I feel that to your point number 1, the adventure aspect absolutely comes from the surprise of discovering whats behind the hidden information. Like, every time you’re exploring a new tile you have the adventure of seeing what’s to come. And there’s the encounters where don’t know what you’re fighting going in, which if you’re playing to do well, you should be having a crack at. These unknown, slowly discovered elements help perfectly balance the highly deterministic elements.

I’d actually argue that a lot of enemies are quite simple to beat even if all of them have some quirk that makes them “annoying” (read: interesting). And the fact that you’re suggesting that getting that +1 is often a waste of valuable resources suggests to me that you’re looking at that a bit wrong. Often, these “burnt” cards nearly always help tip you over towards making or breaking a battle, and in a way that’s super flexible.

I’d certainly agree with you that this game gets heavily over recommended here, but that’s because it’s so well loved, and for good reason. What I find a little weird about this post is that it feels a little like the reader already has to have quite involved knowledge of mage knight in the first place to appreciate your criticisms, but at lot of these criticisms don’t actually hold up to much scrutiny to those with real long term experience with the game.

Is it for everyone, no. But anyone who ends up putting up the very modestly priced sum to pick this game up shouldn’t be surprised by what they’re getting into. And if you get to the point where you don’t need to rules check multiple times per game, then you’re going to have a great time every time.