It will work if you uncheck the "Restore settings" option. This option was introduced in MC15 and it will not work with older library backup files. (It would be better if MC could simply ignore the "Restore settings" option when it is not applicable instead of producing an error message that does not help the user.)
It will restore the custom library fields, file data, file statistics, playlists and some of the view configuration. However the views will not be fully restored because the configuration system has changed significantly. Some of the old view scheme settings are not compatible anymore and you may need to reconfigure the views and columns to match your liking.
In addition you need to configure the settings in Tools > Options >... . As I already said, the settings restore was introduced in MC15 and in any case MC16 has many new and fundamentally changed settings. The old MC12 settings would not be compatible even if they were imported by hacking the Windows registry.