Pros:
First off the course stays out of the way of pretty much everything else going on in the park. It's a very serene and quiet course, but no less tough.
Comparing the open holes against the wooded ones, the woods are definitely better, but the others still have plenty of beauty and some treelines/OB to make them tougher. Long, sweeping par 4s on 7, 13, and 16 are really nice additions to the wooded masterpiece. The mix of wooded/open and left/right turners is darn near perfect.
To get a good score you'll need to be good at multiple shots. 2 is a forehand hyzer, 11 and 14 need a good backhand, and 9 and 15 require a laser-straight shot.
The big takeaway for me was placement. To challenge for birdies on the par 4s your drives needed to be in a specific zone. 10 needs to be to the right of the trees in the fairway, 12 has to be almost all the way to the left side of the fairway off of your drive, 16 can't be stuck behind the trees on the left, and 17 needs to be at the mouth of the tunnel or your birdie is gone.
Several holes play on bluffs, so going off the fairway or coming into the green too hot will be punished pretty badly by skipping down a long hill or into a deep ravine. The fairway danger is present on 10, 11, and 15, and you'll find fast greens on 5, 10, 11, 14, and 16.
Tunnels on 4, 9 and 15 make for a bad time if you get off the fairway, but if you stick to the middle each is a good birdie chance.
Cons:
1, 2, and 3 are kind of beginner holes, but I'm not against having easier holes at the beginning of a round.
Hole 8 is a simple anhyzer or flick, and 18 is just a sad, short way to end an otherwise excellent course.
The tee signs aren't much help. They're more of a playground doodle with distance markings than an actual map.
The walks from 8 to 9, 12 to 13, and 15 to 16 are longer than normal. But they aren't "long" as much as they are annoying. And you have to double back on 8 to get to 9.
Hole 9 is on the very easy side of a par 5. If you don't go in the rough it's an easy 4, but it is a very thin fairway... so I see why they did it but I would still call it a 4.
Other Thoughts:
There is so much good about this course that you'll forget the negatives very quickly. The quality and difficulty are excellent, the upkeep is superb (the mowers were there cutting grass which was already pretty short), and the setting is fantastic. I would go so far as to call this a destination course. If you're ever in or passing through Des Moines, make the stop, you won't regret it.