Yeah, not jumping sometimes trips me up, but I do like the albeit weird control scheme otherwise. My only issue with the camera so far is where "boy" shoots arrows. Just finished getting to the peak of the mountain, if that tells you anything. It was weird to fight a giant boss and still have to climb.
Good to know about the armor. I think I've more or less been doing what you said to and I've so far been enjoying the inverse difficulty, but that's cause I just started feeling more powerful.