It takes some getting used to, but I don't think it's that terrible
No, you are wrong. There are many times this has caused problems.
I agree, that's totally terrible^^
I didn't struggle with this in DOS 2 because I played with a controller, and it was essentially the same as what I'm laying out here. Get the specific character, push one button, and unchained, or chained, as the case may be.
Did you try BGEE or any other games like that on console ?
It's not really confortable because of the controller, but it's far from being worse than the chain...
Only one of those 2 systems are good with a mouse, and it's not Larian's one.