Fun fact: load up a SMTIV save that's gotten the DLC unlocks without an SD card, and you get to see some interesting things.
All the DLC skills are fully functional; their names are the only thing that wind up missing, replaced with ???.
None of the DLC demons but the Archangels - and Aeshma; more on this later, this is interesting - have sprites. Archangels and Aeshma have both sprites and menu art.
All the DLC demons exist in a placeholder form, including descriptions, fusion, skillsets, etc. HP and MP are set; resistances/weaknesses/immunities are null. Levels are set, all stats are at 7. Race is ??? in all cases.
DLC armor is all present in the form of ??? armor. Stats are intact, but not the elemental affinities; no resistances or immunities, and it gives you a Light weakness. Shares Samurai uniform models.
Now, here's the weird thing:
Aeshma is all there ingame. Its art is there, its stats are there, its skills are there, its race is there - everything is in place, even where - say - Oread (also just a recolor) clearly wasn't quite complete at the time the game went gold.
Which suggests to me that this might actually have started life as a normal ingame demon? I don't know; it's interesting. Although I'm not sure why they'd have even considered a shitty Asmodeus recolor with a bunch of unique skills to fuse onto other, better demons as something higher-priority for inclusion in the base game than, say, Ancient of Days/Sanato. Or, apparently, the archangels. (speaking of which, yes, you still need what's-his-face to fuse Aeshma, so they didn't
literally just stick an unused ingame special fusion in Clipped Wings 2; they had to set up the new fusion recipe first)
I think this also rules out the possibility of a second wave of DLC for the game, given that it seems to be very reliant on the existing hooks. Though I guess they could patch it.
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