FFXIII-2 Character building

Question

I've been playing Final Fantasy 13-2 now for a total of about 5 hours now. I've already managed to get Serah to a level 60+ Ravager, and Noel to a level 60+ Commando.

This seems like a lot of advancement for such short playing time.

What level do the roles cap out at? I figured 99, but it seems strange that I'll be able to max out a role within the first 6-8 hours or gameplay. That said:

The cost of progressing a level increases globally (that is, if I put 10 levels into Commando, the cost of the first node in another role will still cost the same as my 11th Commando node) so I'm assuming that the idea is to balance my roles out across each character to avoid crawling through the basics of the other roles once maxing one out.

Should I be levelling 2-3 roles evenly per character, or is maxing one at a time a good enough approach?

Answer 1

The level cap is 99 for each role, for a total of 594 levels. The CP cost scaling is across all your roles, so it does matter somewhat what you buy and in what order.

While you want to specialize a bit (Noel for attack, Serah for magic), you should try to evenly spend your points across 2 or 3 roles to round out your paradigm deck.

Because of their attribute affinities, a good setup is:

• Noel: Commando (due to strength bonus on large nodes), Synergist (way more abilities than Serah), Medic (gets heal-all spells)
• Serah: Ravager (due to magic bonus on large nodes), Saboteur (way more abilities than Noel, including Jinx)

They both kind of make lousy sentinels, so it's best left to a monster for the most part. You don't want to completely ignore it, as the Tortoise (SEN, SEN, SEN) paradigm is useful against heavy-hitting enemies.