You can cloze the kanji readings and individual word meanings, but how do you come to understand the meaning of the sentence? Can’t you learn the meaning and reading of every word and still not know what the sentence means?
Yes, that is entirely possible. That’s why you fall back to bilingual MCDs. If you don’t get it, don’t use it. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. If it’s too hard or boring, delete it.
Having said that, this ability to “punch above your weight” — to handle texts far beyond your current level, is also part of the power of MCDs, though. Because if, say, curiosity drives you to want to crack a dense text without waiting for your language level to increase to a point where that it’s a cakewalk for you, then MCDs allow you to make a piecemeal, termites-in-wood attack on it, comprehending it bit by bit, until (if you stick around) eventually, you understand the whole.