The idea of combining Streets of Rage with rogue-like elements is so great, that it hurts so much greater, that its such a bad execution of this idea.

The randomness should more so be in the quality of the items you find than in the difficulty of each individual level. The items range from completely useless to very slight upgrades, which is sad, because nutters synergies are often the biggest appeal of rogue-likes.

One might then hope for rogue-light elements, meaning a skill tree between runs, but that one sucks even more. You only unlock more moves, that are too slow to be viable.