10 More GENIUS Ways Video Games Fought Cheaters

Granted, grinding isn't exactly the most invigorating activity in any video game, and so it's tough to judge anyone too much who finds creative ways to circumvent or automate the tedium.

In the original release of the PS2 remake of RPG Tales Of Destiny, players discovered they could auto-level their party by simply setting all characters to "auto" and taping one of the controller's analog sticks down, causing them to run around the map in circles and continually fight random battles.

But for the 2008 Director's Cut, Namco Tales Studio came up with a brilliantly devious solution to stop players from fully automating the levelling process - one that's tough not to respect, honestly.

After 20 minutes of automated play, the villain of the second game, Barbatos, will eventually show up totally out of nowhere and ask, "What are you fools stumbling around in circles for?" before initiating a battle.

Now, the ultra-powerful Barbatos also makes it clear that the only way to survive the fight is to flee, but if you're letting the game level up idly, you obviously won't be around to see this message.

And so, Barbatos will wipe the damn floor with your party in record time, causing a Game Over and preventing the player from auto-levelling.

Hell, the Game Over screen is even preceded by a patronising message which declares that the fallen heroes were never heard from again. Ouch.

It's so simple, to just monitor the player's inputs, and yet so, so clever. As annoying as it might be for a developer to inhibit grinding, the execution is cool enough here to make it mostly forgivable.