So I gave in and bought this during the Steam Summer Sale. I very much look forward to getting into it, but man, modern games and their tutorials bug the shit out of me.
The whole "press this button to do this, press that button to do that, (repeat for several buttons and functions), and now you know how to play the game!" approach to game design is just a lousy way to teach players how to play. Instead of telling me about lock on, quick attack, fierce attack, defend, dodge, parry, each battle spell, and how to use/throw bombs in quick succession (an excellent way of ensuring I'll forget much of that by the time it becomes relevant), how about giving me a situation where I need to use just the melee attacks, even providing targets that are more susceptible to one type of attack than the other? Make it a mini-quest with a small reward. Then, another mini-quest where the player is forced to effectively block, dodge and parry. Then one where you have to use specific spell to target specific enemy weaknesses, etc, etc. Give me a tutorial where I learn not just what the buttons do, but in what contexts those functions will come in handy. Let me make use of the commands not just to show the game that I can read a "Press button X" prompt, but to actually establish some level of familiarity and comfort before being tossed out into the world.
Maybe they didn't want to spend too much time teaching and preferred to let the player figure things out through first-hand experience, but I find it annoying that no sooner have I been shown the battle controls when they pile on horse commands and an entire in-game card game. I don't want to sound like I'm shitting on the game (I'm entirely confident that I will soon become comfortable and begin to love it), but I find it interesting how, as far as games have come, we're still fumbling around with awkward and boring tutorials.
