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Because I am a robot, and I buy anything on the iPhone platform that is ever recommended to me, I read this and I bought Zenonia.

There’s nothing particularly off about that review. It’s fairly accurate. But the entire time I was playing away at it, it was hard to do anything but wish for buttons. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve certainly never seen a BETTER virtual D-pad and button on any iPhone game, but that doesn’t make it suck any less.
Add that to the fact that this game is very much a button masher, and you have a recipe for not-as-nice. I’m expected to slam on the attack button constantly, especially as the Paladin class, which is built for survivability as opposed to damage dealing. (And I had to pick Paladin. It had a heal spell. I always pick the one with the heal spell.) But since it isn’t a button, it can be very easy to get slightly distracted, and have your thumb slide just so, and suddenly your character is just standing there, getting his ass beat. Most of the time, it works just fine, but when such errors happen it is really frustrating.
It’s the same with the D-pad. Most of the time, it works really well, and the game is smart enough to have some very minor pathfinding so you don’t have to be extremely precise. (For example, if you are walking straight towards a box that is only blocking one space in the middle of the path, holding up towards the box makes your character go ahead and walk around it) But it’s really easy to slip, and suddenly your character is facing the wrong way when his big attack goes off, making him miss.
You have a hot bar of various abilities you can set on the bottom, but these also pose problems, as the buttons aren’t very big. Setting a move to the slot closest to the virtual D-pad had me turning just as often as pulling off the move, which was annoying. It also normally took me two or three presses to pull off. That isn’t what you want to be happening when you want to heal in the heat of battle.
On top of all this, the menu system uses the D-pad, instead of being touch screen based. There’s no good reason why I can’t drag and drop equipment into slots instead of having to use the D-pad like I’m playing a GBA game. It’s kind of ridiculous.

Still, the only problems I really have with the game are control issues that can barely be helped. The game is pretty deep, and it certainly is engaging. But when it started to get difficult due to the controls, I kind of started to put it down. If you really wish you had a deeper jRPG-style experience on your iPhone, Zenonia will deliver. Just expect to have a lot of frustration with the controls.