Conspiracy theory: Game was delayed 50% for technical reasons and 50% to get it closer to GOTY period so as to avoid giving people too much time to mull over it.
Tabata, Toriyama and (unpopular opinion?) Nomura all seem like they do better when there's someone above them who can control their input and veto anything they approve that's just silly. The 3rd Birthday is a tremendous example of this, when all three of them were sufficiently senior enough for all their bad decisions to just float on by. Story director Toriyama's input should have been rejected by creative director Nomura. Failing that, game director Tabata should have put the screws to both of them.
This applies as equally to gameplay mechanics as it does narrative, too. Tabata should have laughed the random outcomes of DNA combining in The 3rd Birthday back to whoever came up with it. And he should have laughed the random proccing of abilities back, too. But he didn't because... question mark? Maybe he's just not that good? Maybe he got XV by process of elimination. "Nomura can't get the job done, putting Toriyama in charge will go over like a lead balloon, Ito is working on a new game that definitely exists and will be amazing shut up and let me have this. Give it to the PSP guy?"
Hell, based on Judgment Disc, there are a couple of mechanics that stump me for their existence and I would love to know the rationale behind them. Though I have a feeling the answer to "If you can sprint infinitely, why even have a stamina bar?" is "Because other games have it." Which struck me a lot playing that demo, that they imitated mechanics and features from moderately to monstrously successful games without putting the same kind of thought and care into crafting them that contributed to the success of their inspiration.