The Keeper isn't hard. It's bad.

[Viking Mana]

So I've come to a conclusion on this at long last. The age-old debate of whether or not The Keeper or The Lost is the hardest character. And it's The Lost.

Why is it The Lost? Because The Lost is difficult. The Keeper isn't. The Keeper is just extraordinarily poorly designed, with several rooms that are legitimately unbeatable, half the items in the game having either no effect, or an effect so negative it would be preferable for it to have no effect, and the only viable strategies revovling around 1 or 2 mandatory setups which not only require luck, but go against the very concept of what makes Binding of Isaac fun the first place. It removes the element of surprise and randomness, replacing it with a playstale that forces you into playing at the slowest pace possible, turtling through everything to keep yourself afloat, only to likely die at a diceroll outside of your control.

It's extraordinarily poorly designed, tedium and a perpetual lack of power masquerading as difficulty.

The Keeper isn't hard. It's bad. Very, very bad. A frankly shameful addition to this otherwise great game. I've seen people argue that it makes you "think about the game in a different way", but it doesn't. It just turns otherwise great and fun items into disappointments. It makes you realize how poorly thought-out the item pool really is when you manage to roll 4 health upgrades during the first two floors. It turns optional defensive items into mandatory pickups and forces you to repeteadly reset just to save time, as 9/10 runs are objectively unwinnable.

That's my opinion on The Keeper. After hours of playing nothing but him, immediately after unlocking everything as The Lost without cheesing anything, I can safely say that I don't think he's hard. He's just designed to lose.

[Viking Mana]

Originally posted by kitten exterminator:

Though if you really don't want to suffer the skill-testing fair challenge of Keeper, just fully break a run, find the Clicker and have at it.

You did kind of just take it to the Dark Souls level, using the word "fair" even though you don't seem to understand the literal definition of that word.

It's not "fair", that's the whole point. None of the characters are "fair". It's not a "fair skill-testing challenge", and as anyone here who has spent more than a dozen hours playing roguelites knows, skill only makes up half of your win, the other half being luck. Sure, it's probably more like 60% skill and 40% luck in Isaac because you can, to a limited extent, manufacture "luck" once you have most the game unlocked, but that doesn't mean Keeper is just a skill test. There are legitimately unwinnable situation you can encounter as the lost - entering a room that impossible to survive is not fair, nor is it a test of skill. What, it's a skill not to enter rooms?

I also find it kind of ironic that someone who indirectly claims to be skillful suggests using Clicker when that nullifies the whole point of the argument. If you turn into another character you will not get your Keeper unlocks - if you're betting on transforming into Keeper on key fights, you're essentially just cheesing them without playing him, and the what we're discussing is whether or not he's fun to play.

But go ahead and define "fair" in this context. In what way is Keeper "fair"?

[kone]

Originally posted by Viking Mana:

I also find it kind of ironic that someone who indirectly claims to be skillful suggests using Clicker when that nullifies the whole point of the argument. If you turn into another character you will not get your Keeper unlocks - if you're betting on transforming into Keeper on key fights, you're essentially just cheesing them without playing him, and the what we're discussing is whether or not he's fun to play.

But go ahead and define "fair" in this context. In what way is Keeper "fair"?

I was suggesting the Clicker for people who get frustrated at Keeper.

I'm implying that when you play enough, when you've experienced enough of the mechanics, what to do with resources, how enemies move and reacting to it on the fly, a lot of the game you can end up controlling. Luck and randomness is still a central mechanic, can itself be unfair and there's nothing we can do about that, but we still have lots of leeway to apply ourselves. You get hard rooms, unlucky, but it's not overwhelmingly luck or unfairness to die at the hands of them. Champion bosses, enemies, crowded enemies, the 5 big red spiders room, Keeper's tools to deal with them are limited, but not impossible.

I did not find keeper exceptionally frustrating or unfair when I was unlocking his items, without cheese. Hard, but fun because his limitations are unique to deal with. Playing him now, not much has changed. He's still hard. I'll still think there aren't many impossible situations, so that's why I think Keeper doesn't have it that much worse than any other character. That's why I attribute Keeper as another character that brings out skill like The Lost. I don't have anything else to offer than my subjective view. I'm not going to decide what is objective about the Keeper.

[Viking Mana]

Well, let me stop you right there and suggest that people frustrated with The Keeper, not looking to unlock anything with him, just.. Don't play him? That seems to be the simplest solution.

As for me, I've 100% him, played him for dozens of hours across hundreds of attempts necessary to both do Greedier and full hard-mode completion, and I'm frankly just relieved that I'll never have to play him again. The Lost is an interest challenge in my opinion - it's essentially just the game on ultra-hard mode, and Keeper is a lazy replication of that, except absurdly underpowered. That is where I stand and where I will continue to stand. He's either rushed or lazy - I'm tempted to believe the latter since no attempts seem to have been made to improve him since his inclusion, and it wouldn't take anything more than starting him off with an effect similar to Greed's Gullet, but unique to him, where he gains one extra health for every 33 coins he holds, or something to that effect.

There's a lot of creative potential that's wasted on a character that ultimately comes off as an attempt at making a challenge that's as difficult as it could possibly be just for the sake of it, actively throwing outmany core elements of what makes the game great in the first place by making half the items utterly useless, if not outright run-ending. You're essentially forced down one path on each Keeper run - get the ability to mill the store or admit defeat and start over. That's not very interest, in my opinion.

I would much rather that they had tried to make Keeper a fun and unique character - something we know they can do when they want, as seen with Azazel, but also The Forgotten, which is a blast to play as it actually offers something new - a melee-focused character. Sure, he's arguably overpowered and not as challenging as The Lost or Keeper, or even a poor Eden roll, but he's fun.

We already had The Lost. We didn't, in my opinion, need another, harder character with the same gimmick. If you think he's fun, that's great - that's a net gain of positivity in the world, and I'm not a fan of going ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ because somebody disagrees with your opinion. I'm as centrist as they come I guess! But I think he marks the low-point of the Binding of Isaac 100% experience. And that's basically what this post is about - it's me, discussing my opinion, yet I haven't seen an argument that convinced me I was wrong. I see where you're coming from, but I disagree.