Indeed, a simple source port such as ZDoom or GZDoom fixes most of those issues. It is pretty much the only way to play Doom these days. I can agree with Doom not being someone's cup of coffee. The only thing I disagree with are the keycards. They force you to explore the levels and not just speedrun them. This reminds me of the "If Doom was done today" videos.

Wow, just wow...
Original Dooms are still probably one of the best FPSes these days. Historical value my ass. You'd put into a museum a game with one of the longest living ACTIVE gaming communities in existence. I can download a new megawad right now and just switch off for a few days and enjoy one of the best shooters to date. I feel sorry for current gamers for not having experienced the 90s FPSes and they probably never will which is sad. Heck, I started playing Doom seriously after year 2000 and the only things that can compete from after 2000 FPSes are Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Serious Sams.

Clunky controls depends entirely on the person. I have no trouble playing Doom on keyboard only for example. I found mouse extremely clunky and unfit for the game.

And no, I'm not talking through nostalgia glasses. If I want to have a good time and shoot some things I load up Doom. I have no desire to ever replay current shooters (except in rare cases). I could replay Doom infinitely but I don't even have to do that as there is an insane supply of expertly crafted community levels.

And Doom 4 didn't amaze me in the slightest. I'd still load up the original rather than the new one.

Hmmm, yet just before that you said that GLDoom/ZDoom are pretty much the only sensible way to play Doom today? Doesn't that also suggest that the original Doom games are kinda archaic by today's standards?

I tried one of those Doom-enhancers a long time ago (one that made all the monsters polygonal, adding true mouse-aim including vertical aiming, WASD controls. etc.), and it did really give the game a new life, improving it a lot. But it wasn't Doom anymore, it was more like a Doom remake. I don't recall if it was one of those you mentioned, or some other.

But they can, buying Doom 1-2 from GOG or Steam and play it. But I feel many of them will feel pretty much like Raderofthestark, going "Ummm, ok... maybe this was hot shit in the 90s then when they had nothing better...". Which is how I feel as well, even though I was one of the most avid Doom players in the 90s. It just hasn't aged quite that well, but then it was 25 years ago...

Yep, I'm more than disappointed with Diablo III, especially now that I have all the three games of the saga installed on my PC. Diablo I is a beautiful, raw gem, Diablo II is THE FOCKING PERFECT GAME (as much as ARPG are concerned) and Diablo III... well, Diablo III is Facebook Diablo. So much disappointment I can't describe it...

But you can say that about most games. Oblivion for instance is like the German national football team (bland, uninteresting, no inventiveness, terrible levelling system and most likely to be dropped after a couple of outings). As one or two tweaks to it and it can still stand up to today's games.
The problem is in thinking because something is modern it's better. Sure mouselook is a QOL improvement and graphics have gone more 3D, but those don't make a good game as COD series should tell you (only 1 and 2 are any good). Just recently played doom 2016 which is a modern version of the original doom, cracking good fun. Take all that cover mechanics, story, pc agendas and such like and shove em. Give me a fecking big gun and an army of demons (or beards stroking coffee drinkers-that would be a mod!) and I am well away.

Agony.

Devs ultimately lied, down to the last part. They made off with backers' money and refuse to even compensate them, by refunding. Everything they promised, became a scam and a fraud. Even the new, uncut version, especially that one which was supposed to arrive on GOG... For which, they never even contacted GOG, to begin with. Still, they are closing down. Good riddance! So glad i wasn't suckered into funding! Let that be a lesson to everybody; never pay upfront, for something you are not certain it includes all features presented, or a finalized project, damn!

Also, Bloodstained, somewhat...

Prequel mini-game deprived backers of a DRM-Free release. They didn't have the courage to announce that during development, though, ergo they deceived everybody, Fanmail service included; for which they caused quite the inconvenience and extra work load (since they had DRM-Free platform choice in the survey). Now, the demo... It isn't optimized well, lags a lot, controls are gamepad-centric with keyboard being half-functional to non-functional, seems to be a barely decent console port just operating on PC environment and worst of all? DRM-Free version isn't 100% guaranteed, after all... I mean, GOG backers were supposed to have "Early Access" too, but reading the small letters, nowhere is set in stone, that said "Early Access" would be delivered through GOG, too and/or simultaneously. When people asked on the forums about guarantee for FINAL GAME GOG version, they weren't 100% reassuring, either... I myself am preparing for a refund, just in case, they pull off a last minute Inti-Creates esque trick. After all, Steam page is up and running, we here have nothing at all.

So much for kickstarters. First and last time, i backed one and i considered to back another one. Final for certain, though.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Try running it without DSFix... You wot mate?

Kingdoms of Amalur: well, this game felt so promising and I'll play it from time to time, but I always get tired of it about halfway (I think..? Never made it past a certain point out of sheer boredom).

Dark Souls II: It took so much of what made Dark Souls great and shit on it.

No Man's Sky: Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha....

Final Fantasy VII: Oedipus complex and amnesia swapped memories... Great RPG gameplay around one of the most bland shit stories I've ever played through 6 times.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - because of the dumb "refilling enemies" mechanism.
I just hate that.

(Edit: almost forgot)

Far Cry 2 - see above.

The Witcher 1 - at least on my first try.
That "timed-clicking combat" made me quit the game right after the tutorial.
I only returned to it, when "The Witcher 2 came out.
And, lo and behold, I invested some more time, and really enjoyed the "timed-clicking combat".
And then I was through with TW 1 and started playing TW 2, expecting more of the same - and of course - they had changed the combat - sigh.

