The real drawback with the old kits is the raised as opposed to recessed panel lines.
Its a lot easier to get a realistic look with recesed lines, teh raised kind take more work.
I don't see those raised lines as a drawback, but rather they're simply a location guide for placing the proper engraved lines... I've seen a couple handfuls of kits in 40+ years of modeling with recessed lines that would make my "realistic" list, but that's about it.. Most, and I mean in the neighorhood of 70%+, aren't even close... If the lines were scaled up and that big on the prototypes, you'd see daylight through 'em.... And that's provided that there were supposed to be lines there in the first place.. I've seen a fair number of kits with the "realistic" panel lines in places that no panel-joints even existed on the 1/1 scale...
Frankly, the "engraved vs raised panel lines" is an old, old, debate, and one that usually means nothing in the end, since neither way is all that accurate on many of them, especially Pre- and early WW2 aircraft, since most of those had overlapping panels and flush rivets were yet to come... However, I'm not a rivet-counter, so raised or engraved, it really doesn't matter to me...
No one has ever lost a contest (at least none I've ever judged) because they built a kit with raised lines vs the same aircraft-type with engraved lines... They lost because they got beat by someone with better modeling skills and who paid attention to details like fingerprints, smudges, sand-scratches, seams, paint-sags, runs, pebbling, overspray, etc...
I've lost a lot of times, but never once because I used an old kit with raised lines, but because I did a sloppy job, lol... Nothing like that flawless finish on a beautifully pastel-weathered Spitfire, only to see, at the very last second, that HUGE burnt-umber fingerprint on the canopy...
The amount of detail and eye-candy that goes into "modern" kits (at prices that reflect it) is rather disappointing to me, since I used to clean up at some contests back in the day with the amount of scratch-building I did... "Average" modelers didn't fair well in those days, since there were no "after-market" goodies to buy (or VERY few), and they never took the time to learn how to make what was needed... The SOBs (Straight Outta Box) were tough contests then too... Kinda tough to do those anymore, since far too many kit contain the detail sets one used to have to make yourself... Nowadays, it's "buy a high-end kit, buy a boat-load of high-end AM stuff, then glue it all on and be declared a Master Modeler" kinda thing...
Dunno how the above Spitfire would fair in the SOB category against the Tamiya Spitfire, but to take a SWAG at it, the Revell Spit would likely fall short with the judges, even with all skill-sets being equal... There's that "Scope of Effort" thing to consider, y'know, and Tamiya's Spit has way more to offer in the "Fiddly Bits" category...That is, unless I'm the one judging them, lol... Then you get 10 points just for using the Revell Spit, lol...
Call it "Handicapping", lol..
Seriously though, I'll hunt down the old kits all day long rather than buy the new stuff, unless there's a subject that I simply MUST have...
Then I'll just bite the bullet and shell out as much as 30.00 for a 1/32 kit... Maybe even, now get rhis: Thirty-five...
Dollars... US Dollars too...
I know.. Pretty Wild & Crazy, huh?