Repentance is NOT fun (angry rant)

[Danielviomusic]

I am genuinely upset with the current game. I expected to find some new bosses and fun items to wombo combo, and what I found was my game experience completly destroyed. I am so fed up with this difficulty trend, with the games being difficult because they have to. No other reason. So many bold choices were made here.

1. Normal mode is now twice as hard as old hard mode was. New hard mode is nearly impossible. Curses every damn floor, and now they are even worse than they were before.
2. Talking about curses. Wtf is wrong with curse of darkness? Like I can't see ♥♥♥♥, it's an instant run killer.
3. Nerfing items to balance? More like nerfing items to make the ones that were essential before even more essential. There are so many garbage items you depend on a good item pool way more than before. Nice.
4. And more about item nerfs, there isn't a single moment you find an item and be like 'cool, this is a good run'. Even when finding the best of the best I am just scared of the bs enemies that may appear in the next room. There is no relief or satisfaction in finding a good item.
5. New enemies are bs. Flies surrounding me shooting fire towards me? White eyes shoting >5 divine beams at once?
6. Old enemies are way stronger. Increased attack speed, shoot speed and movement speed because... Reasons. Even the first 2 floors can become a nightmare.
7. Stats nerf. Ok. So needed.
8. 'Trap' rooms, like the ones having statues shooting and buttons and that stuff. Now every single one of them has a little detail to make it even more punishing. Do you know that little safe spot you hide between statues to press the button? Well I am sorry for you, it has spikes now.
9. Devil deals are an overkill. Not only because they are more expensive, but specially because all the nerfs to those items. Angel room gives you better items (since they are mostly about survival and not raw damage they have not been nerfed too much), for free and even sometimes with some soul hearts.
10. Instant damage rooms. So fun. And fair.

I am probably leaving so many things behind, but well, you get the point. I am totally fine with any of you having the time of your lives playing Repentance, but this is a casual-killer DLC. And I am by no means a casual player since I've got 200 hours in the game. Maybe not a hardcore, but definitely not a casual.

If Edmund pretended to make hardcore players rage with this update by making it pointlessly difficult and punishing, all I can say is well done, now the game feels nearly unbreakable. But he should've also thought about all the other players. I didn't know how to insta break a run pre-Repentance and now I feel punished for no discernible reason. If you design a DLC only for the hardcore players, which may represent a <5% of the player base, all you end up doing is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the rest hard. Being constantly punished and having no rewards (good items, good combos...) is not fun whatsoever.

I'll repeat it, I have nothing against any of you who are enjoying this. There is nothing wrong with it and I respect that. If so, feel free to leave here your opinion, since maybe I got things wrong and overreacted. I don't think so though, I don't find this fun anymore.

EDIT: Edmund tweeted last night about difficulty increase. He says its about adapting and learning the new meta. After some time he will decide if he has to balance things. Wether he decide one thing or another, most people will be long gone by that moment. Casuals and veterans will have dropped the game because, I don't know, maybe they don't want to feel frustrated just for the promise of it getting good after 100 hours?

[kkkkkkkkkkkkkk]

totally agree my man im so dissapointed i was playing this game cause it was fun but now its just sad

[Alien_Halls]

I agree, the nerfs on old items wasn't necessary, removing almost ALL possibilities of breaking the game wasn't necessary (there is even a Achievement for breaking the game LOL), making the game harder by unavoidable damage it is not fair. They should tweak these things urgently.

And if there is people that really enjoyed this kind of difficulty, they should add a new mode like:

BORING & REALLY DIFFICULT MODE or keep this things for Daily Run.


i have +600h of isaac bth.

[red.hexapus]

Agree with you completely. There are some nice buffs (like with Keeper and Lost), but the nerfs hurt. Curse of Darkness is unbearable now, so i have to play with gamma at max. Hard mode reduced shops, faster enemy shots and reduced chance for soul hearts from fires is BS

[mr worldwide]

I completely agree aswell. The game hasn't been enjoyable, the past 2 days I won 1, I repeat 1 game out of 20-25, and in that one I haven't touched the new floors. I haven't tried normal mode yet since I got used to hard mode only so I can't speak for that, but hard mode is close to impossible. I don't consider myself a bad player, I won 80-90% of the games I played before the DLC, but now everything is terrible. There is also an unlock I believe for getting every hard mode completion mark with every character, but I don't think I'll waste my time grinding 1000s of hours just to get that. Some of the new items are cool, but some of them are just filler items. There were some cool stuff, for example hp up items now heal 1 heart aswell, shop don't need key on first floor, and the item rooms having mistery items. Also I've noticed that either creep immunity or flight is mandatory now, because on later floors I can't see holes or creep and I always manage to hit them. Altough this might just be me because I'm colourblind, idk. One thing which I agree with the most is the items getting unnecessary nerfs. I died with items like maw of the void, brimstone, ipecac, mom's knife (the 2 latter didn't get a nerf I believe, but the rest of the items I got with them were garbage. Previously if you got these the run was pretty much over). Usually I don't mind having a difficulty tweak in games to make it more interesting, but this just seems absurd. Hopefully they'll do something about it

[Smiley]

The game was already hard before, in that some rooms are near guaranteed health loss.

