Recoil is always there, but it's nerfed right after the jump (the controls would suck a lot without that) and sideways it's building up gradually. Hover from shooting enemies doesn't make much sense but it does its job gameplay wise.
>>>overly aggressive with the kicks
You can dive head first into the boss and deal impact damage to it, and then also start kicking its body parts, but the last part is risky because you can lose i-frames by accident.
>The game gave me no indication that stealth is possible, or that there is impact damage or even momentum-based movement. If anything, I assumed touching enemies damaged you.
This assumption kinda makes sense since the game starts with a swarm. It's not exactly stealth, but the wall gives you an opportunity to get closer and swoop in, and you can dig from below too.
It makes sense now, I neglected the UI scaling there so the tutorial wasn't readable or visible enough.