lot in Legend of Mana, including getting a Land Dragon to level 99 using a diet plan that I came up with myself. Calculating the innate stat boosts of certain monsters, I came up with other plans, but I never raised another monster to that level. Since it's part of the same series, I also have a file in Secret of Mana where I got everyone to 99 and maximized every spell. I tried to acquire every rare armor drop for each party member (Power Suits, Faerie Crowns, etc), but I probably missed a few.

I also played through Chrono Trigger more times than I can count, and Star Ocean 2 is another game where I got caught up trying to do everything (something I always did was to use Reverse Side to make big bucks once I reached Linga, since you could buy paper there) but I think my completionist days are over. These days I'm lucky if I can finish an RPG, much less try to do everything in it.

What would surprise me would be if someone actually got water and wind to level 99 to use that Timegate spell of Feena's in Grandia. That seemed an insane task.

Jam it back in, in the dark.