Symphony of the Night has a peculiar replay value for item collectors.
Symphony of the Night has replay value just by virtue of being fun to play, and there are many ways to play it. Besides the obvious Richter mode variation, you can play the game targeting map completion (and the game helpfully shows a map percentage), and you can also play the game as a speed runner (and the game helpfully records timestamps to various milestones). Or, you can go for the most tedious task of them all, which is to be an item collector.
Symphony of the Night discourage grinding for levels in that the EXP (experience points) you get depend on the level difference between you and the enemy, and that if the enemy's level is sufficiently low, you will only get 1 EXP. A similar discouragement exists for farming in that the drop rates of rare items are fairly low. The combination of these systems would have convinced most players to simply keep moving, and restart the game when they reach level 60 or so. Except... the items in this game are very good.
I remember farming for 3 hours or so in FF6 just so that I can hold one weapon in each hand, and that might not have changed the game balance all that much. In Symphony of the Night though, we got swords that fly further, swords that cut faster, swords that fill half the screen with flames, and even swords that has its own level up system that required you to feed it blood. Actually the last one is pretty useless but the effect looks cool, and I am told that with sufficient patience, it can level up to become the strongest weapon in the game. All these swords can only be obtained by farming. And then there is the greatest grind of them all -- getting enough funds to buy Duplicator without cheating. That item totally ruins the balance of the game.
Maybe the real replay value is for non-farming players who were just lucky to get one rare drop once in a while, and goes on to clear the rest of the game with that one special sword. It will probably be a different sword for every game, and you will just have to start over to try your luck next time.
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