Thoughts from a new player

I browsed the subreddit a bit and thought I'd make a post. There's a lot about the game I don't understand, but i like how i can explore the stages for secrets. Found the artifact realm teleporter in a run. I thought the portals after the mithrax fight were intuitive enough, but i love portal 2 so that might have helped. Commando feels kinda meh and huntress feels insanely good for kiting and boss fights. Bandit feels like he's got a higher skill cap but he's fun in a different way than huntress. I unlocked more characters but I'm trying to do challenges on the first 3. The alternative skills feel, well, alternative. not superior, which i think is cool from a design perspective. The lunar items feel hit or miss, and i thought I could do the huntresses R skill challenge with the beetle thing (shield instead of health) but the game still recognized that I got hit, even though I didn't lose "health" so that kinda sucks. I've been debating how effective multiplayer vs single player is, since you have to divide up items vs being one overpowered tank. Is it common to have a good start only to get one shot by something? I had a good run and got one shot by a spikey green thing on stage 9.

Sorry for the rambling, I just think this game is kind of addicting and it's made a great impression on me. Replies appreciated!

Edit: i forgot to say, why would anyone go for shrines beside blood upon entering an early stage or chance? Mountain just makes the run harder right? I've never had a run go farther than stage 9 so maybe i just wasn't OP enough