My first RPG was the original pokemon red/blue and as a kid I was utterly baffled by the menu based combat. At first I thought the menus were bushes that you were hiding behind to catch the pokemon. The idea that the battle system was an abstraction over what a pokemon battle would actually be like was completely foreign to me. I got over it within the first hour but I remember being disappointed that you weren't actually slinging pokeballs and such.