New to code igniter and the view(s) are killing me

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
I checked out ruby on rails but decided to go for CI since I already php. I rebuilt an application I had originally created with smarty in CI and everything was good until I got to a complicated view that required me to write <?php echo ?> a million times, as well as a good amount of loops and operators. I realize there is a template parser but the documentation says that it will slow apps down and it seems as if the creators aren't really in favor of us using it. Is there something I am missing here. Should I rely on some community template solutions to reduce the amount of code I'm writing? If so, which is best? I realize that most people here prefer no template system as it's just one more thing to learn but sometimes I feel like it would be worth the effort.