I gave this a try last night.
the voice acting is amusing, if a bit nuts in places and some of the humour had me laughing, also the sounds and music are excellent, and its good to have an audiogame with actual graphics (I can't see much of them on the Iphone screen, but I do like the sparcles everytime you cast a spell).
In terms of gameplay, yes, the game play is more arcade style, however the fact that your using a touch screen does change things up a bit, rather the way that the gameplay in feer wasn't quite standard. For example, each time you hear an enemy there is one of twelve possible gesture combos you need to perform. Whilst this won't be hard for experienced gamers it required enough attention to hold my interest and not become a grind, the way some basic hear and react games do when played for a long period
while I wouldn't say this is literally "difficult" it can get a little tricky in some of the later levels when challenges and bosses are introduced, especially challenges and bosses that alter the rhythm or the sounds required, indeed at the moment I'm on an interesting boss who changes all the sound cues into words, and odd as it sounds, when you've got used to swiping up every time you hear grinding rock, having to think "earth," "dirt," or "ground" with the same gestures does change things up some what, or maybe it is just playing late at night whilst tired I don't know .
I wouldn't go as far as using words like "strategic," but there is slightly more here than the average boppit, at least for the first couple of hours.
I will say, I have two basic problems with the game play. The first, is that the speed you can fling spells and thus the speed of enemies is limited. This means even in the endless mode the game never becomes a crazy enough speed to get ridiculous the way Feer does, and difficulty mainly occurs through finding an enemy out of rhythm or mishearing a cue, the second, is that the levels are a wee bit too short, especially those that involve interesting challenges such as having your swipes changed up, or needing to not hit a given enemy, though whether these will be unlocked as conditions for endless mode I don't know.
I also have a miner design niggle. The story mode has I believe 20 levels (I'm currently on level 15), yet endless mode features all the monsters and boss types from the story mode, so unless you want spoilers you can't really play it until you've finished the story mode, (I played endless mode and was killed by a boss I hadn't encountered in the story yet).
this effectively means at the point your ready to use your unlockables, you've already unlocked them .
so, unless there are extras to unlock in endless mode which I've not run across yet, the unlockable system, whilst fun is not quite as extensive as I expected due to the game design.
All that being said, the game is actually rather fun for what it is. Where gold gun took me less than 20 minutes to complete, I've already been playing this one for about an hour yesterday, and have more to do, especially if you need to ace each level to unlock all stars. Also, since the story mode is entertaining in and of itself, its something I could see me replaying in the future just for the experience.
So, while the game is certainly not going to change your world, its a nice way to spend an afternoon, or maybe its just that I am a bit less inclined to be down on a game because it isn't a super rock hard absolute challenge and am quite content to just treat it as the bit of fun it is intended to be.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)