It's not that his DLC doesn't add much new, it's that Awakening's character DLC in general doesn't. If you're not too crazy about Roy's redesign, you're probably better off enjoying him from Bonus Box.
Benefits to each character map:
- Some dialogue from enemy troops who are veteran characters of the series, each with entering battle dialogue and dying dialogue. Some characters trigger special dialogue for entering battles with past characters of the series.
- A throwback to one old song in the series per map, which isn't much considering they aren't even remixed or remade. It's nifty if you really want to use your 3DS to listen to whatever theme, I suppose.
- Recruitment dialogue from the hero you recruit, including some of their backstory, though it's brief.
- You can recruit the paid DLC Roy and the free DLC Roy separately, for double the Roy.
Downsides to character DLC:
- No dialogue outside of their map intros, own recruiting, and enemy appearances on maps.
- No supports to boost their statistics and pair up potential, and nothing to add more gameplay options for other characters.
- Cannot be used in Streetpass, they show up as just Outrealm units to other players, so they won't know you're repping our boy.
- Generic avatar class models for each class, with no unique classes, animations, or items for these characters. It strongly disappoints me that Roy is given ugly armor via hero promotion with avatar creation parts slapped on, and even the decent mercenary model armor suffers greatly from the avatar creation parts.
I'll leave it to you to decide if the DLC is worth it or not. Personally, I would hit up serenesforest for scripts at
http://serenesforest.net/wiki/index.php/Xenologue:_Champions_of_Yore_2_(Script) and I would recruit Roy from the Bonus Box. The character DLC for this game is disappointing for its price, especially considering its intentional flaw via these heroes being almost entirely excluded from Streetpass, when you could be showing your favorite Fire Emblem characters on there otherwise. I hope Hoshido/Nohr learns from these problems with character DLC, if not I don't plan on buying most if not all of their DLC if they go that route.
Noteworthy maps for making units more powerful, however, are:
- Champions of Yore 3, which nets you an All Stats +2 book for each completion, and Micaiah comes with Shadowgift which her Bonus Box counterpart lacks and is an extremely rare and valuable skill to begin with.
- Lost Bloodlines 2, for Alm with a Dread Scroll on each completion for access to the Dread Fighter class for males (swords, axes, tomes, and the Aggressor and Resistance +10 skills)
- Lost Bloodlines 3, for Seliph and the Paragon book on each completion which is a skill that doubles experience.
- Smash Brethren 2, for Eirika and a Wedding Bouquet for each completion, for access to the Bride class for females (lances, bows, staves) along with the Rally Heart and Bond skills.
- Smash Brethren 3, for Lyndis and the Iote Shield book, which negates additional bow damage against fliers when the skill is equipped.
- Rogues and Redeemers 3, for Ike, and the Limit Breaker book, which is arguably the best skill in the game for postgame. It raises all stat caps by ten besides hitpoints.
- EXPonential Growth for grinding weak units or being a place to round off a unit that's Lv9, Lv14, Lv19, etc.
- The Golden Gaffe for lots of gold, you can auto-grind to maximum gold in minutes with the right loadout.
- Infinite Regalia for Eldigan and legendary weapons that are one-time obtainables without the DLC, you can farm for many Forseti, Ragnell, etc.
Even with this in mind, $2.50 or $3.00 per map is very costly, and $6.00 or $6.50 for a value pack of three isn't really worth a few skills, easy grinding, more copies of rare or limited items, or mechanical boosts.
The Scramble and Future Past DLC packs offer toooooons of dialogue and new story between Awakening's cast, Apotheosis is nice for a great challenge, an emblem for completing it fast enough as a challenge, and you get Katarina, who is another Shadowgift wielder, though if you can beat Apotheosis then there's not much purpose for it, is there? These are some of the better DLC packs. I would say Future Past is the only pack worth its price while Scramble isn't, but Scramble's still some of the more valuable DLC Awakening has. Apotheosis is worth its price as a standalone map.
The Challenge pack was disappointing to me. I do not recommend it, the rest of Awakening and Apotheosis are much more satisfying for challenge than this pack, and the pegasisters don't have as much valuable dialogue as the lords. These maps threw in unique mechanics without making them particularly interesting or worth playing through, especially considering it goes with one minor gimmick per map without really tying the maps together in any sense.
Don't worry about it, Awakening really screwed up with their DLC plan which is why frustration is very understandable.
Overall I'd be much more positive about the DLC if it didn't cost so much for so little compared to the rest of the $40 purchase that is Awakening. $70.50 for everything individually, and $50.50 with the value packs. On DLC alone. Yeah. After the game is taken into account, that's about $110.50 at worst and $90.50 at best. This is absolutely disgusting. I never expected Intelligent Systems of all people to stoop this low and it muddies the fact that DLC can be very healthy for games. They are charging more than the actual game for a fraction of its content, and this started the moment they could get away with it due to the 3DS being able to handle digital transactions while systems of previous Fire Emblem games couldn't, since it'd be hard to push copies with more than $40 retail price.
I bought into it before it was too late, so now all I can do is educate people who still haven't thrown their money away to greedy development by showing what's worth buying. I bought the Awakening DLC as soon as each pack was released just for more Fire Emblem content, but I didn't think about it much until it was all said and done. It was easy to fall for it with their releases over time.
Hoshido and Nohr so far seem like they'll be giving more value for $40 due to the choice between two full Awakening-sized games, each for a different audience. We'll see, though, hopefully IS doesn't pull any stunts.