No, the punches are indeed 0 damage, quite low on power, I would say.
Papercut is slightly different, enemies take "fatigue damage" every time they hit you, buffed by poison, and papercut lets you chip them between attacks.
As for the attacks...it's a bit of both, but less delay between alert and attack makes trigger-dodge on exclamation mark actually work, so it is easier with just that.
Based on my friends who actually played a lot of movement shooters, the game forces you to wall-slide non-stop and doesn't give you a lot of time to assess the situation, so the component of picking elements is less strategic and more "spraying the crowds with whatever you last picked up until someone dies". The elements of the enemies themselves are hard to see and register in constant motion. And, from what I saw, the last level dragged on forever either because of waves or sheer starting amount of enemies.
4-dimentional shooting + enemies having as much health per room as I have for the game makes combat really jank and hit-and-run-y, and I just ran past everyone until I got a mode that can actually do decent damage.
I played until I got 8 modes, and they either don't do much, force you into an awkward melee or... kill the game if you got them first by slowing you down to like 1/10th.
