For the first Sen no Kiseki (and every falcom game I played including the untranslated ones) it's the same, it's cosmetics and useless cheat items.
Aside from the shining poms which aren't usually avaiable ingame (excepting the free ones) all of the cheat items can also be easily optained ingame.

Regarding the DLC-stuff, to stress again: the base game is a 100% complete experience, there are no missions, playable characters, story-content or other game-stuff that are locked behind a DLC-paywall. You can buy the base game, ignore the DLC, and there's nothing of value that you miss.

The DLC is all stuff that Falcom also released on PSN, so XSeed's releasing it as part of the licensing deal...with the exception of the Estelle/Joshua costumes for Alisa and Rean, you had to buy these on PSN, but for PC you get them for free if you own one of the Trails in the Sky games.

The DLC consists of:

- alternative costumes for the main characters. Basically summer clothes.
- ride-along dolls that are dolls attached to characters' arms. Silly cosmetic stuff.
- sunglasses, monocles, glasses-with-gag-nose cosmetic stuff, angel wings/devil tail/fairy wings accessories.
- cosmetic covers for your orbments.

- ingredients pack that contains large amounts of ingredients for cooking food. All these ingredients are common drops by monsters, they're just there if you want to cook extra food items and don't feel like farming them off monsters.
- sepith pack that contains sepith that you use to upgrade orbment slots and synthesize quartz. You can find sepith in chests and monsters also drop it, this is just in case you want to upgrade stuff earlier than usual and don't feel like farming it off monsters.
- accessory pack: mostly stuff that protects against bad status. All of them are buyable from in-game shops, so this merely saves you some money.
- Zeram items: the Trails equivalent of a Final Fantasy elixir; rare non-buyable item usually only found in certain chests that revives characters with full HP and CP. Useful, but not essential since you get some of these in-game. They're just crutches.
- U-material pack: you use these to upgrade weapons and certain quartz. Monsters drop these and later on you'll have access to a very reliable farming spot for these. They're just around if you want to mass-upgrade stuff without farming them off monsters.

- shining poms: summon monsters that guarantee a level-up for all characters in the party upon beating them. They're essentially free level-ups.

None of these are essential since you can farm the contents of the "cheat packs" off of monsters anyway and you can always fight extra battles for level-ups. The game gives you enough experience and items that you don't really need the "cheat packs" anyway since it's not a very grindy game. The best way to think of the DLC is as additional tips you can leave for the waiters at a restaurant.

Ok thanks, I take your word for it, and get the base games at some point. I probably have to write that down somewhere so that I don't forget, otherwise I will be asking this same question again when these games are on sale.

Thing is, if GOG wants to court DLC-heavy games here earlier, they'll have to find a way to handle DLC managament/installation smoother, instead of hoping for a complete edition that will eventually release here year (s) later. As for Witcher 3:
a) GOTY is an anomaly (It is a single installer including everything, instead of just being main game and DLCs separately).
b) The 16 DLCs were free, thus it was easy to create a new all-in-one installer. Try putting a price in each DLC and the situation is becoming more complex.

The one preteen girl (12 I believe) you get in your party is covered pretty well. All other girls are in the 16-18 range and their attire is entirely appropriate for that age (rated PEGI-12 which afaik means it's apropriate for 12 year olds. I'm not sure I agree, but not because of nasty stuff, it's just a bit too story heavy).

Thanks for the detailed infos, but in my opinion this DLC policy is still ridiculous and it's a totally oversized tip if you want to see it like this. This is squeezing out money of completionists or people who don't care much for their money. It's basically a loose-loose situation for regular customers - it's either having an "incomplete" game or buy stuff obviously not worth the price for most people out there :-(

I presume the answer to that is Galaxy.

To me it doesn't appear though that "GOTY versions with everything included" are necessarily that rare even in Steam, or are they? Like Skyrim Legendary, Darksiders 2 Dethinive (ok it was also a "remake" with better visuals) etc.

I don't recall for sure, but when you buy a bunch of DLCs for a Steam game, are they always installed with the base game, or do you get to choose which ones to install?

Anyway, I don't really have a good solution in mind because different DLCs are for different purpose. Sometimes there is no real reason not to install all available DLCs, while in this case one might not want to install all, or even any, of them. So maybe in this particular case it is even preferable each DLC is in its own installer, I guess. Can't have the cake and eat it too and all that.

Presumably, but it sucks for those who don't use it.
They aren't rare, but that's not my point. On Steam, Witcher 3 GOTY is nothing more than Witcher 3 plus the free DLCs, plus the expansions. On GOG, Witcher 3 GOTY is a completely new installer that even has its own set of achievements.
On Steam, any DLCs you have are installed by default, but you have an option to not install those you don't want.

If you compare apples to apples (Steam client vs Galaxy), the same is true for GOG. I didn't have to opt-in to the free dlc, it got installed by galaxy automatically, I can go to options and uncheck it later. The standalone installers are something that doesn't have Steam counterpart, and I don't see a way around having separate installer for each of the DLC. Maybe the installer for main game could see there are DLC installers in the same folder and offer to unpack them too... but that seems like extremely brittle solution.

Only after it has already been installed? On Steam, you can both prevent a DLC from being installed and prevent its usage after its installation.

I think Starmaker's talking about this screenshot. That kid doesn't look like she's "in the 16-18 range" and she's definitely not "covered pretty well". No one here would allow his/her 12 years old daughter to walk around like that.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't even care if all of the characters were naked... It's just a game. But I see why some people could find this pretty annoying. I have a similar "allergy" to "super cool badasses" (like Deus Ex's Adam Jensen - I'm glad that most of Deus Ex is FPP) and inappropriate/excessive kill moves in video games. Especially the kill moves are utterly ridiculous sometimes. You're surrounded by a few dozen bad guys with guns and instead of killing your enemy fast, you take a few seconds to make him suffer before you give him the final stab/hit/headshot. Being "awesome" seems to be more important than to get out alive. Or in Skyrim... Who thought it's a good idea to introduce Fallout V.A.T.S. style slow mo kill moves? They're the right thing for Fallout, because it is a part of the game's humor. But it looks totally out of place in Skyrim. I still remember how Manhunt was criticized for the kill animations. Today this is pretty much the norm.

Anyway... I didn't want to derail this thread. Just wanted to say that I can definitely see what Starmaker's talking about.

Up to a point. http://mantis.gog.com/view.php?id=1370#c3004

And we have the sea of DLC raising its head again. 13 add-ons cluttering up the store page. I don't see why GoG can't stop this behaviour and just add it under the title.