Mars Survivors is not a great survivors like. It fails to provide an entertaining game experience. The game is difficult, but the difficulty is not due to player skill or player choice, but rather by the game's design.
Starting from the first level, you have a pistol and a dude that dodges thing. So far, so good. It has a power up menu, and seems like a typical survivors like. However, like Vampire Survivors, extra characters/weapons are on the map. You go and pick these up and this I don't have much problems with. The problems is with the enemey density, enemy HP, and the game being in a state of struggling to survive or utterly dominating with no in between.
The power up menu is poorly designed. Upgrades you get in game offer 2x most of their max level bonus. Most are 3% per level, with things like revives being out of reach for a long ass time. I don't think there's a single thing in the menu that goes past 5% per level. Reload speed, firing speed, damage, none of these are incredibly helpful and push builds you otherwise would struggle with over the top. On top of this, part of the unlockables is certain... very basic additions. Movement speed, summon damage, there's a LOT of things in the power up menu locked behind achievements. And this doesn't help the casual player get far into this game since you have to specifically look in the achievements menu to find that.
So, what about build diversity? Most of my runs I end up going to the same build every time. Not out of lack of build variety, far from it. It's just the only way to live. There are two builds I can recommend. One is the ultimate ammo build. You grab lightning cores and the other lightning ability, and make it so every shot shoots a lightning bolt. Lightning cores has a second power up that it gives you a chance to reload 3 ammo on lightning damage proc. At first, this is how I did literally any build I wanted, but I had to get these two first.
The second build is more complex and more likely to fail. There is a late game evolution that gives you 1 magazine size but in return boosts your reload speed. You couple this with things like enemies explode into smaller projectiles on death, penetration, and bouncy bullets, you have an entire screen full of projectiles. This one is the build that requires the most things to make it go right, but once it does, nothing can kill you.
So, why is there only two builds that can function? Enemies do not care about knockback, and swarm you faster than you can kill them since you have to reload eventually. That reload is the primary reason why I've had most of my death and got surrounded. Enemies spawn in too fast, and have more movement speed than me. If your build has no knockback or doesn't kill everything on the screen immediately, or CC in general, you just die. I typically included freeze in my build for this reason, since if I have a circle of ice sculptures around me, enemies can't get close.
So let's say you beat the first level. You unlock hyper mode, and eventually hurry mode down the line when you get another item on a different level. I have yet to find a build that can get online fast enough to attempt to do both modes on at the same time. In fact, most of the time hurry mode is too difficult on its own. Enemies are too numerous and surround you extremely easily. I burned through my revives on most characters, and the only time I did live until I got a broken build was on the 7 HP character. Adding two additional difficulties that average player won't even be able to clear is... mind boggling, to say the least. I've never seen hyper/hurry implemented so poorly that I don't use either because the game becomes too difficult.
Later on, you get something much more powerful than power ups called tech. You have to reach level 40 with a character or weapon to get a tech, there are multiple of them. These are miles more powerful than anything in the power up section, and you get multiple of them through the match. It's a choice of 3 like the other things you have, but rerolls don't function. At least I don't think they do. Things like getting more reload speed and attack speed for setting things on fire, or icing them. Or just a flat 50% all your projectiles have a chance to freeze or burn. There's a lot of goodies in here, and I would have liked them... if they influenced the game in a meaningful way.
Despite how powerful tech options are, the two builds I listed above are still the only builds I can use. Full summon unless I use the 7 hp character just doesn't work. Not to mention tech requires a lot of money, but I yet again got the 7 HP character, got a rocket launcher, and did my second build using the third difficulty option (nightmare) and hyper to get an absurd amount of money on a level called The Arena. Now the main currency that locked progress is laughably easy to get, and I just gave up caring enough to complete the game.
Character selection doesn't matter. Your build matters more than any character. Only the 7 hp guy is worth taking because he can live long enough (maybe the first guy, I haven't used him) to get an OP build. If you want some recommendations, I'd suggest Vampire Survivors, Soulstone Survivors, or Halls of Torment. Halls of Torment is one of those you have to beat your head against a wall, but you eventually CAN get it rolling. I have yet to get things rolling with this game, and you can see how much of it I've completed with just my achievements.
