For me, I'd have to say Old School X-COM (UFO Defense, TFTD, X-COM Apocalypse to an extent). I love them in a way that I just do not enjoy NewCOM, but the interface was quite possibly based on the recovered works of a 13th century scribe, and is very difficult to get used to for an unfamiliar player.
I came here just to say, "fuck you that game didn't age poorly at all, it's still great" and ... that is exactly what I'll do. X-Com is awesome. The UI isn't bad, it's just old. Big difference. Some old games have bad UI just like some new games do, but X-Com's UI is fine.
The game is borderline unplayable without a fan mod showing you TU costs for your moves in advance. There's no indication of how far a soldier can throw a given object. Grenade timers going up to 30 turns is just patently ridiculous, and the way those timers behave defies player expectations. Managing your characters' equipment is a nightmare beyond words. Buying and selling every little piece of equipment, down to spare mags and flares, is silly and pointless. I have hundreds of hours playing oldcom in its various forms, but I also have eyes.
Better tell that to all the people who have completed and enjoyed it then. :wojak-nooo: nooo its not playable you need MODS the game DOESNT WORK stop pretending to have fun!!!
The entire point of this post is that people can still have fun with games that are poorly designed.
the point im making is that people unfairly level the "poor design" accusation at games that are perfectly well designed for no other reason than that they come from a different era. which is exactly what you're doing.
I mean nobody says this shit about Pong or PacMan or shit, those UI's are old but they do their jobs perfectly. The reason it's being brought up is because it's clunky and creates friction between a player's actions and their intentions. For example, in nucom, the game will notify you when you aren't performing research but have a project available, whereas oldcom will happily let you trundle along without having any going. This is just an objectively worse experience - it has nothing to do with age or aesthetic, one interface has a UX problem (a player who would want to do research is unaware that they could be doing some, wasting in-game time and falling behind due to a communication failure on the part of the game) and the other resolves it without any sacrifice to gameplay depth.
the thing is, if this is the standard for games being broadly "poorly designed" then there are almost no well designed games in existence. you can nitpick any game out there and then say "breath of the wild is BORDERLINE UNPLAYABLE without a mod to remove weapon durability"
just because the game has a flaw you can name does not make it a "poorly designed" game or "borderline unplayable"
Alright I've had enough of this discussion, I would say unkind things if it continued. I wish you the best, I'm glad you're enjoying video games :)
:hasan-ok-dude:
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You do not start the game with a research already active, this tends to happen mostly in new games. That said, I've seen cases where someone started a project and forgot to assign any scientists to it, which is functionally identical to this.