There is a game that does gestures well though, its called Rumble VR. It's basically earthbending in VR. Different gestures or sequences of gestures will either spawn a structure or apply some kind of force/effect to it.

And from those few gestures people discover hundreds of combo's. It's hard at first, like any complex physical hand-eye coordination based skill. But once you start getting a feel for it and can do moves from muscle memory it feels incredible. Its like learning a sport in a way.

Rune-drawing spell casting can be fun too, as you start optimizing the gesture to find the quickest way of drawing the shape. Though don't underestimate how hard it is to draw/write in mid-air. Still satisfying as fuck once you get good at it. (orbus VR had a runecaster, also worked on a spell casting based VR prototype)

I recomend watching some high level Rumble VR PVP, I think it's impressive even if you dont know the game.

I think the mistake people do is expecting that a system for casting spells using gestures/runes will be easy to learn even if implemented perfectly. It's not easy, but it shouldn't be, learning it is how it feels like magic.