There certainly isn't a lack of strategy, for one. Lots of it boils down to rote memorization, I think, in terms of efficiency, but overall this certainly does have potential to be something, if niche. Of course, the emergence it's designed upon also makes it rather difficult to balance and engineer a strategy game over; lots of things are plainly going to be unpredictable, and beyond knowing generally-good patterns, I'm not sure how I'd imagine high-level play to look. At the least, I'm anticipating that a lot of it is going to come down to who can expand the fastest, and outcompete with long-lived bomb-slop, rather than intentional combat and guarding structures/creatures, but that's just a hunch of someone who's fooled around with it only for an hour or so.
For a general audience, the greatest drawback is probably going to be exactly the same as its merit. Complex things are often hard to sell, and I can't even see the skill ceiling from here. That said, nothing should stop you from making what you want to play, as this is certainly a niche not many are filling right now, and I've thought about bringing a few ideas of my own to the table at one point.