The default controls are bad? They work fine for me. Left handed with the mouse. Maybe default is supposed to be used with your left hand on the mouse. I can imagine myself trying to use defaults with my mouse on the right, my left middle finger would be twitching between S and X to move backward or shield. Even though the default left click is to move the last time I used it was about a month after starting when I realized WASD is significantly more comfortable for my use while my right thumb does X and sometimes Z instead of right clicking to attack because I have no idea. Maybe I just have weird hands and the only reason it works for me is because I was kidnapped in my sleep and a generic crazy German doctor switched my hands and feet. I would give kickboxing a whole new meaning.

Spiral Knights is not the only game to be taking the "textplanation" route in teaching its players. There are still some games that can balance tutorials for their content without lecturing the player with uninteresting dialogues, but usually those games succeed by skipping the part where you sit down and read ten sentences and either show it visually or tell the player something happens when they do whatever the situation calls for. Megaman is a great example of that second one which taught people how to play the game without having a boring dialogue.

This is also a convenient situation to mention Wakfu which has an optional tutorial area that explains the very basics (how to move around in the world, how to talk to NPCs, how to start a battle, how to move during battle, how to use attacks during battle, and how to use the "rest" action which restores health faster while outside battle than standing up and waiting) which brings you to a small starting area where you can choose to learn one of the basic professions, fight simple enemies to practice and level up a little, figure out puzzles in the area which give you rewards for figuring it out when there was no prior explanation from the game whatsoever, and an area that teaches you a couple tricks during combat like bonus damage for attacking an enemy from their sides or back and the elemental damage system. All of these tutorials basically put the player in an area with something and let them figure it out after giving a concise explanation or give up and leave, but they can come back any time if they want. Regardless if the player chooses to do any of these tutorials or get any of the rewards which the tutorials give you, whether they already know everything or want to skip it, they can go into the main world and they have to figure out what to do from there on their own.

To be fair, Spiral Knights succeeds at having the little controls that come up immediately after you create your knight and fall out of your escape pod, but beyond that they could have just added how to do charge attacks in there and be done with it. Maybe have a bomb related puzzle where you needed to attack multiple switches in an area of effect at the same time where the current "bomb tutorial" is, but that would probably lead players to believe bombs are needed for puzzles which are otherwise impossible to complete. Which should exist with bonus loot but not as a puzzle required to complete the floor.