I know what you mean but I really like the diversity of the map. It feels a lot more like exploring and dungeon crawling.

I find the cards in the dungeon row very interesting, some very cool cards in there. Overall you will make a lot of clank going around. Many cards add it and many monsters also add it. But there are plenty of options to heal and mitigate.

The lockpicks instead of keys are a cool little thing because paths opened with a lockpick stay open for everyone. Earning gold is also possible through multiple different ways. I really prefer it over the base game. You can also combine the adventure party addon to catacombs to play with 6. Its has extra rules in the rulebook for that