I felt that the beginning of the game is pretty punishing, exactly because you don't have these movement abilities yet.

After getting Swift Step (dash), the game became quite doable. Luckily you get dash a lot faster than in the original game, although I would say, in Silksong it's more a necessity.

I went through Hunter's March without abilities and initially I hated the diagonal pogo jumps. It took a night's sleep to reset my mind, and learn pogo-ing for real.

That also was the lesson I needed to go forward: take your time, consciously clear the environment, and learn the movesets. I have a lot of hours in the original game, and was way too used to sprinting through the environment.

Most of the pogos don't require the full diagonal range, you can just trigger the attack when you're really close to the target, which makes it almost a regular downwards jump.