As for brave fencer, I've had the same thoughts as you. 3 of my local gamestops got the game out of nowhere, and each one of them didn't have the demo, or did they have instructions though. But all looked brand new.
hmm well both the copies i found were dead mint BUT they both had the demo disk .

lots of good rpgs have been showing up lately, with the few rereleases its getting hard to decide whether to snatch em up (stuff like valkery and suikoden have showed up )