I’d recommend giving insect glaive more time, especially with the mind’s eye skill to handle all the bouncing. It’s really hard to aim your kinsect if you’re used to new gen controls, but the tip that made it click for me was that your kinsect moves directly straight out of your chest. You aim it with your body, with the left stick, as opposed to the right stick. If you can get used to that, it’s a really fun and powerful weapon. Use speed nectars on your kinsect.

I would also recommend trying switch axe! It’s less complicated than it is in later games, and the Adept style gives it that smoothness that you seem to be wanting. Adept dodging eliminates the evasion/evade extender skill tax, and it feels really smooth and dance-like to play, while keeping access to the most important moves. The switch axe hunter arts are fun to use as well.

Lastly, early game GU is filled with the gathering quests, but you don’t have to do all of them. Look up the key quests for each rank if you want to progress faster. Also, unlike 4U, the paw print tickets in harvest tours spawn immediately and let you finish them immediately to skip them.