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 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.