Quoted from Rondogg:All that being said just understand that the people that love this game, generally speaking, are people with a lot of experience playing a wide variety of games. ... Most of your family, friends and kids are going to gravitate to something much more accessible.
Agree wholeheartedly with your entire post, and this is a good point I hadn't thought of. For someone who's basically seen & played it all over the last 20+ years, Maiden is the culmination of everything I'm looking for in pinball. Maybe you can't fully appreciate it if you haven't played all the great games it builds upon, and suffered through all the design mistakes it avoids. My wife is a casual player. I keep telling her "we have the best game of all time in our basement and you never play it." She just wants to blow up saucers & castles. And that's fine.