Vietcong 2 - I absolutely love(d) Vietcong 1, and I was so exited, when they released the second one...and then it was such a far cry from the first game. Endless waves of enemies, disabled only by trigger points. An absolute sin in games, that depict a "real war"... in my humble opinion.

At least I am not thinking that way, and I didn't claim so for Doom either, ie. that it is bad because it is old. It is "bad" because it has a bad game engine, controls etc.

For instance, I've noticed that with e.g. RTS games I tend to prefer older RTS games because of their relative simplicity and because many newer RTS games have introduced features or emphasis on things I consider as negatives.

For instance, I think the first Age of Empire game (at least with the Rome expansion) is more enjoyable to me than e.g. Age of Empires 3, as the latter concentrates too much on heavily scripted missions and storytelling of fake and invented historical characters and events, and AoE3 also introduced lots of extra units that felt quite superfluous because there were already so many other similar units in the game (e.g. the amount of different kinds of horseback archers... just why?).

Or, I like Starcraft more than Warcraft 3 or especially Starcraft 2. In the later RTS games Blizzard has too much concentrated in online eSports, while I am after good and balanced single-player campaigns. On the other hand, I feel something like Warcraft (1) is a bit too archaic nowadays, with somewhat clumsy user-interface and TOO simple gameplay, worse than Starcraft.

The gameplay didn't feel that great to me, particularly in comparison with earlier Final Fantasy games.

In particular:
* Why only 3 characters in the party?
* Characters don't have significant gameplay differences.
* Materia system is actually too flexible; it is too easy to have a character who can fill every important combat role at once. (I think the problem is that the system is too granular; too many materia slots, and too few abilities per materia (excluding master materia and Enemy Skill). (Compare this to Final Fantasy 5, where you only get one job and one ability slot per character, but each job or ability can provide a lot of power or an entire list of spells, so character setups tend to be more focused toward a role.)
* Game is too easy; this results in certain reasonable materia setups being completely unnecessary. (For example: Seal + All would be nice if the game had enemies that were dangerous and didn't die too easily (as long as the developers didn't get lazy and give everything immunity to Sleep), but the enemies are so weak that this is unnecessary and not even worth it.)
* Too many mandatory mini-games, where the controls suddenly change (particularly painful on the PC version when played with a keyboard; it's easy to familiarize yourself with the controls for normal gameplay, but then the game tells you "press [switch] for this" but you don't know which key [switch] is). Also, the minigames involve the sort of gameplay that doesn't belong in an RPG (also see the room in that one temple with the boulders with that hole).
* It takes too long to reach the world map.
* Summons are awfully handled by the game. Long animations, and you can't even enter commands while waiting for the animation to end (the targeting cursor is replaced wioth a pointer with a red 'X'). The final battle makes it worse by having the enemy use a spell that acts like a summon, forcing you to watch a 2 minute animation; at least for player summons you could choose not to use them, but you can't make the enemy not use them.
* Deliberate permanent missables; I have generally considered these to be sloppy game design, but in this case, some of them (huge materia and the Pandora's Box spell) are clearly intentional, which is just malicious game design IMO. (Case in point: In FF5, the developers made sure that no blue magic spell is permanently missible; in FF7, not only did they noty do that (I believe Trine is only used by bosses), but they explicitly scripted an enemy to use the Pandora's Box spell only once per save file; if you dodn't learn it then, you can *never* learn it.)
* Also, unlike FF6, which has its brilliant non-linear late-game, FF7 remains linear throughout and never opens up.

So, in conclusion, that game did not feel like "great RPG gameplay" to me; earlier games in the series were much better in this respect.

(Also, the programmers *still* didn't get the inventory coding right; see the W-Item glitch that lets you duplicate items (which was *not* fixed in the PC version).)

It fixes a few bugs that actually make the game unplayable completely (soft locks and the like)

Backing up your save is because of script kiddies that will invade your game or let you invade them and then instantly egg-head/curse/break your equipment. Backed up save fixes this since they don't ruin your whole game.
Well, that's why we all have opinions. Obviously you like things I don't and vice versa. You love FFV, I think i's merely ok. I love FFVI. It's all cool though. You don't have to like the things I do for us to continue getting along. :)

Ah yes, I recall seeing some Youtube-videos of those.

I presume one can play solo too, without anyone else, script-kiddies or not, invading your private game? If someone comes asking me "Anyone wanna trade?", I tell them "UR MAMA WANTED TO TRADE WHEN U WERE BORN!". Works every time.

Well, there's no actual communication in game.

You can play off line or as a hollow. The difference is Offline, you can be human and summon and be the game's phantoms without other dickheads making you miserable. As a hollow you have no access to any phantoms.

This. This so hard. Like you, I loved both Eador: Genesis and MotBW, especially after patching fixed a lot of the issues with the initial release of the latter. Losing multiplayer was the biggest reason why I passed on it. I read that, and it completely broke my desire to acquire or play it...(and I even got Disciples III and played it.) :|

That depends purely on the source port in question. Some change nothing, some fix bugs and remove engine limitations and some make drastic gameplay and graphical changes. Most of them have them as options.
I play with removed bugs and engine limitations. No gameplay or graphical changes at all. And all that I said before stands. The ports just allow you to play the game in 1920x1080 @60FPS, which is already an extreme improvement over the original that changes nothing within the game itself.

Define age well. I still see it almost as an epitome of FPS gaming, even after 15-20 or so years that I've been playing Doom. To be honest, I appreciate Doom more and more every year. There is this good feeling in knowing that I will always have a great FPS to play.

But I agree that it might have a hard time attracting new players. I was lucky and was able to experience games like Doom, although at a young age.