Tom, I would posit that you can get away with building damn near any green you want at this point. Which two par 3s at Prairie Club Dunes were over-the-top for you? I'm assuming 4. 14?
I don't see you getting straitjacketed for building a green like 4. Rob Collins built a pretty similar green at Sweetens' 4th that sorta put him on the map, after all. Now, part of the reason I love that hole so much might be because I hit such a great shot the first time I played it, but it was also a shot that doesn't happen without recognizing the influence of the architecture. Playing to a back right pin, I hit a low 4 iron that landed and released up the ridge in the center of the green and then fed probably 40 feet right toward the hole, winding up 12 feet or so away. The feel I came away with was that, while you could put two pins 80 yards apart on that green, you could probably also land two well-played tee shots about 10 yards apart near the green's center and have one feed to each of those two hypothetical pins for good birdie looks. And I liked that the slopes were strong enough that even a first time player could see and consider them, but that they still required a pretty exacting shot to really leverage to full effect. That in contrast to some of my questions about Mammoth Dunes, for example, where it sometimes feels like any ol' shot in the general vicinity of your target will end up just fine.
Noting that the course is over-the-top for your tastes is fair, and probably not surprising really. After all, the thing I love most about Dismal Red is that it is so much different from everything else in the Sandhills in that it feels restrained and compact despite its wild and wooly setting. And I love that juxtaposition.
At the same time, I've always loved a little dose of bombast, in pretty much every form of art. I love Apocalypse Now, the 1812 Overture, Fallingwater, and Tobacco Road. So yeah, the Dunes course is huge and full of centerline hazards and really wild slopes and it spreads over a huge piece of land with enough maintained turf that I fear for their ability to maintain it long term. But it's so much fun to play, and packs in so much variety. It really feels like it could be a totally different course from one day to the next, to a degree exceeding any other course I've ever seen.
And that's the part that I love most, and the part that keeps it in my personal top 5. My sole criteria is "Which course would I be most excited to be standing on the first tee of right now?" For me, there's no course that clearly beats it by that measure, and only a handful that rival it.