Expanding on this, Godot has its own 2D widget framework that's fairly straightforward to use, though it doesn't use native widgets.
Note that the Godot editor itself is written in the widget framework, so you can get a sense for how well it works just by opening Godot and clicking around.
The 2D framework, especially for UI, is pretty awesome. But the learning curve on the layout system is quite sprinkled with head scratching and frustration in my opinion.
Yeah it's brutal. I've been using Godot professionally for years. I have effectively mastered the layout system but it was annoying to learn. It tries to be like Unity's system but they made a few mistakes with Pivot, Grow Direction and Size Flags imo.
I made a tool to position nodes in a way modelled after Cocos2D, with a position, pivot and anchor point.
I've made a series of small tools to help me lay stuff out.
One really good thing about Godot Ui is the "StyleBox" which simply allows coders to make rounded rectangles, which are so frequently used in UI it's nice to not need an artist to make a .png
As someone who has never made a game, I really want to make a tower defense game that fixes shortcomings I find in others - where would one complete beginner delve into Godot to accomplish starting to learn the system - there are a number of tuts on YT - one of which is ~11 hours long.
Can you make some suggestions to avoid/pre-empt any said headscratchings and frustrations?
You are going to scratch your head and be frustrated. Just keep going! Imagine your asking "I want to make a rock song that is better than the other rock songs. What youtube video can I watch to learn how to play the guitar?"
I usually recommend GDQuest on YouTube. Just start! Keep going! You'll figure it out.
Start with something small/easy to get the basic concepts and just keep going from there, like you'd do with any other skill. Making a Flappy Bird clone (for example) has become the Hello World of game programming.
