I believe (although not 100% sure) that in one of the Yoshi-P updates he said something about have two UI's running in tandem, one for mouse/pc users and one for gamepad users. I do think the current UI is more geared to gamepad users the biggest gripe I have is constantly having to double click to perform one action so I would click on the ! when near an Atheryte crystal which would open up the right hand menu and then I need to click on the ! in that menu to access the Atheryte.

That kind of double clicking is only a small issue but when you have to do it lots of times in game it does get annoying!