rampancy: What annoys me about Hammerfight isn't so much the game as it is the (admittedly novel) control system. I don't mind if I suck, because with practice, I can get better. With Hammerfight though, it feels like I'm doing awful because of some inherent issue with the controls; when I'm swinging my ship around it feels like I'm fighting the game more than I'm fighting my opponent. Maybe it's just me though...I don't know.
I felt the same at first. Try lowering your mouse sensitivity/resolution/whatever. There's a setting for it inside the game. At first, I had to swing my mouse in huge circles, frequently going outside the mouse pad, but after turning the sensitivity down in-game, it felt much better, and reacted to much smaller movements.
Of course, that didn't change the fact that the difficulty of the game itself is much too brutal for my taste, but at least the controls felt sort of natural.
Edit: Oh, ninja'd.