It may be confirmation bias, but I *think* benches spawn more if you slide more. I find that when I slide a few times, a couple of benches will show up soon. If this is the case, though, it could be communicated to the player somehow.
I agree that enemy hitboxes are too big, but only because sometimes when I hit an enemy, they hit me too, and we trade. I'd like to see something like a Parry, where if this happens, your streak isn't broken and you get a special animation for getting so close. The punishment for striking early stinks if I still land the hit late into the animation, especially if multiple enemies are lined up (I hit the first guy and then get hit by one or two more whom I cannot hit), so a more generous window, at least more accurate to the framedata, could be nice.
The biggest problem I think is that landing isn't safe. If we could Pogo off of enemies (even once per jump), or any downward attack just to hit below the player, that would improve things dramatically. It would also remove most of the difficulty, so more aerial enemies at Pogo height to challenge Pogo-ing could spice things up.