Played about 25 to 30 games in 37 hours. Always played on Normal, beat the boss exactly once. Man, was I ecstatic! Getting to Last Stand is possible (not always, mind you), but that's where the trouble really starts. Takes a lot of luck and a lot of tactics and overview.
My goal now is to unlock ships, not beat the boss again (I've proven I can do it

. Just a few minutes ago, I unlocked the Engi special ship, just when I thought I was never gonna get one of those special encounters (met the Mantis special ship encounter and managed to do everything right as far as I could, but then didn't have a Mantis crewmember and my MedBay was "only" level 2, shit).
Game's pretty hard. Roguelike-like, I dare say.