Kotaku sparked an interesting discussion when Level up packs appeared as Tales of Vesperia downloadable content. There are three packs online now: Level Up + 5 (1), Level Up + 5 (2), and Level Up + 10. However, you cannot repeatedly buy the Level Up + 10 Pack and skip grinding all together. Each of these packs and the 300,000 gold can only be purchased once. If you buy all of the level up packs the maximum paid level boost you can get is 20 levels for 700 Microsoft Points ($8.75).
The paid content items are actual items as seen in the above screenshot. When you use them the Xbox DLC item is consumed. In the case of the level up items you won’t be able to buy another one unless Namco Bandai sells Level Up + 20 in the future. While this may save you time on a quest to become level 99 you still have to work towards the achievement. The official Tales of Vesperia blog doesn’t state the cooking ingredients have a limit so you can probably buy those over and over again, but if Tales of Vesperia is like any other Tales game cooking items should be easy to come by.
Namco Bandai is probably aiming at casual gamers and RPG novices with the downloadable content. This reminds me back to E3 where someone checking out Tales of Vesperia and explained their disdain for combat. A Namco Bandai representative then demonstrated how all of the characters can be set to AI and you can literally watch the fight. I thought it was strange at the time because the Tales games are pretty much about fighting. At least this content is optional and some packs are free. I would rather have unnecessary content like this than missing levels like in Beautiful Katamari.
Images courtesy of Namco Bandai.