Got it yesterday and just spent a few hours on it this afternoon. I love it though like you I have certain issues with the game. However, the only reason why I have issues is because I have been spoilt by Pikmin.
1. You can't find your men on the map as you mentioned.
2. You can't seem to send men on multiple tasks. In pikmin you could send white pikmin to destroy walls blocked by gas while sending blue pikmin across a river to do some work.
3. The camera doesn't follow you as well as it should.
4. You can only summon workers one by one. In Pikmin blow your horn and you call everyone in the range of your horn. In Pikmin 2 you could get a hell of a wide ranging horn.
5. You get a podium for summoning your workers but recruiting is still a nightmare. You summon which group of workers you want but can't recruit them. You can only make them stand there and then you have to recruit them one by one. And some stray workers from another group can be near the podium so you recruit them by mistake. There is a podium upgrade which allows you to select specific villagers. I am hoping it drastically improves recruitment but I have a feeling it will only be useful for selecting two characters in love to take to get married.
6. Can't find a way to separate those you have recruited which is absolutely crap. In Pikmin you could separate them into the different colors so if you were with 20 of each color and came across an enemy you could separate all of them and then only send in the red fighter pikmin.
Despite these flaws, at this early stage it seems like a great game to me. However, not better than Pikmin 2 in anyway.
Biggest Pikmin Fan on VGChartz I was chosen by default due to voting irregularities
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