What are people's main issue with this game? I'm playing it for the first time now, i'm almost halfway through the game i think (chapter 6) and it has some REALLY WEIRD pacing.

It's insane that you are thrown into the world barely knowing anything about the Noctis' kingdom or the Empire (desu, i find it funny that Noctis is royalty but we almost treat the power conflict here as if it was democracy vs monarchy or something when we're talking about two kingdoms).
People have said that the DLCs give more context to what's happening in-game, but is that even true or do i need to watch the movie and anime to understand the big picture?