That would be one of the top complaints, moving your mouse vs pressing a key on the keyboard takes longer. Everything adds up when breaking down time and how fast and fluid flow of combat works.
IMO you want the ui to be minimal / not intrusive to the main game, to the point, and clear. The ui is not the game, it is a feature that supports it. Hiding features of the ui when it isn't needed is better than having it on screen the whole time. But when all aspects of the games ui is all pop ups you will be opening those menus every time. BG3 actionbar style ui is old and reused in multiple games yes, but if its not broken don't fix it, or you can say, keep it simple stupid (K.I.S.S.).
Solsata's ui is big, grey, and box shaped. The icons all have extensive dead space in the pictures, along with light coloring. The light coloring draws your eye to them in darker environment locations in game.
Video example: walking in a swamp at night.
Fair enough. I think the Solasta devs are going to add keybinds to spells eventually, because their design philosophy has literally been all about improving functionality. Your suggestion is probably lower on their list of priorities because you're probably the first person I've seen that has actually mentioned it - and as such, I should probably drop it off in their Discord, because it *is* a good suggestion upon second thought. They at least monitor it pretty heavily and will comment on things there.
As for the actual look of the UI, that can be easily improved later. Functionality is generally a more difficult thing to design, and a far more important priority than the visuals in most cases. They might just keep it as is, as most people don't seem to mind (though I think they should pick a different color other than grey, or give us the option for different colors, the same way there are options for the color of the dice), but if not, this looks like something that would be easily moddable anyway.
