I actually think pre-mouse games can have pretty elegant interfaces if you learn them. For me the era of the early GUIs (late 80s/early 90s) is often tougher to deal with.
Unless an interface is egregiously awful it’s usually not a dealbreaker for me; it’s more that it adds an hour or two to the learning curve, which may or may not be worth it depending on the gameplay underneath. (I am distinguishing interface from something like ‘stick feel,’ which is absolutely essential in action games and has been since at least the '80s.)