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I generally over-level, I love grinding (call me old fashioned) and usually do it in every RPG I play (even FFVIII).
I just started it with Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy on NES and haven't stopped yet.

For simplicity's sake, it's easiest to say I don't train but fight all enemies, so that's how I voted. In truth I try to do that but will flee if forced and fight a make-up battle instead. I'll also train for abilities if there's a way to do so without statistical gains in other areas because unlike my base statistics, I can always opt out of using them if I feel I want a more challenging battle. I also like to rotate my party members so that they're all evenly leveled. I rotate my characters to keep them as evenly leveled as possible to the point of neglecting forcefully overleveled characters like retired party leaders and seek out all sidequests, ect. ect.

I do things this way because it seems like a good stable barometer for determining exactly how strong I should be at which points of a game. Although the battles are usually random, since the encounter rates more or less have fixed averages, I can end up with pretty even levels throughout the course of entire games playing like this by the end of the game. For example: In Final Fantasy VI my characters usually average around level 38 by the time I defeat Kefka; In Pokemon Red, I usually reach the Elite Four at level 48; in Final Fantasy IV I usually end up at level 64; In Final Fantasy VI I'd be at level 38 facing Sephiroth except my save died and In earthbound I average around the fifties except for he who hath been forcefully overleveled... These are about the numbers I always come around by the time I finish these games doing all of the quests 'n stuff, so I figure it's as good a method as any. It's better than having no methodology and wondering if you're a few levels too low to reasonably win the combat or if the big boss battle was so easy because you've overdosed on training and ended up twenty levels too high anyway. It may not always work as intended for every given game but meh, such is life...

On that side note, Final Fantasy Tactics ticks me off with the inability to flee though, since it makes my methods impossible to implement unless I forgo backtracking altogether. This isn't something I really enjoy doing since certain things can only be bought in certain places ect. This makes it a rare example where I'll bite the bullet and make an exception, although only because I have little other choice. It's a great game otherwise though.

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 20th January 2010 07:12

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Role reversal at its finest.