Factions?!?

I am a new player that has just finished Prophecies and started Factions. I tried to build a Ritualist to experience this expansion pack for how I assumed it was designed. After struggling to make it to the mainland, I abandoned the Ritualist and tried to start the story with my Warrior from Prophecies.

Enough background, I am finding Factions to be annoyingly frustrating. Not only is it really easy for me to get lost traveling around the city on missions, but it is very annoying to struggle to keep Togo and Mhenlo alive. I have made it as far as Tahnnakai Temple. Does it get any better? Will I continue to have to protect the other two the whole story? Is the whole campaign a series of mazes that require you to constantly backtrack?

-Kaineng City is really a mess. That's just how it is, unfortunately. Once you get out into the other areas it'll be fine.
-Tahnnakai Temple was definitely the mission that gave me the most trouble when I played through Factions the first time. After this Togo and Mhenlo will go off and do different things so you won't need to take care of them much anymore. If you're having trouble beating it, try reading the tips on the wiki. The Afflicted don't have much in terms of healing so as long as you can kill quickly enough you should be ok.

Like you I am also a new player. I finished the Factions campaign about 2 days ago and can sympathise for the points you made, since I experienced exactly the same thing. (Struggling to keep Mhenlo and Togo alive in Tahnnakai Temple and getting lost in the streets of Kaineng. The map can be pretty deceptive when navigating.)

However, since I got the trilogy pack I also had access to NF, and therefore the heroes that came with it. I managed to get past that point by researching hero builds and promptly blitzed that frustrating temple. I found the rest of the campaign to be easier (though obviously the hero builds I looked up were the cause of that, but I do think the rest of the campaign might be easier even without heroes if you do not have access to them) and the terrain changes soon after. So to answer your questions, no (well, sometimes, but it's not as frustrating) and no. Keep at it and you'll enjoy the campaign alot more for what it is: a good campaign.

If you're still having difficulties then feel free to contact me and I'll help you out. There's still alot of things I have no clue about so we can be noobs together.

EDIT: How could you contact me if I didn't put my character's name? Duh. It's Aristotelian Philo.

several years on I can navigate Kaining center with relative ease but it is very confusing at first.
3 dimensional with enemies above below and the other side of dead end paths, that combined with lots of ambushes make it challenging indeed.
Try to think of it as an experience to be enjoyed its a unique part of the game once your out of the city the game becomes much like the others.

I found the ritualist class annoying at first then I settled on playing it pretty much as a lightning mage which was better but still nothing special.
Once I got access to enough spirits it became a very solid class to play good in defence as well as attack and that's how I played it from then on.

I am a very defensive player anyway and find a mix of Earth Elemental circles Spirits and Necro minions to work very well in keeping the ai help alive and fighting the bad guys on my territory with lots of advantages.

Don't give up on your rit, it will get better as you gain more skills. Although I took my main, a warrior through all of the campaigns before finishing Factions with my rit. At this point in time, Factions is my favorite campaign to take any profession through. It has just the right amount of difficulty, but I do remember the frustration my first time through (pre-hero days).

It gets better----the jade sea and the echovald forrest are much nicer places than the ugly city!
I was very happy to leave that area behind when I first started. ( and its still one of my least favorite areas in all 3 campaigns).

The city so horrified me that I took my new Assassin to Prophecies to finish leveling. Upon return, I found that beginning combat with a Longbow helped my Assassin to survive the exploding undead. Even now, I get lost in the city and the Undercity. It is certainly a different area than any in the rest of the game and a very challenging area. After a time it becomes doable, 7 heroes make combat very easy if only you could figure out how to get where you want to go!

I abandoned Factions about halfway through, didn't like the maps and the environment at all, and haven't gone back. Just didn't enjoy it at all.

The problem with factions is the actual layout of the zones.
Prophs was nice because it flowed easily from one place to another - same with eotn and nf.But factions - game devs on drugs it seems.
Shing jea island is nice , kaineng is a nightmare till you learn the routes and if you hate that type of thing factions loses your interest - a to b takes 20 mins in kaineng even when the exit is right near you.
After you leave kaineng then whoohoo its back to normality ( the devs drugs must have wore off ).
Personally even tho its annoying as hell - keep at it on factions and afterwards you`ll think it wasnt too bad.
And just to add - i was like many others and hated kaineng and it took a year before i went bk and did factions - now i can breeze thru it in a day or 2 easy play.

At one point in Factions, you will have to choose between 2 path : Luxon and Kurzick. Each path contains a mission where you have to keep something alive (singers for Kurzick and Turtles for Luxon). I believe the Luxon way is far easier than the Kurzick one, especially if you use the special "trick" for the mission (avoid to aggro the turtle and clean all map before to come back to the start point).

The easiest way to roll through campaigns is with a team of 7 heros, but you can also wait for Zaishen Quest and try to find a group to join... (Every day, a different Zaishen Mission is offered in Great Temple of Balthazar, now it's "Gate of Kryta", in a few hour it will be "Gate of Madness", "Boreas Seabed" is on Monday 12/09/2011...)

Almost everything about the Factions campaign is annoying. Kaineng City is, as you noted, a pain to navigate. When you get to the actual factions part of it, the maps are not annoying but the NPCs are. The Kurzicks and Luxons are just irritating on every level, and I hate myself every time I have to do something in those regions.

IMO, the most awesome part of Factions is the Ritualist class. My wife plays one and it's like night and day when she got the hang of that class. I don't know if there's a more flexible, robust class in the game.

Before factions many players said they hoped the next expansion would included a city area, since prohecies is all wilderness. Its really amazing how well anet deliverd an environment that really is like a city, including the look and unfortunately, the difficulty getting around. Like in a real city, I eventually got to know my way around most of it well enough to get where I wanted fairly easily, which makes it much less frustrating. But I still get lost sometimes.

In the end, factions gets my vote for best campaign. It's definitely an acquired taste, but if you stick with it you may feel the same way. For the guy who quit halfway through, you should know that much of what's great about factions comes from that point on.