I really try to do my best while choosing my words (especially in EN) but yea, in EXEMPLE the user interface of P:K, PoE or Tyranny suits way better to a game named Baldur's Gate to me (even wasteland 2 if you want an exemple with a totally different style).
The UI of BG3 and DoS feels like a mmorpg with many informations everywhere, big skills bar, informations and effects everywhere on the screen... There not only one side of the screen where you have nothing in front of the action. It's very intrusive while it's way more sober in the old BG and suits better to "writing a story" in a RPg according to me.
I expressed my frustrations with D:OS2 UI, before. My issues with it come with functionality rather then looks - having customisable bars is good, but it takes too much tedious management to keep those bars up to date with skills switching, disappearing, items getting added/removed/used. Having an ability to set up a custom hot bar is good, but having to do that to make game playable is pain.
For the very same reason I hate Pathfinder’s UI with passion. It also requires maintenance to be useful, and with game demanding for you to swap spells before many encounters it just adds to already an extremely tedious game. Sure, Pathfinder has traditional skill selection, but abilities are just piled together and you need to manually expand skill and items tabs which adds more clicks hen needed. On top of that, buttons to expand those tabs and switch between spells levels are so small that one needs a Starcraft level of precision not to misclick - amount of times I had to reload the battle because and key moment I gave the unit order to move by accident is fairly high. Log is also rather lacking, and doesn’t function properly. Don’t start me on need to manually put every damn potion into characters item slots instead of being able to just assign it and have it refill automatically as long as there is available stock.
PoEs UI (especially PoE2) are fantastic. Portraits and skills set in the same area, clear distinction between skill types, easy to access to everything from the get go. Little mouse movement and little clicks required. I don’t recall misclicking anything. PoE2 log has even a neat log filter. And there is optional hotbar - it’s biggest fault is not being advertised well. I think it took me almost a full playthrough before I learned about it.
Outside UI functionality: Is your issue with D:OS2 that it is not Skeuomorphic enough? [squeal of joy. It took me forever to find this term].
Haha sorry but the skeuomorph and what I read on the wiki is a little bit too precise for me to understand all the subtleties.
I don't have a problem with that kind of UI BUT it's a very common UI you could find in any games, even in mmorpg. It doesn't translate any personnalities, you don't have any feelings about it. It's very intrusive on the screen if you compare to other games (even to XCom or the new Wasteland 3 to name another modern TB game) but it's functionnal and... that's all.
I think the UI of the old games and of new "old school rpg" aren't only design to be functionnal. UI is a part of what a player see on the screen and it can completely change the visual feeling you have about a game. BG1/2 are old and outdated but i.e PoE, Wasteland 2 or Xcom wouldn't feel the same with a UI like BG3, whatever their functionality (which is probably one of the most important thing about UI).
As I said I don't have a problem with the actual UI but I'm a part of those that are dissapointed because """this game don't look at all like a BG game""" and I really think that a little bit more poetic/story telling and a more "Forgotten Realms" UI could be a good compromise for everyone.
I'll play the EA whatever is the UI but I really think this could be another "link" (or at least not totally another break with the feelings of the older games)
