Gonna say...keep watching.

"I understand that these games are finely tuned and allow for all sorts of strategic depth. My problem is that those interesting parts can only be accessed by taking a running leap and smashing through several layers of arbitrary and counter-intuitive nonsense.

Wow. Several of those are actually quite appealing. :]

Oh, cool. I'm glad Cradle finally made it. It was one of the few genuinely interesting looking games on Greenlight during it's opening run.