Try jumping at the end of your forward roll. Newton's law of conservation comes into play, and it makes moving around a lot more... interesting.
Also, unlike jumping or gliding, you are invincible during that roll. It is intended to be a part of your anti-gang combat strategy.
And yeah... combat was never intended to be of Ninja Gaiden caliber. Mushroom Men offers more combat options than Mario Galaxy or Psychonauts. Sadly, some of the more strategic portions of combat (telekinesis attacks, turning bleeders into living bombs, and the ability to bat projectiles back at enemies) may not have had enough opportunity to sway most people's overall opinions on combat
Some more things to note:
* Player 2 can sustain telekinesis much longer than player 1 can... and so if you're playing co-op, player 2 could potentially find a neat object to carry around through levels to use as physics ammo for telekinesis.
* You don't have to waggle like crazy to do a combo. You have a very large window within each attack of the combo to swing once in order to buffer the next hit of the combo. In other words, if you swing to the rhythm you see in the hero's animation, you should be able to do the three-hit combo with ease
* The whole shooting at bleeding enemies thing is really meant to reduce your need for waggle. The more you upgrade your spore power, the more powerful that bomb becomes. You can take out an entire squad of enemies with a single cast of that "spore punisher" spell on a bleeding enemy.