That is a question I've asked myself many times and found to rarely be able to give example of. As quality and flaws stand, even if I praise or complain while playing, the UI and menu interfaces are probably what I forget the quickest about a game.

I think that what stuck with me the most is not the practicality but the visual appearance. I know I've played many RPG through the years and since you spend so much time in menus, the more appealing they are, the better.

Not sure I could give examples of what I consider good or bad, but Final Fantasy X comes to mind. I like the original design better.

Final Fantasy X (Original) - Overall Menu

Final Fantasy X HD - Overall Menu

By the way, does anyone know a website that archive or document videogames UI/Menu ? It's an important element in a game and could be interesting to skim through more easily than Google Images :p

Or Secret of Mana, though I don't consider said game to be an RPG.

Of course, that game's spell casting system doesn't work so well in multiplayer, as in order to cast a spell, you need to pause the game, which of course is annoying for the other player(s).

Personally, for this sort of game, I think Final Fantasy Adventure handled spellcasting better. You do need to pause to switch spells (though that can be forgiven due to the limited number of buttons on the Game Boy), but you don't need to pause to actaully *cast* them.

I think the UI in Dead Space is great. It's functional and seamlessly implemented in a way that doesn't break the immersion.

Trespasser (yes, i'm serious!).

I absolutely adore LucasArts' classic interface (starting with Monkey Island, so the name of interactive objects appears automatically when you hover the cursor over them) and LucasArts look-alikes. It's perfect for what it needs to do, and as soon as you start playing you understand with it does. I also find it useful to learn/practice languages, since it shows with written words the name of every object, hotspot, character and even your actions.

However, it seems that adventure games starting moving from this "action --> object" interface since the late 90s to the currently more common "object --> action" interface, which is also intuitive once you get used to it. But I miss the good old days.

Not to mention the aesthetics. The interfaces of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or Simon the Sorcerer are absolutely gorgeous. Surely they count! I do have a favorite interface mod - BUG mod for Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword. Civ4 already has a better interface than other games in the franchise (even 5 or 6), but it's far from perfect (google TheMeInTeam, a notorious player in CivFanatics/Youtube, if you want a deep analysis). The BUG mod displays information in a really practical way, saving the player lots and lots of clicks. It is really customizable, so you can select which information you want to be notified of. It's the only mod in any game that I always use. It has the potential to show so much information that some people believe at first that it's cheating -that's how useful it is.

Yeah... it's surprising more games didn't adopt breast-based health bars as the standard.

I agree. In Simon the Sorcerer, you had to read a letter to save. Think of it as writing home, heh.
Dark Sun had nice gui for its time. You can easily target protecting/damaging area spells. That would be trial and error in earlier games, methinks.
Europa Universalis 3 was the first game I've noticed that uses extensive mouseover tooltips for extra information and effects.

Maniac Mansion had a cruder version of it, if I recall correctly. After The Secret of Monkey Island they just added pictures instead of object names, but that was a minor change.
I did learn the English word "hose" with Indy, though (I did think it was some kind of rope until I looked it up in the dictionary). So yes, you can learn a bit of a foreign language this way.

As for the object -> action, do you mean restricting the actions based on the type of object? It may be less frustration-prone since you can't open a button and you can't pick-up a door (unless there is a very unusual context). What I have seen also are automatic verb selection where you just click on things and and the game kind of sorts itself out.

The Sims 3 (EA sim games in general, but particularly that one). There's a shit ton of content and options, and there are a lot of ways to find and get to them. Was it perfect? No. But really good at helping you to play the game that had so much to it.

Epistory has a great UI for what it is. It's a typing game... and all the menus are playable without leaving "typing mode".

Secret of Mana's radial menu. (radial menus in general for many types of games).

Bad examples are easier to find. They're more salient, sadly. And I get so pissed off at so many games that hide relevant information from you! Others mentioned the BUG mod to Civ4. Makes it a completely different game by mostly just changing the UI.

Yes, in older games you clicked on the verb, then on the object. Nowadays it's more common to click first on the object, then select one of the possible actions that show up. Both have their merits.

Automatic verb selection is good with the super-common actions such as "Look at" for virtually every object, or at most "Open" for doors. But I prefer to have to think a little what I am doing. :)
It adds so many useful tidbits. The Great Person generation bar alone is worth installing the mod.

For me it was Transport Tycoon Deluxe
I played it for so many hours from 1994 and still playing it, the interface was great since from the firts day i played it ((I was 13 at the time), very intuitive without reading the manual :D
Nothing to envy to "modern" tycoon games

Witcher 1.