I'm guessing that you didn't read anything about FFIV-DS before you bought it, because if you did, you would have known that this game is massively "harder" than it's original.

The second my husband bought it, I told him "You're lucky you like leveling, because you're going to need it on bosses" and... yeah guess what, he plays the game like a game should be played, what ever you need to do to beat the game you do.

When he got Edward, Cecil was lvl 20, Edward comes along being lvl 9. Sure, my husband complained for.. oh.. 2 hours about Edward being useless, but he leveled him up to everyone else and hasn't had the need to complain since. When Cecil went pally and got back down to lvl 1, yeah he complained, but he leveled him up and got him back to normal.

Last time I checked, all of his chara's are atleast lvl 40 (I think the highest at lvl 46) and he's at Golbez in dwarfen castle or what ever.

Either way, he loves that game more than anything now, I could see him easily play it a million more times.

As for me, I hate level grinding. I'll prolly have all my chara's under leveled and dying constantly through the game, but that's not about to make me hate the game so much I'll only do one play through.

But again, everything you're complaining about was well known before the game even came out in america, clearly the game sells and people love it, so they're not really big enough of a deal for people to want to play it through once and never touch it again.