Performance problems aside (menus take ages to load in), I like the game quite a bit. There is just so much stuff: 120 characters, two additional fighting systems for special events, a card game, a bayblade minigame, a castle/town upgrade system and probably much more - I’m not even halfway done. The combat is quite auto-attack heavy and therefore simple, but keep in mind I’m olaying with double MP cost for all abilities (one of the additional challanges to tweak your own difficulty, like the ones in Dragon Quest XI).

As for the EXP thing, there are a few things that happened to align for me. EXP works like this:

• Each level requires 1000 EXP.
• You get EXP based on level difference between you and your enemies. There is a maximum value of EXP a single enemy can give to usually prevent what happened to me - I think it’s about 1000 for most enemies.
• If you get say 3000 EXP, that’s 3 level ups. Remaining EXP does not get adjusted upon each level up. That’s great since you can recruit 120 characters and if you miss someone at first, it does not take long to catch up if you want to use them.
• You fight with 6 charaters. EXP is split between them, meaning you get more EXP per character if only e.g. 2 of them survive.

Now, what actually happened to me is: I fought a unique mini-boss encounter with 5 enemies. I was overall underleveled and got wiped twice. The third time however, I won with only my weakest character still standing - he was 8 level below my team average. He got about 1200 EXP for the level difference * 5 enemies * 6, since only he survived, resulting in about 35 level ups.