Just got this game today

[Aulayna]

Will be going home to play it after work. I've literally read zilch about it, anything important a first-timer should know (such as easily missed things or secrets near the beginning etc)?

[Skyblade]

There is very little that is easily missed, if anything is permanently missable at all, and I'm not sure anything is.

The game has two menus. The standard "Equip, Items, Magic, Status, Etcetera" commands are accessible through the main menu, by pressing "X". However, there is a second menu that can be accessed by either pressing Right on the DPad (movement uses the Circle Pad, DPad is for commands), or touching the arrow on the side of the touchscreen. This second menu includes a nifty little tutorial mission board. Whenever a new feature gets added, it will give you a little mission that you can perform, and it rewards you with an item.

For example, within the first few minutes, it will tell you that you can find items hidden around town, and ask you to find something in the inn. This introduces you to the fact that items can be found by exploring towns (a feature sorely missed in many RPGs, in my mind).

This tutorial board will also go over some basic combat strategies on how the new Brave/Default system works, and how Special Attacks work once you start unlocking them through Norende. Though practice is really the best way to get the hang of the battle system.

The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to make Friends a rebuild Norende. Social features are pretty huge in this game. You can use Abilink to connect your characters to your friend's characters, which grants you the ability to borrow their Jobs and Job levels, which is huge. Rebuilding Norende gives you more items to buy from the traveler shop (travelers are essentially save points, guys dressed in red that are scattered throughout the various maps and cities, you'll see a ton of them), and also gives you weapon Special Moves and the modifiers for them.

[NeoCracker]

Go in expecting a few moments of story to be failry stupid, just so you don't get your hopes up too high, though it's still a great game!

And Level up a couple people as merchants early on for additional gold while grinding. I believe it's 8 or 9th level the increased gold bonus becomes usable on any class. Other then that you're godlen.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

I JUST GOT IT TOO!

[Moogle Chrome]

I JUST GOT IT TOO!

AS DID I, KIND FELLOW!

[Fynn]

WELCOME TO THE COLLECTIVE!

JOIN US BY POSTING YOUR FRIENDCODES IN THE APPROPRIATE THREAD!

[Vyk]

Yeah. Having a few leveled up friends comes in very handy. Gives you access to a few abilities you can enjoy early on. Also if you stumble across a hard fight you can summon in some help. Some people offer super healing, and others try to send in their most powerful attacks

Welcome aboard though. Hope you enjoy the game as much as I do. I haven't been playing it as incessantly as I was at the start. But still going strong, and still in love with it. It makes me feel vindicated against people who thought I was judging newer games too harshly through nostalgia glasses and holding games like FFVI up too high to be realistic. I would easily compare this to FFVI and say Square apparently still has it. Somewhere hidden away. And kudos to them for finally getting it right. I doubt it's that way for everyone. But to me, it completely lived up to the hype. Feel free to add me if you want to make use of any of my abilities or my summoned attack

Though if you don't want to play the game socially, there's an option for adding fake friends from random people on the internet, just to have things available. It doesn't make you add them for real or anything. But you can summon them if you want