Catholic? Despite the setting being religious (derogatory) pretty much the whole way through? Interesting...

But yeah, no- for the first maybe 15 hours of my playthrough I struggled with it, and while I'm comfortable with it NOW, it sucked ass in the early game and I swapped off as soon as I could. Definitely feels odd, especially coming from the first game

It feels significantly better as a combat tool than it does as a platforming tool, personally. I got used to it as the latter, and there are unlockable movesets that have downward attacks that work better for platforming, but I struggle to find any of those down airs more fun to use as a combat tool

Really hard choice, but for me it has to be this one, very biased, yes, but it's just so cozy.