I tried the demo out over the weekend. Let me start by saying that the music kicks ass! As far as strategy and tactics go, I pretty much just hammered my way through the first line of defense and took out the target. It was all over rather quick, took me about 20 minutes.
The game doesn't even attempt to hold your hand - which I like, I really hate tutorials. Overall I found it self explanatory. It did seem a bit slow for my tastes, but again, I only played the first mission of the tutorial...
One big question that I had is that during the start of the mission when defining your team, it lists the ships along with the name of the pilots. For anyone playing the J version; is there any actual dialogue that takes place between the pilots? Or is it all serious ship-fight-ship the whole way through with little to no plot?
At any rate, I'll most likely support the cause and buy this next month!