Yeah the keyboard controls were awful, apparently it was because they wanted the game to have a console port using a gamepad.
Thing is I bet the people who played it are right too, I just never managed to bring myself to play more than a few hours of the game before getting frustrated. Bad controls + 90s point-and-click-puzzle-design + early 3d graphics is not a good recipe.
Full Throttle was criticized for its dumbed-down point-and-click (basic only 3 actions + using items, instead of the usual verbs), but that was the sweetspot for my early-teens mind. Can never get enough funny responses of using the lick action.
LucasArts then made the same mistake with Escape From Monkey Island, because they were targetting the PlayStation 2