I can't seem to level up at all, and I'm pretty sure it's a massive glitch. I don't have the game on proud mode, nor do I have the zero EXP ability turned on. My dream eater buddies can level up, but not Sora or Riku. Can anybody help me out please? I've got only 4 hours in the game, so I really don't mind if I have to do a data wipe or something like that. I'd just love to level up and not get screwed over on later worlds being stuck on level 1 forever.

What platform are you playing on? If you're on PC you may be able to use a Save Editor to level them up a bit to an appropriate level and see if the XP flow continues from there. If you're not comfortable with Save Editors or playing on a different platform I'd recommend starting a new game and seeing if you level up on that one. No harm in doing so as you can have many save files. You get your first level up around the time you get your first dream eater.

I'd definitely recommend checking the abilities again if you're playing Critical. It may have gotten toggled on by accident. It'd be much lower down on your ability list and would need to say "Off" with a red circle icon next to "EXP Zero". If it has the Orange icon with the sparkles on it it's active and needs to be toggled off. I know you said it's off but it doesn't hurt to double check  

Not sure if that's the case but if you are playing the 3DS version on emulator, it could be that it's some kind of anti-piracy. Just an idea. Never had that problem :/ Hope you are able to fix it!

8 hours ago, Chris said:

Not sure if that's the case but if you are playing the 3DS version on emulator, it could be that it's some kind of anti-piracy. Just an idea.

That would be interesting if they were to implement anti-piracy measures in that way.

From doing a quick search it appears that 358/2 and Re:Coded both had Anti-Piracy Measures that would crash the cart after selecting the difficulty for 358 and starting the tutorial on Re:Coded. There isn't much info on the rest, but from the ones I have seen it appears to either crash the game or display a message. I'm assuming it would result in a crash, but again I'd find it very interesting if they went about it in a sneakier manner like this.