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playability
While I have several friends who love Il Principe, the "unintuitive" bit was a deal-killer for me, I'm afraid. This may have been because I didn't read the rules, but was taught the game. Moreso than most games, it seems to me that Il Principe really needs to be carefully and skillfully taught. There are so many different moving parts and pointy bits, and the putative theme is so completely unhelpful when it comes to fathoming any of them, that it's really tough to parse if you haven't read the rules. Even immediately after having played, I didn't feel like I could turn around and explain the game to someone else, which is unusal for me.
It's not my sort of a game, but I do see why people like it. It strikes me as sort of a "puzzle" game, a distant relative of Puerto Rico or Caylus mabe (although not, in fairness, as interesting as those two games). People enjoy working out how the systems work, figuring out all the pieces interrelate.
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