Edit:  apart from the controls and the camera angles - other points are slowly getting addressed the more I play this game and get upgrades.

been playing this for about 4 - 5 hours and gotta say it's just awfull.  I've read the reviews and hype so decided to spend £35 on it.  There's no motion controls implemented in it so you move the aiming with the nunchuck and the camera with the direction buttons, try doing that in a battle and you'll end up sending them to chop a log in the middle of a battle as the aiming is out.

Also - there's no continues so every time you die in a fight you have to go right back to the main menu, load it to the castle, re-read the letter, accept the challenge, refind your men, go back to the location and have another go with the clunky controls. 

Locating the men is also a pain as you can train soldiers, farmers, carpenters etc and they cannot be located on the map so you just walk aimlessly until you bump into them.  the b button is shared in being used for assigning a job, recruiting a new person and regrouping anyone you've picked for your campaign - this means I tried to pick 2 carpenters up to build a bridge, I informed them to start building the bridge then as it was gonna take a while - I thought i'd recruit more to help them but upon approaching a carpenter and pressing the B button to recruit - this also informed the 2 already building to stop and regroup to me.

These are only a few of problems i've encounterd and it's a shame as i've waited a long time for this game and I just cant play it with these control problems.

Anyone else played it and have any opinions?

You´re gonna make some people jealous around here.

Anyway, you have to do all that process again if you die?..Lame.

I don't really see that being a problem for myself.

Umm what? I have died once and then the continue button came up and i started at the exact same place.

I really don't have any of the prolbems you seems to have, takes a while to learn the controls but now after 7 hours it's a piece of cake giving out comands.

You must build the platform outside your house/castle from there you can summon each type /farmer/soldier/carpenter/etc etc

And you must upgrade it also then you can summon specific characters.

If you summon the "Battle party" all of the ones you used last time will run up to you.

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.

I've died 3 times fighting the frog and I return back to the main menu every time and have to reload the game.  I'm finding it really annoying

Dude just upgrade your podium and you can select any citizen you want in your army. And if you die in a king battle you can continue the battle without having to start again. It would have been nice to use IR but the control feels fine. Game of the year so far

Trust me it get's easier.

Up and down on the direction pad on the wiimote will seperate them - but I may trde it in for pikmin 2.

if i had a pal wii, i would have humbly asked if i could have the game since you wish to abolish your copy somehow.

alas, i still have to wait 2 months for it.