i've been playing in the beta test and i was initially surprised at how fun the game is.  character customization is pretty sweet, you pick their age, modify any body part, change clothing, skin tone, eyes, hair etc. you can play as a 4 year old with a massive head, a preteen, or an 18 year old dude who's 20 feet tall and anything in between. plus, all of this is changeable at anytime by going "shopping." i think that's where the item mall comes in, but there are many options available for free and after playing only a couple rounds i had enough money to do pretty much anything i wanted. 

the music is pretty sweet too. very dancy. the gameplay itself has varying difficulties. the beginner mode was just that, but the hard mode is pretty much impossible for me. if i keep playing it'll take me a while to master it and get bored. although, like any rhythm game, once you play through all the songs a bunch of times it gets boring. i haven't gotten that deep into it yet, so perhaps they're implementing features to give players a long term interest. your character can level up, but i'm not sure what effect that has on the game. anyway, it's fun so i recommend people give it a shot. 

EDIT: found out some additional information... the game really shines in battle mode with items enabled in which 3v3 or 2v2v2 teams throw items at each other to mess up their opponents. it's a hell of a lot of fun that way. also, levels do nothing except if you obtain level 10 you get a closed beta t-shirt for your toon. lol.

That's too bad the leveling system is kind of obsolete. I wonder if the game limits which level of difficult of game you want to play given your level, as in a level 25 players can't play in beginner, but I guess not.

The game is fun for short periods of time. You get that burst drive to do well on a particular song or random through the limited selection of songs before the same melodies sink and stay in your head. The arrow keys are a bit small, and it's very different than Step Mania or DDR, because they are across the screen. I think the arrows are a tad too small, but that's just my opinion.

This is different than your cookie-cutter model of an MMO, if it can be called that. With only 6 people per battle, I wouldn't really classify this game as an MMO, because you are not playing on a massive scale. The game might seem a bit slow if you are constantly waiting for that last person to click ready or for the room to be full.

The idea of multi-player Step Mania is kind of cool, because it's never been done before. Even DDR is only two-player. However, there are still kinks to be worked out if the developers hope for any kind of retention.