It was a very frustrating game. A friend of mine got it for Christmas the year it came out. We tried really hard for a lot of hours but we were completely overwhelmed by it. I don't know if it was the bugs that made it impossible to win (or even progress very far) or just the difficulty of the game, but we moved onto playing other stuff after a while, even though we both loved ET more than anything.
I agree, but my older brother figured it out. It was confusing because most games were single screen with obvious objectives. ET had a larger map with randomized items. You had to collect various objects to get home and bring them back to a central base. Unfortunately, there were a lot of similar looking maps and bad collision boxes, so you were constantly falling down empty holes and having to lift yourself out.
Bugs aside, it was beatable, and you had to read the instructions a few times to figure out what the hell was going on, and you would just ... lose sometimes.
Deadly Towers on the NES gets a lot of hate for almost the exact same reasons: random dungeons, unclear gameplay, and sometimes vindictive enemies.
The funny thing is, the current roguelike indie boom is built entirely around those concepts, and the Dark Souls series is hailed for being a throwback to the original zelda, where you just had to figure the game out.
ET wasn't a great game, but it was an ambitious game when home consoles were a new thing and everyone just wanted asteroids and pac-man.
The environment is very different though - we have the internet, and can watch the entire game played through by experts if we want. Back then if the average player got stuck by not being able to figure something out, and didn't want to call the expensive helpline, their enjoyment was over.
And this easy access to info can be a double edged sword.
For example, adventure games are basically dead because of how easy it is to find a step by step guide on Gamefaqs or similar.
Similarly, MMORPGs used to foster an in-game (in-world?) community because so much had to be discovered and shared via it. These days it is one part follow the quest marker, and one part check the wiki.
MMORPGs had knowledge base websites dedicated to them almost the instant they came out. The reason they don't foster community anymore is more by design than anything else. That said, old MMORPGs fostered community via some pretty unfun methods. I'm not sure if there's a good middle ground.
