There is also HTML::FormFu with which I have had a love/hate relationship. It's big, complicated, and slow but reminds me of the chestnut about democracy: it's the worst form of government there is, except for all the others. FormFu seems like overkill until you end up writing/tailoring just about everything it does from scratch, then it starts to seem pretty cool that at least FormFu has documentation. :P I don't know Validator::LIVR so can't accurately compare it. A casual read of its POD leads me to believe it's approximately FormFu-lite though I would also expect it to be much faster.

Your real question: stick to the API. If you feel it really isn't right, write a patch and submit a pull request to the project. Trying to correct the way an API behaves, or force it to your comfort zone, complicates the plumbing quickly and is prone to maintenance nightmares which is pressure to abandonment.