I thought for sure that by two hours I would know how I feel about Toribash, but so far my emotions have been all over the place. At first I was intrigued, but then I got a chance to play around with the combat system and it was absolutely overwhelming. A couple of times I lost to the inert training dummy. To let my frustration cool down, I spectated a few online matches, to see how people who knew what they were doing played.
The experience was a mixture of goofy as hell and oddly awe-inspiring. It was nothing like the choreographed fighting in the movies. It wasn't even like something that could exist in any halfway rigorous physical framework. But there were technique there. It was clear things were being done with intent, and the interplay between move and countermove was beautiful to behold.
That set a fire in me to buckle down and learn the system, so I went back to the training dummy and hilarity ensued. At one point, I got the dummy into a headlock and wound up severing my own arm. At no point was anything I did elegant or practical. At best I'd wind up make contact with one minor blow before tripping over my own legs and falling over. It got to a point where I was just constantly laughing at myself.
I expect that the winds will shift several more times before this is all over. I'm not worried about finishing the game. If the worst comes to pass, I could watch in spectator mode indefinitely. In the short-term, though, I need to come up with a strategy for practice that gets me noticeably closer to not tying myself into a human pretzel. As it stands, I am so bad at this that I'm not sure I'm even capable of learning to improve.
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