The graphical views are useful, and the wide range of plugins comes in very handy. I could never get on with the emacs interface - it just wasn't discoverable enough - YMMV I guess.
Discoverability in emacs is a tiny bootstrap problem. I have to admit that for years I didn't know how to ask emacs, but when you do (C-h m, C-h k), there's no more discoverability problem.