thanks for addressing the misinformation! Either way, I played a bunch of the Asian release (Getting the american one as it was announced soon after my game was shipped) and yeah, its hard. I found the Royal Class to be pretty good to start with. Thanks for the integrity on not reviewing it...
I don't see any other news stories at all in relation to the difficulty being increased. I asked this question earlier in a different forum (NeoGAF) and it seems many people are under the impression that the game does not have gameplay changes, just translatic tweaks.