One other thing I think is cool about Chi Chi Chess, at least in the potential it contains, is that in an opening state with a lot of immediate forced moves and (apparently) obligatory trades, there is a sort of drill you can run through by rote, almost like a direct and intuitive version of opening theory for untrained players, until you both suddenly find yourselves in a very difficult place.
It's like (to make it about swords again) in fencing when someone makes a certain attack against you, there is pretty much a response you are obligated to make. You can do it with a preparation in mind, a feel for some nuance for your next move, but you can't just pretend it's not coming at you and do something else. Once you've executed the right parry, there are again numerous ways you can go in riposte. Often the sequence of parries and ripostes chosen are victorious on the basis of their making an opponent respond with a larger action while you manage to run through a shorter action more quickly. This is easier or harder to do depending on what action immediately preceded, the state of your defensive posture, etc. which all feels to me kinda like "oops I shouldn't have started with Nxc3 and then gone in this direction; now they are winning the tempo."