Hover
Using Sword or Hammer aerial combo lets you hover. Simply spam your attack button until the aerial combo is over. Starting a second aerial combo after the first one won’t give you any hover effect. However, with Sword, you can finish your aerial combo by an up slash to hover a bit longer. With Hammer, you need to start with an up slash before starting your horizontal combo if you want to benefit from it.
Up slash
When doing an up slash, Ori gains a bit of height. This can be used to reach higher platforms. Hammer’s up slash gets more height than Sword’s up slash. If you try to do a second up slash before touching the ground, you will not gain any height from it.