So, time to tone down my fanboyism a bit and talk about some of the negatives of the game.

- First, the customization and min/maxing. Yes, it's awesome. The problem? Without the DLCs, you probably won't use a ton of it. What you get out of the system depends on what you put into it, and with the main game itself, you're likely to beat it without going to the effort of min/maxing the various children character abilities (or simply trying to survive Lunatic or Lunatic+ without DLC grinding, rather than working to put a ton of effort into the children). It's only with the DLC that you really get cause to delve into the depth of the system.

Oddly enough, though, the DLC solution to this is not what you might expect. Usually, one would jump to the conclusion that the game was created with the DLCs in mind. However, the DLCs were in fact created later, in response to fan demand. While the Einherjar wars missions were planned from the get go, the Scramble Pack, Challenge Pack, Future Past, and Apotheosis missions (I don't know about the Golden Pack) were all designed around fan feedback, a desire for more story, and harder content. This is why the popular characters got their own pics (even if Tharja's lovely derrière did get censored in the US version), why Future Past junked rewards in favor of sheer awesome story content and difficulty, and why Apotheosis just said "to hell with it" and threw out the hardest enemies in the entire series.

They created a really in depth system that allows a ton of customization and min/maxing, but they didn't really put it to use in the main game. On the plus side, this does make it more accessible to new players, and optional superbosses and missions has never really been the series' forte, so it makes sense that they wouldn't start with them. On the other hand, it does seem like a bit of a missed opportunity. At least, without the DLC. With the DLC, though, everything makes sense.


- Second, the SpotPass characters. Each one comes with their own map and mission, which are fun, and the characters are awesome. Unfortunately, though, I'm not really happy that each one only gets Support conversations with the Avatar. Actually, this was another issue that a lot of fans had that got corrected in the DLCs, as the Scramble Packs contain a number of conversations between the SpotPass characters and a few other players. But, still, I would have liked to have seen full Support integration, especially since some of those Supports would be really, really important (I'm not going to spoil who the characters are, though, so I'm shutting up now).


- Third, Morgan. I really, really hate what they did to Morgan. I understand why they did it. Since the Avatar can marry any character of the opposite gender, including the SpotPass and Children characters, giving Morgan any kind of fixed background would have been difficult. But the amnesia is such a cop-out! I want to see Morgan's background! I want to know where Morgan came from, or why, if Morgan is the child of the Avatar and a child character, Morgan came back in time from a later future. I want to know what exactly happened in Morgan's timeline. Again, missed opportunity. We do get a little more on Morgan in the Future Past DLCs (and, geez, if it isn't both heartwarming and creepy as heck), but it's still vague and minimal.


- Fourth, the Father characters. Each child character is based off of their mother. Severa is always Cordelia's girl, etcetera. However, the Support conversations between child and father are extremely formulaic, and share much of the same text no matter who the father is. Given that some of the characters are radically different, I would have expected a little bit more variety in the conversations. Yet again, the DLCs take this into account (noticing a trend here?), and the conversations between child and father include some fairly large differences depending on who the father is, which is really nice. Unfortunately, while you have a Support Log, you don't have a log for DLC conversations, so you need to play the chapters a lot to see all of them, and play them again to see them a second time (or, y'know, check YouTube).




Ok, I would like to take a moment to say I totally wasn't intending to gush about the DLCs when I started this post. But when I learned about them being created due to fan feedback and responses, I really kind of couldn't help it. While the solutions weren't perfect, Intelligent Systems really did a great job of crafting the DLCs into what their fans wanted to see, and it's great that they were able to cover so many of my criticisms (but still, more on Morgan!) in the DLC chapters. If you've got to make DLC, that's how to do it.