I just tried out the emotes on from the Gamepad I used the "Sit" emote.

Are they not going to explain the combat? Like... at all?

Is there no tutorial? It seems to just throw you in there with no explanation and the text on the arts at the bottom of the screen is so small. The text in general is so small I have to lean forward to read it.

Other than that I have just set foot in new LA. Game makes a strong first impression, that opening with the camera panning around the environment is a genuine holy shit moment. The scale of everything is awesome. When I was running towards New LA I thought it was going to get smaller as I approched it but instead it seemed to get bigger.... and bigger and bigger! I stood at the entrance looking up and it was fucking huge. Amazing.

Elma and that girls face aren't so bad in action, the other faces are allright. I don't get the criticism when you look at where MS focused their attention, with amazingly detailed armour designs, massive mechs and vehicles standing next to you, amazingly creative monter designs and an environment so big it makes other environments poop themselves.

I just wish the game was as user friendly as XB Wii. Looks like I'm going to have to read the manual this time.

You're absolutely right.  It's a disgrace!  I bet that they won't use the gamepad for ANYTHING during the whole game.  /sarcasm.  

There's plenty of good use for the gamepad, the minimap is there more to spot nearby enemies and whatnot than to actually serve as a true map.

After facing off with massive creatures using a 4 inch knife I suddenly realise the point of Japanese games' fascination with giant swords. They make sense now.

Seemed very odd going near the creatures legs with a tiny knife to slash it.

Perhaps you could watch a whole playthrough of the game on Youtube, that way you'll know everything there is to know about this large, complex game before you even start.  

gamingeek said:

I expect you to explain everything.

Jerk.

You're welcome.  

The map shows on the gamepad.  You can alternte between the honeycomb view, which will point to places of interest based on your quests (I think) and a regular map view showing landmarks and interesting locations.  I don't know about all the other stuff, I'm only in about as far as you are.

I played some online. I usually always play Conquest Squad. Every so often you'll see squad missions pop up on the bottom right. So far the only ones I've done were 'kill so many of certain type of creatures' missions. Press and hold R button then tap L button to cycle through what type of creatures you need to kill and how many. Also when running around the game world the enemies that count toward the mission goal also have an S like symbol in front of their level that you can see when close enough. You don't play directly with others but other players that are playing at the time help contribute to the overall number of enemies needed to be killed.

You can also join up with other players to do quest type missions together as well. I got a random invite to join up with three other players to kill 3 of a certain creature. It was a simple kind of mission and was done in about 5 to 10 minutes. You then get some loot and return to your own game.

There's also a big boss type creature which you can fight. From my understanding you get these token things from doing the other missions which you then use to go battle it. The boss has a massive amount of life so you just go and fight it for like 10 minutes and whatever damage you do contributes to it's demise. All other players who battle it also contributes to lowering it's health. It's similar to the UR Dragon in Dragon's Dogma.

There's still more to the online stuff but this is most of what I've seen and done so far.

Combat seems to be pretty much the same in this as in the Wii game, if you know that one then you know this one. I find it actually to be a bit easier because team members will make call outs to certain types of attacks and any arts you have that are of that type will briefly flash.

As for the maps the mini-map is mainly for direction to go in towards quest goals, enemy locations, friendlies locations, and treasure locations. The map on the gamepad is more detailed, for fast travel, changing probe types, and some other things that I need to fully figure out. I think it will also show you if you found all treasures in an area and show you if new things have been spotted there. I think whenever you plant a probe the area surrounding the probe area gets more detailed. The gamepad map also shows how you probes that are the same are linked to each other.

Yeah they really need to fix that text size.