Well that's not a good thing if you've got 3 buddies over. Everyone will be going "what's going on"! Also I find recommendation levels are usually done through a feedback group and those really aren't that good.
I don't mind the party sizes so far.. I'm pretty early in the game though. Mainly due to the option to choose different colours for your character, which I'm so glad they provided. If they were all the same colour I think my eyes would explode.
I finished the elf's story. Last boss was pretty hard with her. Going to keep playing with her in online battles, but I'm also going to start the story with a knight character. Pretty hooked on this.
Just to see if I am understanding this properly.. your character auto-uses food when it needs to? I will just notice my Elf will start eating apples out of the blue.