Hi alternatey. I've been one of the biggest "critics" you could say of narsil, but I mean that in the film "critic" sense of the word, although others believe I mean it in the more "criticizing" sense of the word, but I certainly do not.
Narsil is great and is as simple or complicated as you want it to be. Most of the features people are talking about, are things many people never use. Do you care about accessing battcheck or changing your moon mode level or accessing crazy strobes? No? Then just stay relaxed on the switch, don't do any unnecessary double or triple clicks or anything, stick with press and hold ramping and you'll be in the simple ramp up ramp down interface.
I'll admit I got slightly glitched by the reversal timeout, but I haven't used it much (only because I've been testing HD), but it's not a big deal. If it ramps the wrong way, release and ramp again.
There's also the modegroup operation of Narsil that you should give a shot. That doesn't ramp. You click, it changes up "one level". If you're interested in modegroup operation you can also try bistro-HD
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/44344
I certainly wouldn't call it objectively better. It's certainly less mature, ie fewer features (things like double click to turbo, quadruple click to lockout switch, etc). And the major downside, you need to hold the button down for a bit more than a second to lock it off (it goes off instantly, but won't stay off until you've held it a bit). This comes with upsides, but it's still a downside.
Like with narsil, there are a few advanced features though. You can turn them all off or just not use them. Don't let the huge manual bother you. Most of that is for development. The UI is just bistro.
But first I'd say don't worry too much about all the talk about fancy features in Narsil. Just try it. Have you found you needed to do funny incantations to make it brighter? Did you find that it blinked out at random times bringing down enemy fire?