Good observation about the artwork! And another part of the expectations. I hadn’t even considered box size in my assessment, but that definitely plays into it. This is also why I sometimes have a blast with smaller boxes when they feature a lot of decisions and strategies with few components.

Excellent point about choices, too! There are times when I enjoy having limited choices… Often when I’m too tired to think a lot, but still want to play a solo game. That sense of being overwhelmed with too much is also a problem, much like you said. Thanks for pointing this out!

It’s perhaps unreasonable of me but I also expect a game in something close to a full-size box to offer a bit more complexity than this.

I think choice is the most important element for me: the fewer choices I have to make, the less I tend to enjoy a game, even if it’s just a short filler. (There is also such a thing as too many choices, of course.)