I'd hardly call the DLC cheating.
Hell I'm not even sure if you could beat Lunatic, let alone Lunatic + mode without using the DLC.
Even with the DLC and abusing leveling and gold in order to get better weapons, ect. The game is still very hard on those difficulties.
Not to mention the DLC has in itself some very hard and challenging maps that someone can enjoy.
If you don't want to pay for anything, thats fine. You will have a very enjoyable game to play. The main 25 levels take quite a long time to beat, then toss in the 15 or so paralogues and the 5 or so spotpass levels, that are ALL FREE.
Besides, if you really are just doing it for the "cheating" as one might say you only really need to buy one map. The golden gaffe or whatever its called for what $2.50 or so. You will get like 50k per time or more and the enemies are decent enough to do any leveling that you would want as well.







