Guess I'm one of the few who loves turnbased grinding RPG's.

RPG's are way to easy these days...

I never required any sort of grinding just for the sake of leveling up except for post-end dungeons and bosses. Unless you don't thoroughly explore the dungeons and towns, you'll never need any level grinding. Some people just plainly suck at JRPGs, they should admit it. Just like I admit I suck at FPS.

WRPGs don't require grinding when you fuck up? Oh yes they surely do. Let's take the example of Fallout 3 which I'm finishing up. In the beginning of the game you're very limited. You can't repair any of your weapons and armors well enough yourself. They cost lots of caps to repair. If you play the good guy, you can't pickpocket any of the citizens (they don't have much caps anyway). What to do? Grinding. Also, if you don't thoroughly explore the 'dungeons' and don't search every corpse, desk, box, etc you'll run into trouble. Then someone might say :' Man I have to do some level grinding...' yet level grinding in Fallout is totally useless and takes ages to level up.

Level caps annoy me, they take the principal mechanic of RPGs out. Without it, you play a less exciting game.

I don't suck at JRPGs, just FFXII.

Fallout 3 does not force anyone to grind along some area just before facing a boss, it requires certain levels to achieve certain skills but you're gaining those levels through natural progress of your character, and exploration of the world. Fallout allows you to go nearly anywhere you want from the beginning thats why you cant really "mess up this game". You dont have to search every place, othere are only few items required to finish game and they usually in most visible places. 

In most of WRPG's such  as Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights level cap is usually reach by the character in the end of the game thats how those games are designed.

I know  i suck at FPS's but JRPG's ? Well i just dont like elements which bore me and waste my time. 

im surprised no one has mentioned MMO's when it comes to grinding. Arent they like the king of this catagory????

I've got to add this: I'm playing Persona 3... and im in july and the games (through characters) is basically telling me to grind. They keep saying "we need to train in Tartarus (the only dungeon in the game)" but honestly i don't feel like it. I got to the highest floor possible at this point, 89, but i havent gone to tartarus for like 14 days in a row...
I like the story.. but the game is telling me to grind and i don't want to...it's such a pain in the ass running around randomly generated floors fighting bad guys over and over... x.x

Lost Odyssey's first boss was the hardest one in the game for me, I died quite a few times before beating him. He's not exactly a good representation of the game as a whole, although I will admit it requires a certain amount of grinding not for levels but to ensure your eternals have the proper skills learned.

As western RPGs have gotten better over the years I've had similar feelings, now that I have quite a bit less free time I'd much rather have a game that's 20 hours long with little level grinding than a 40 hour game with 20 hours of leveling up because I simply don't have the time or frequently the patience to sit there and level grind for hours on end.

I am afraid Dragon Age will have a lot of grinding.

It's not you who suck at the game, it's just the game that sucks.

OT: Those that say they never require grinding are probably taking their time exploring and are not avoiding/escaping a lot of battles. There is always a point for me in games where the bosses get ridiculously over-powered and I need to gain a few levels in order to advance. That especially true in games with random-battles because I escape all of them (that maybe why I never finished FFIV DS).

Persona 4 requires me to grind for some of the bosses but it's not like FFXII where the amount of grinding needed is a big turn off.