It ain't Morrowind, but for this platform, it does impress for a little while....
First off, the 'world' is very immersive, making you feel very much like you are running around an actual 'place', instead of running a maze of boxy rooms (like Deep Labyrinth was). Quick load times (less than a second) between map segments and decently rendered (but slightly repetitive) textures for walls/ground/sky help maintain the feeling of you actually being somewhere when playing.
The bow is not as bad as many reviews make it seem. The intent was, I think, for the bow to be used in a sort of sniper fashion, where you run just close enough that the enemies don't 'see' you, but you can still get a shot or two off. This is accomplished quite easily since you have an overhead map with all enemy locations clearly marked on the second screen. I don't know why people don't like the bow, frankly....I use it nearly all the time to safely clear out a room, reserving the melee weapons for boss battles or for when I run out of arrows. So what if you can't move when firing a bow... you can't do that in real life, so why allow it in the game?
The game length can be on the short side if you just visit each area once. However, it is possible to return to previously explored regions to find every secret item (dragon teeth and scales, which permanently add to your HP and MP maxes), as well as to gain more experience using the weapons or magic (which make them stronger when used).
The game does not feel like a slogfest at all. Despite the hack-n-slash nature of this game, I never felt like I was on a dungeoncrawl (like I did when playing Deep Labyrinth). It just didn't ever seem to get tedious, thanks to the large, diverse regions to explore, both inside and out. When entering a castle, it really looks and feels like a castle. When in a small town, it looks and feels like a small town, and you can talk to most of the inhabitants to get cheesy side-quests or to just hear what their opinion is of the current state of affairs ("The king isn't helping us...what are we to do?"). Again, not major earth-moving stuff, but it changes up the activity, rather than simply running in and killing everything that moves. In short, the graphics are decent, the story is good, the world is immersive, and the length is a wee bit shorter than hoped for, but not short enough to feel like a rip-off. Can't ask formuch more than that in a fantasy adventure RPG-like dungeoncrawl.