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Let me tell you about the moment I truly fell in love with SteamWorld Heist 2's job system. I was about twenty hours into the game, my main character had just mastered the Sniper class, and I found myself facing that familiar RPG dilemma we've all encountered. Do I stick with my overpowered Sniper to tackle the next story mission, knowing I won't earn any experience points? Or do I switch to my underleveled Engineer and potentially struggle through what looked like a pretty challenging encounter? In most games, this would mean either accepting wasted XP or spending hours grinding easier missions with weaker jobs. But SteamWorld Heist 2 offered me a third option - one that felt almost revolutionary in its elegance.

The game's solution to this classic design problem is what I'd call the reserve experience pool system. Here's how it works in practice: when your character has mastered a job class, any excess experience points you earn don't just vanish into the ether. Instead, they flow into this magical reservoir that sits waiting for when you decide to switch jobs. The moment you equip a different job class and complete just one mission - even an older, easier one you've already cleared - that entire banked experience pool automatically applies to your new job. I remember specifically banking about 15,000 experience points with my Sniper during three critical story missions, then switching to Engineer for a quick side mission and watching my new job level up six times in a single mission completion. The psychological satisfaction was immense - no wasted effort, no tedious grinding, just pure progression.

What makes this system so brilliant isn't just the mechanical efficiency, though that's certainly part of it. It's how it respects the player's time while still encouraging experimentation. Traditional job systems often punish players for wanting to try different playstyles. I've lost count of how many RPGs I've played where switching jobs meant voluntarily becoming weaker, sometimes for hours of gameplay, just to experience what another class has to offer. SteamWorld Heist 2 completely flips this dynamic. Instead of punishing job switching, it actually rewards you for it by making your accumulated experience work harder across multiple specializations. I found myself more willing to experiment with combinations I might have otherwise ignored - what if I tried the Technician class with my Sniper's banked experience? Could I create some overpowered hybrid build?

The numbers behind this system are worth examining, even if we're making some educated guesses about the exact calculations. Based on my testing across approximately 35 hours of gameplay, the reserve pool appears to capture between 85-90% of the experience you would have earned if your current job wasn't mastered. There's some diminishing returns for massively overleveled content, but the system remains generous throughout. I tracked one particular session where my level 24 Sniper completed a mission that would normally grant 4,200 XP. Instead of losing that progress, 3,780 XP went into my reserve pool. When I later switched to my level 12 Scout and completed a simple reconnaissance mission, that entire reserve transferred over, skyrocketing my Scout to level 18 in one go. The time savings were astronomical - what would have taken me 2-3 hours of dedicated grinding instead took about 15 minutes.

From a game design perspective, this approach solves what I consider one of the most persistent friction points in class-based progression systems. Most RPGs create this tension between optimization and experimentation. Do you play what's strongest for the content you're facing, or do you sacrifice effectiveness to build toward long-term versatility? SteamWorld Heist 2 elegantly dissolves this conflict. I could bring my A-game to difficult story missions without worrying about wasted progression, then use my accumulated power to rapidly bring other jobs up to viability. This created this wonderful rhythm to my gameplay sessions - tackle challenging new content with my strongest setups, then spend my reserve XP to power-level alternative configurations for future use.

The psychological impact of this system cannot be overstated. Instead of feeling like I was wasting time when using mastered jobs, I felt like I was investing in future flexibility. That reserve pool became this tantalizing resource I was constantly building toward specific goals. "If I complete one more story mission with my Sniper," I'd think, "I'll have enough banked to instantly max out my Demolitionist." This created positive reinforcement loops that kept me engaged far longer than traditional grinding ever could. I estimate this system reduced my total grinding time by about 60% compared to similar games in the genre, while actually increasing my engagement with the full range of gameplay options.

What's particularly clever is how the system manages to encourage job switching without forcing it. Traditional games often solve the "mastered job" problem by making content impossible without specific job combinations, essentially strong-arming players into constant rotation. SteamWorld Heist 2 takes the opposite approach - it makes job switching so convenient and rewarding that you naturally want to experiment. I found myself planning my progression around which jobs I wanted to power-level next, looking at my reserve pool like a strategic resource to be allocated rather than a punishment for sticking with what works.

Having played through the entire game twice now - once normally and once specifically testing different progression strategies - I'm convinced this reserve experience system represents one of the most significant quality-of-life innovations in modern RPG design. It respects player agency while eliminating one of the genre's most persistent friction points. The system isn't perfect - there are still some minor balance considerations around how quickly you can power-level secondary jobs - but it's so dramatically superior to the traditional approach that I'm genuinely surprised more games haven't adopted similar mechanics. For any developers reading this, take note: this is how you handle job progression in 2024. For players, understanding and leveraging this system is absolutely essential to maximizing both your efficiency and enjoyment of SteamWorld Heist 2. Master your favorite jobs, bank that experience, and watch as the entire game opens up in ways most RPGs never allow.