Your argument about fighting games makes some sense - in order to support fast-paced gameplay, the inputs required for actions should be intuitive. The input in question is tilts. The action your example brought up was turning around to attack someone behind you with a tile, quickly and on reaction. The input - tilting behind you and pressing an attack button - seems intuitive enough. And so, it has matched the requirements you have set.
The problem you are having is that the input does not seem intuitive to you. When a player approaches a new game, everything about it may seem unnatural, awkward, gimmicky, strict in timing/inputs, etc. That's a natural part of the learning process. As we play more, we pick little things up about the game and grow more accustomed to it's mechanics, until most actions feel natural and intuitive to us.
Sometimes, though, we may have been unaware of some aspect of the game, and skipped it during our "beginner" learning process, or approached learning it in a less-than-optimal way. Take tap-jump vs. x/y jump. I was a victim of that, too. I used tap jump for a good 5 casual years, only to find myself held back later on when I wanted to get more competitive. In most other games I had played up until that point, up on an analog stick had almost always been used as the jumping input. Using X/Y seemed backwards, and re-wiring my muscle memory to jump with not only a different input, but with a different hand took several tries over a few months. It's not easy adjusting muscle memory, or overriding what you may consider to be "intuitive." But for 99% of the rest of the community, it already is intuitive. But it's really no big deal. Somewhere out there, some other guy is getting frustrated trying to learn to U-tilt without jumping, or maybe another is having trouble not F-smashing instead of F-tilting, or jumping --> F-airing instead of F-smashing.
It's all a matter of recognizing that this is your own problem, not the game's, and realizing the fact that you're able to see this is a bad habit means you're getting better. Being able to spot your bad habits is a hugely important skill to have, so put it to use! Don't blame the game for being the way it is - PM is well-established, and getting angry at a rock for being shaped the way it is isn't going to convince the rock to change anything about itself. What you can change is yourself. So swallow down some pride, don't keep telling the rock things to do, and practice tilts for 5-10min per day until you've reshaped your hand to fit comfortably around that rock instead...until holding that rock - whose shape used to seem so awkward - starts to feel natural and intuitively-designed for you.
