It's a great-looking game. Nice blend of some Fantasia with middle eastern aesthetics. Here's what I haven't liked so far.
Space to select spells and then using them with another button is clunky. If you don't want to have too many buttons, why not just have the book selection be what casts the spell? There's enough keys to make that work.
Map zones that are nothing but plain enemies on an open area with no additional design to it are no good. Zelda 1 usually has some twist that makes each screen different in how you tackle them, and even then the limited diagonal movement is a huge part of why it works there with minimal environment props, since you cannot so easily run circles around enemies and their projectiles.
This game is at its best when it leans on the magic theme rather than Zelda pastiche. Items, enemies and maps taken straight from Zelda just leave me with a feeling that I have played this before.
The level design is much more linear than Zelda 1, but there's no cohesive world design like you see in later games in that franchise. It's a bit like the worst of both of these worlds at the moment.
Dialogue has some jank. Sometimes it seems to fly by randomly, not sure what's going on there. I am playing with sound off if that matters.
The flying sections are too long. They could work as spectacle at the end of a real boss or something, but their gameplay in itself is not good. For whatever reason, the one with the dragon controls slippery.