Apple Pencil pressure sensitivity not working, nobody knows how to fix it

I'm having trouble getting my apple pencil to work with my iPad. I am an artist and trying to use procreate. However, a feature I was hoping to make use of, modulating how hard I press the tip of the pencil to the iPad to change the size and opacity of the brush I'm using, is not working.

I have a 9th gen iPad and a gen 1 apple pencil. on Apple's website, it says the following: "Apple Pencil expands the versatility of iPad and opens up new creative possibilities. It’s sensitive to pressure and tilt so you can easily vary line weight, create subtle shading, and produce a wide range of artistic effects — all with pixel-perfect precision, so it’s as natural to use as a pencil." (https://support.apple.com/en-us/111920) Despite this, I have no been told in both an official apple store and a 3rd party store which apple linked to on its official support app that this model of apple pencil does not support pressure sensitivity. I am beyond confused.

I have tried everything short of a factory reset of the device, which I am apprehensive about as there are a lot of files on it and I would like to avoid the hassle of backing everything up and restoring said backup if I can help it, especially because I highly doubt that will help. I've unpaired and re-paired the pencil, I've reset the ipad multiple times, I've updated OS, I have even bought a replacement apple pencil because I thought maybe the problem stemmed from damage (the old one was totally mangled at the top, the new one is in mint condition). Nothing has helped, and I am incredibly frustrated by how poor Apple's hardware calibration and settings options are, and by what has been a terrible customer service experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as procreate have said "it's likely an Apple hardware issue out of our control" I really have nowhere to turn to if you guys can't help.

One more note for context, when I try to draw in procreate with default settings, the apple pencil doesn't work at all, and I have to invert the pressure curve for it to work. this then allows brush-strokes to register, but pressure sensitivity doesn't work at all. when I use a 3rd party cheap apple pencil my wife got on amazon, it works fine out of the box without me having to invert the pressure settings, but again there is no pressure control. however with that pen it is not advertised as having pressure sensitivity so that makes sense.