Note: I played it in browser, maybe I had some performance problems due to this, even other games do run smoothly.
With stiff I mean: clicking on the icons below did not feel responsive/ immediate PLUS having to click first on icon, then on the field, then back on the icon, then on field are a lot of mouse movements (I think something like a context menu/ icons appearing at field clicked then choose one action). But is just my very subjective feeling.
Yeah i do think that its annoying using all the buttons. I like the idea of context based options, change it to WASD to move and then have a melee, range and self context click. melee when clicking on adjacent squares, range for more than 1 square away and then have defend/wait be on clicking the characters current tile.
