When I started this game I thought it was the best thing ever, but it loses luster as you go.
I beat Returnal in two sittings with 6 deaths. Generally I don't think single player games, especially roguelikes, need to be balanced - that's never as fun and it has a tendency to ruin a game every now and again. So while I agree that Returnal has a variety of fun weapons you can quite easily beat the game if you stick with the assault rifle, shotgun, lmg style guns you get very early on. And with a couple broken power ups you can really power through the game with no problems at all. I wouldn't care except in this game it created two problems; 1. I blew through all the eerie atmospheric event cut scenes almost back to back and they became kind of annoying disruptions rather than an occasional cool discovery, and 2. The game is 70 dollars pretty, but I was inching towards feeling bad about the purchase when I hit the 70 dollars and I got all the way through the game wit 90% of the trophies in about 8 hours. I didn't hate my time with it, but I feel like I had a deeply flawed experience where many things I cam across posed little to no challenge.

Stay humble, champions.