If I was one of those ppl who gave negative reviews pending an update, I'd do that here.

EDIT 2: The updates HAVE started coming and they're addressing much of what I moan about, such as the boss 2 wave (which I incorrectly said was always the same spawns) being a hard wall early on. Still big balance issues, some of the in-game goals are wack (Max leveling stat ups) but I love the game and do reccomend.

The bones and loop and art direction are all so good, but the balancing is crazy trash garbage.
Each level has 3 bosses who show up. Everything feels good in the game until around boss 2, at that point every level gets a flood of the exact same DPS check enemy (Banshees) and basically 90% of builds will fail. It doesn't feel great leveling up a few times and going 'nah, this won't do it.' over and over. The achievements seem to show only 18% of players beating the easiest 2nd boss wave. I've been focusing on the 'see all of a level' goals because those are at least doable on any build if you're fast.

You need to roll just right to get there. Some weapons (Bouncer) outclass the others to an insane degree. Or like 50% of the upgrades are pointless. '5% more gold/blood'? So I'm supposed to use a level upgrade to hasten my subsequent level upgrades by 1/20th?! In a game where level 15 is high? The swing between only getting those options versus 'your shots explode now' highroll is too much.

I'm here for rougelike RNG nonsense. I am. But the Banshee check is too high and many of the weapons need better highroll hits and some stat buffs need to be doubled and, in some cases, quadrupled.

Again: its generally very good.

EDIT - as you can see from play time, I'm still slugging away at achievements and goals, so take that into account. It's almost as though subverting the games flaws is part of the fun on purpose? I.e. taking crummy blood buffs is only way to get 'hit level cap' goals.... It is unbalanced, but I'm having fun.
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I am on 76% completion, almost got all achievements on steam and decided to write a review because of the criticisms I read about the game. I think some people are missing the point about Blood Dungeon.

I'll start by saying that the game has undoubtely some balancing issues
- Krug feels really bad to play compared to the other characters, him beign so big is a huge debuff and does not have enough hearts to compensate it. Also harpoon is such a bad weapon that I don't see the design vision behind it.
- Reaching level 15 is a bit too hard considering that it's required to unlock upgrades with each character. The main problem is that the run ends immediatly after killing the third boss, so unless you purposefully stall the run by avoiding killing it it's impossible to achieve, even with blood focused charms and spells. An ideal solution would be to add an endless mode. You should probably need less blood to reach higher levels nonetheless.
- The amount of charms and spells gets overwhelming very fast, so unless you max them out when you still have only a few of them it becomes annoying to do so. This matters because for example you need Luck spell at level 8 to unlock a bone shop upgrade. They should probably add a way to ban items.
- Some weapons are way better than others (bouncing balls)
- Flood map might need some adjustments. Oxygen Tank and Fins should be way easier to find in this map (also beign the only map in which they are really useful). It's the one I played the least and I have not beaten it so I don't really feel comfortable talking much more about it.

Now as the main reason I chose to write this review. I think many people are playing this game wrong, for a good reason. Survivors-like have accustomed us to a specific playstyle in which the primary way of scaling your power to infinity is by killing enemies and gaining levels which allow us to choose upgrades. In Blood Dungeon the primary way of getting upgrades is not with levels, but with chests instead. Each map has a set of chest spawn locations which never changes; every time you get a chest, another one spawns in one of these locations. If you are used to, let's say, Vampire survivors you'd think these are just an extra to occasionally chance upon. WRONG. You NEED the chests, they are everything you should strive for. The game wants you to constantly rotate through the fixed chest spawns to win. You have to find a route on every map that allows you to get chests in the most efficient way possible. Follow your route, avoid enemies, get chests. This is the gameplay loop, and to be honest I really enjoy it. With this strategy pretty much all builds become viable if you play good enough. The only map I'm not entirely sure about is flood since the routing there is really hard because of the water and I haven't put enough time in it.

I've seen complaints about enemies beign too tanky or many upgrades beign not good enough to pick. While the latter may still be valid, I'd argue the problem is that these people didn't reach the second boss or the later waves with enough items because they are mostly relying on levels to get their upgrades. If you think you'd like this "twist" on the survivors genre I think you'll like this game and enjoy its gameplay loop.

I can't be 100% sure this is the way the developers intended the game to be played, but in the current state of things everything is balanced around this and I feel like it's a good direction to follow for the future of Blood Dungeon.

EDIT: The developers basically confirmed this in the latest patch notes.

First off -- love Messhof. Love Nidhogg. Love this game. The art style, animation, and vibes are perfect, truly. I've been playing it on my little Retroid handheld and it's such a ridiculously perfect game to flip open, play a couple runs, and put down.

However... balance is just not there right now. I go pretty hard in games I like, and this one's currently got me. And yet, every time I hit level 10, the DPS check enemies start spawning (Banshees, as it were), and my run pretty much just ends. Like clockwork.

This kind of wall creates a familiar sort of pressure -- if you're constantly failing the DPS check, you will gradually start passing on any upgrade that is not part of the highest DPS build possible. And as of right now, that "build" is basically "pray you get Bouncer early so that you can upgrade it enough to help push you past the wall."

There is really no build variety yet. No real synergies, no interesting angles. No "oh my god, this build is BUSTED" kind of moment that we're all kinda searching for in our roguelikes. The wall you hit at level 10 never changes; it is always you being swarmed by massively tanky Banshees that surround you and end your run. 90% of the available upgrades do not actively help you avoid this fate, and so 90% of the available upgrades don't feel good to pick.

And to be clear: I LOVE a challenge. I love that this game is hard. It's just that in its current state, the difficulty is extremely linear, predictable, and honestly frustrating. You cannot outplay the Wall of Banshees. You must simply pray that the same set of upgrades arrives quickly and consistently.

I keep playing right now hoping to unlock some character, weapon or charm that will change this dynamic... because again, everything else is fantastic. Hopefully something will come along - whether it's an update, an unlock, or me realizing I've somehow been playing this all wrong - but until then this is a tentative thumbs up with a heavy asterisk.