Fun at first, grindy in the middle, fun at the end again.
From the "Survivors" name you might expect something like Vampire Survivors: get abilities until the screen is full of bullets and the enemies are dying en masse. After you see the dodge mechanics and bosses you might expect something more like Death Must Die. Instead, it seems more like it's intended to be a more skill-based action roguelike (something like Death Must Die is slowly moving towards).
Good character selection eventually, but most characters unlocked early are hard to use and it takes until almost the very end to unlock some of the most fun ones (Keyra / Newsom). The game works against itself by having some characters drop special resources (Rodrigo for fish, Mausolea for candy) that you need to progress, and requiring them in sufficient amounts that you practically have to run these characters for most of the game. On the positive side, Rodrigo is incredibly strong (high damage with crab trap, easy to get lots of hearts with the net and the basic attack) and Mausolea is my favourite character (I run a summonless build with an Elixired Fungal Vortex). You can get fish from the Fisherman's Hut and candy from the Graveyard, but you need to play the characters in the relevant zones first before you can unlock the levels for the areas required (for the Hut, the Graveyard does not have this issue outside the Haunted Grounds).
I played most of the game on Malignous with Cursed Bait (which I only turned off for some of the end-game character-specific boss fights). The levels are long enough with the Bait that I dread to think what it must have been like going through before it. I swapped down to Normal to halve the number of enemies (and their health) after the first three zones, which made progress slightly faster. Even with all the difficulty modifiers I never had much of a problem passing the levels with Rodrigo, or some of the other characters after I unlocked their Forge and Tailor upgrades. The first Tailor upgrade to double the invincibility time on dodge is a game-changer that means you can do things like dodge into a crowd of enemies, fire a shot, then escape out the other side to churn through them faster.
The Forge and Tailor upgrades also work against playing multiple characters, as you invest points into each character individually. Some are easier to upgrade than others: Rodrigo needs his fish, Mausolea needs her candy, the other characters need resources you can buy in the shop. After you unlock the Farm, you can grow vegetables and sell them to have as much gold as you'll need. The Bank is a terrible way to make gold comparatively.
Most upgrades are very weak and progress feels very slow. Food-wise, the foods that give attack and skill damage over time, and Stone Soup that gives block chance over time seem stand-outs. Block chance is really good and it's difficult to get much of it, and anything that makes you better over time ends up giving a pretty decent boost. For statues, the only stand-out is the one that lets normal enemies drop chests, which gives you loads of levels.
I was glad for the Laboratory offering non-character-specific skills, some of which seemed better than most character-specific skills. Fungal Vortex especially can one-shot a boss: I'm not sure specifically how, but I think if you can pull enough clouds, especially black clouds, the tornados can end up doing 40k damage each (and it charges all the way on auto unless you dodge, which is appreciated). The crab claw does a lot of damage but is hard to aim. The mud circle, sand circle and Hoggert roar were all appreciated as decently damaging character-centred AoE attacks, and all the Spectral weapons are quite damaging (and the sword offers sustain) but tricky to aim. You can also pull in an Elixir just for the passive and banish the attacks, as you have a lot of free banishes.
Specific complaints I have: rerolls, banishes and reserves appear to have no key assigned, so you have to use the mouse for these, which is a bit awkward. The late-game Dungeons and Overgrown Lizards challenge sends the adventurers in the order mage, cleric, archer, thief, warrior. The warrior is the easiest by far, and the mage is the hardest and most annoying to fight, so I would have rather these were swapped to give you a chance to level up against an easier opponent. The mage teleports often, making it hard to do damage, has a large undodgable grid attack, and has an ice attack which 1) hits you with an ice block, which 2) fires off tornados after it hits and 3) has a damaging circle around it. With dodge invincibility boosted you can dodge the initial attack and just run out the circle before the invincibility fades; without the boost I don't know how you're supposed to deal with this. As it's a late-game challenge maybe it's just balanced around you having it.
With Cursed Bait, the caverns summon masses of enemies right at the start, and on some levels this makes them lag tremendously -- e.g. the bears. It also makes the levels much harder, but this is also fun.
