You can freely move around the fight in real time. The fights just pause while you're picking your character actions. You can also swap out team members in the middle of fights.
What parts are you having trouble with?
I think the basic part is common for a final fantasy player, so if ya played a final fantasy game before Max, you'll be familiar with the actions overall.
The complicated part comes in programming your characters to do certain stuff at the right situations. You even have to set the basic attacks because if you don't, you'll have to activate every single action manually every single time. I remember having it set on attack "the closest enemy"
I am talking about the gambit system. This is where you "program" your characters to automatically perform regular actions. The wisest thing is to put healing as 1st priority, and then you set who they'll heal(which I would set to all allies). For example I have cura activated when someones health is below 40%(in game shown as <40%), so whatever they are doing, they'll stop doing it when someones health goes down that 40% which is very handy.
Then you put attack as second priority. So again, because healing is first priority, the characters will instantly stop their actions to heal when someones health is below 40%
That's the basic part but you can do all kinds of stuff with the gambit system. You can purchase many gambits, like the death gambit and have them use revive when someone dies to give another example(this is the one I set as first priority when I bought it)
Also about making money. You don't get money from killing, you have to sell similarly to final fantasy 13.
Anyway, if you read some of my posts in this thread, I've been playing the game as well. Although the learning curve is steep for this game, you'll definitely get the hang of things. Final fantasy 12 is for me one of the best JRPG's i've ever played, so I really recommend it.
