There's a lot there, but mostly because that bird has so many engines. It's mostly duplication of the same small set of instruments, and it's pretty neatly divided up into sections.
The whole center panel is basically 6 gauges, times 6. Right hand panel is ignition, boost, etc... but again, times 6. Once you identify the section and see how each is divided by engine, it's actually pretty intuitive. There are a few odd things, like fuel gauges on the bottom and flow meters on the top, but that's not too bad.
Took me less than two minutes to suss out the basic groups, from left to right: environment/deice, fire suppression/deice,AC power, engine instruments, ignition/fuel selectors/boost.
I love these old-school panels... so many gauges, switches, knobs, and blinky lights! Doesn't intimidate me, because I am an audio engineer who learned on the old analog consoles. The uninitiated are shocked by, say, a 48-channel audio desk... until I point out that it's really just one fairly simple channel strip, with signal flow from top to bottom, duplicated 48 times. Add submaster, aux and matrix busses, and it looks even scarier... but again, it's just the same thing over and over. The only hard part is making sure you are manipulating the correct channel or buss.
The only people who should have feared these old bomber panels were the people who serviced them.