Okay, so... this may be an issue of screen size, perhaps, because on my screen, the size of the UI and the amount of screen it takes up compared to the play space is not oversized or intrusive at all.
Could be, but lack of proper scaling is a problem in itself. I found Kingmaker's UI horrificly easy to miscick, as I found hotbar too tedious to mantain for all the companions, and for rarely used characters defaulted to expandable list thingy. Then I switched to 1440p/27 inch screen, and it became much better (not perfect, I still think some UI elements like switching between spell levels, and expandable spell UI are to small and create an unnecessary danger of misclicking).
Strong, Strong disagree on removing labels from buttons.
I think it is nice to not have descriptions (you could have tooltips with a delay), but yeah, designing tooltip which will be intuitive for all/most will take a lot of testing. I read recently an interesting bit about Total War game, where end turn button used an hourglass symbol - clear to long time turn-based players, but a decent number of new people got stuck and couldn't find the "END TURN" button.
The graphic design is for a UI: It's already on OUR side of the 4th wall. It's NOT a part of the fantasy adventure - it's our personal interface for interacting with the fantasy adventure. It's most idea situation is to be unnoticeable and practically invisible to our subconscious as we use it. A clear, clear but otherwise nondescript UI is one (not the only, but one) way of achieving that invisibility. But regardless, this is an aesthetic complaint.
Let's be honest though - Solasta's UI doesn't look pretty, it sticks out like a sore thumb, and draws attention to itself in the all worst ways possible. It is aesthetic complaint - all it needs is an artist to spend a decent amount of time to make it look good, and buttons nice to click. Not problem with design, but budget spent on it.
I have no problem with how BG3 UI looks - just what funcionality it offers.
