I'm on my second play-through of the game now (thanks ER!). And I was just doing some level grinding while listening to some podcasts when it hit me...does anyone ever reach level 99?

In my first play through I actually tried to do a bit a grinding, I know it's not really needed, but it's just one of those RPG habits I can't break, and I only got to about level 78. This time, I'm a little past half way and I'm at level 53. 

I guess my point being that, it's quite hard to get to max level.  Each level, obviously, gets harder and harder to get to, particularly with the quick diminishing returns after awhile in dungeons. 

Has anyone here ever gotten to level 99?  Does anyone other than me even have an interest in doing so?
Just curious to see what the rest of the community thinks.

What difficulty are you on? If I remember correctly, its a bit easier on expert but you do still have to grind for it. And yeah, its worth it just for the awesome personas you can fuse once you reach lvl 99.

Persona 4 is a bit nice to those who want to actually undergo this endeavor, since you can trade the fisherman for a sword which gives you a 50% XP boost, I believe. It's what I personally used to get up into the 90s fairly quickly so I could fuse Izanagi no Okami, even if that wasn't a particularly great reward.

No, I've never been much of a grinder. Just having enough to beat the game is enough to me, though I was a little overleveled by P4's ending.

Nope I got high enough to fuse Lucifer (93 I think) and went and fought the true final boss.

Nah, I guess lvl 99 in persona 4 never really appealed to me as theres no real incentive to reach it other than Izanagi-no-okami, which as Pepsiman said, is not all that great. Still, for the perfectionists, the game is geared towards reaching it due to things like XP boosts and SP refilling in the later levels.

@ChrisTaran: You can actually avoid doing quite a bit of fishing if you research how to get the sword ahead of time. (I apologize for not remembering the name off the top of my head.) I do know that it involves getting a better fishing rod than you start off with by trading even more fish, but you can get those from Tanaka sometime in... October-ish, I think. Other than that, you only need to seriously fish once or twice for a specific type and there's lots of info about what signs to pay attention to so you know when to gamble the bait and when not to. It's time-consuming, but I probably would have gone insane getting to 91 if I didn't get the sword ahead of time.

If you go solo in Magatsu Inaba with that xp gear on, you can get a really good chuck of xp.  The highest i've gone up to is level 94, mainly for Lucifers Victory Cry (I was doing laps around Magatsu).  I thought anything higher would be overkill.

Level 99 is easy using that pringle king (may not be his real name) auto leveling trick. Cheesy as hell, but it works.

Legitimately, I have not. Takes too much damn time.

I've done it twice, and it's really not worth it because you don't automatically jump to 999HP/999SP like you do in P3. Once you reach 93 to fuse Lucifer, consider yourself done.

I'd try to, but the thought of all the grinding makes me shudder.

/has a vision that one day there will be an achievement for hitting lvl 99 for a Persona game.
/dies.

only got to lvl83 on my first play through, gonna try expert as soon as i have the time for a second playthrough and try for the max level

@christaran: yeah, naturally.

Levelling up, grinding, gaining EXP and new items... learning skills and exploiting weaknesses in enemies is why RPG's exist.

So when I boot up the game and its like a low tier Boy Meets World episode where everyone talks about stuff no one cares about... fake characters building fake emotional attachments to absolutely nothing... orchestrated laughing at unfunny stuff in pixelated hallways... it's very irritating and naturally, the RPG player in me takes it out on the grinding, the constant barrage of smashing heads with swords. It's therapy for the Sims/Animal Crossing/Bad Hentai acting festering cancerous aspect in these after school special games. Like... if there's a whole cinematic episode built around TOFU, which is expected from a JapoRPG, that's an automatic 5 hours of grinding for me. Naturally, it's not even my choice, dude. :(

What sucks is... at level 99, there seems to be some limitations now. I been running around Inaba all day and not one Mr. Pringles. And I friggin' love Pringles, dude!

Always interesting to see a thread bumped from 13 years ago when it obviously isn't just a bot trying to sell boner pills or something equally stupid.

I don't think I have much else to say other than... I immediately thought of Disgaea. Which is a series designed for specifically this kind of sicko (no offense, I have those tendencies myself). I played Disgaea 1-3 before I tapped out. Great games.

It's not Persona 4, but here's a picture of my lvl 99 P3P save file that's probably as old as this thread is.

Please don't make fun of my dirty PSP.

I mean, mine is probably worse than yours. A friend of a friend found it in a rental car in 2010 and didn't want it, and I claimed dibs. It was the oldest model there was, charging cable was missing, it had a Spongebob UMD in it, and was set to German language. I assume it belonged to some German tourists.

It worked out since I'm not much for portable systems and probably never would have bought one for myself. Enjoyed the hell out of P3P and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, which got me into that series. But that PSP was beat to hell already when I got it.

@atheistpreacher: If German tourist found my PSP right now, as some sort of universal karma make-good, they'd get a PSP with a UMD copy of Oldboy in it, which is fun to think about.