I'm very familiar with Old-World of Darkness... it was the first system I ever ran in, or ran... and I frequently find myself missing the simplicity of it's flaws & extras.
I've also since learned how flawed (no pun intended, but I'll take it) it is to try and force that on other systems. It worked (mostly) with WW, some of the time, sorta (unless you got a player who liked breaking it, and that was most of mine). Don't try to mimic it here- it really, honestly, won't work... but you can make Fate work for you.
Aspects absolutely ARE the way to go-
As example, I have a not-quite-wizard I run who's missing his left hand (cut it off as part of a ritual to gain magical power), and rather bluntly gave him an aspect "Need a Hand?"
Suffice to say, it's going to get in the way ALL THE TIME. All sorts of physical complications arise, and since it's his left hand, he's really weak at defensive magic (he's from a similar school of magic as harry, which places such energies on the left side of the body).
Since it was part of a magical deal, circumventing it costs him a FP (to refuse the compel on the aspect), whether with prosthetics or magical effort.
On the upside, the aspect does carry a few beneficial connotations: he's used to working around his shortcomings, and has learned to work with others. It also really pisses him off to see another person's shortcomings taken advantage of (and that can go either way for him).
That said, there's no reason why you can't have an aspect that's completely and wholly negative, just like there's no reason you can't have one that's completely and wholly positive... the balance between aspects you can use and aspects that can be used against you is more about the character as a whole...
If every aspect you have is entirely negative, you'll earn lots of fate points, but have no way to spend them.
If every aspect you have is entirely positive, you'll have lots of opportunities to spend points, but find yourself perpetually broke.
You can pretty well look at any given aspect and figure out how positive or negative it is on a gut feel. If one's too negative, don't throw it out, just make sure you have some other aspect to balance it in the other direction.