I do not understand why golden chests aren't really rare but are a guaranteed treasure, like 4-5 consumables or a 25% of being an item. Why does it have to be a 90% disappointment?
Why are so many secret rooms useless?
Why did the shop have to be limited when you can choose to sacrifice time and/or health to gather up money to mitigate some of the damage that has been done to your run?
Why is dodging the only legitimate skill that is rewarded in the game, especially when so many rooms are effectively un-dodgable bullet hells or monster spam?

Edmund has specifically said that he doesn't like the game being broken by players... why does he feel entitled to decide how I spend my time having fun?

Games should not hold people's hands and BoI has never done that, EVER, instead it rewarded people who learned the secrets and strategized well. I'll never be good at dodging or hitting in this game, because I would be good at it by now and I'm still not, so why am I not allowed to utilize my other skills at beating the game?

I think the game has reached the point where you can choose to enable or disable mechanics.
Disable curse rooms, disable greed on shop, disable Krampus, disable "bad" secret rooms, disable the limited shop and then give us an entire grid of all unlocked items where you can disable the ability to spawn.
There's a ton of items that I never take, such as Isaac's Heart and 80% of the active item pool. Just get them out of my games, I don't want them to be there.

If I can have a mod that does that and still be able to unlock everything, I'll happily admit to not unlocking everything the "legit" way, because I don't care what other people think about my skills, I care that I have fun playing the game.

The way it is now, I'm not having fun and I think Edmund ♥♥♥♥♥♥ us over with this DLC.

[onsports]

Also not having fun anymore.

[Mr. Dual]

Friendly reminder that you have to collect knife pieces EVERY FEKKIN RUN. WHO THOUGHT THAT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA. GOD HELP ME ON THE LOST IF I EVER GET TO HIM.
so yeah, not liking the dlc so far

[Cyiel]

Fun is subjective. It's up to you to have fun. :/

[Undain]

I totally agree with you, i'm disappointed that the update greatly miss the mark, seems that the dev didn't play the game at all or are disconnected with the playerbase. I'm all about difficult bossess, but the game needs to be fun. Instead it has becomed boring, long and tedious. You deal zero damage, the enemies are bullet sponge, and spawn more enemies or explode with so much collateral damage that you cannot keep up, becouse the hearts drop rate has been nerfed.

I'll just wait for modders to revert the nerf and play then

[Hyger]

I must agree it's freakin' too hard. I have 2000+ hours in this game. I'm not a pro, but I don't consider myself being a bad player. Normal mode is kicking my butt.

My girlfriend was initiated to this game a year ago and she absolutely loves it, even though she's awful at the game. She's having an Isaac tattoo done for her birthday at the end of the month. Imagine repentance. She can't do squat...it's sad :(

[Marceloid]

New update is certainly not the easiest, but after a few runs you'll get used to the new enemies and their shooting patterns - new enemies will always hit you hard since you don't know what's coming

I can understand that some people are disappointed that OP-items got nerfed, as it kinda robs some of the spectacle, but there are tons of new synergies and a steady incline in power (many buffed items now give flat stat upgrades), which reward a consistent and skilled playstyle, which I like.

I wouldn't say it's for hardcore-players, its just a completely new breath of fresh air people will get used to.

Don't give up and hang tight - new bosses & enemies are amazing and super rewarding once you beat them

[Fuzzy Images]

Yeah, I agree with the upset nature of the feedback I have been seeing. This really feels like it was made to appease all those elitist voices that echoes "The games just too easy" I'm fine with the antibirth levels being the games Very Hard Mode, Why buff enemies like this (I mean the most ridiculous is the moms fight), and nerf so many iconic weapons so severely? (Brimstone, when I got it actually made me feel weaker than before I got it) and OMG the shops!

I know that there have been supposedly many buffs to old crap items, but I haven't been noticing anything to different so far.

I have played BOI for a collective time of months (On the Xbox version BTW, I re-bought all them on steam to play repentance) and while I wouldn't consider myself some kind of elite player, I had the skills to hit the top 10 in the daily runs on a fairly regular basis. Now I feel like this game constantly wrecks me on even early floors. Granted nothing a few more hours of play to get the hang of some enemies new moves wont fix, but this all does feel like an over compensation in the end.

[Misunderstood Badger]

I pretty much agree so far, it still needs some tweaking but I'm mostly enjoying it. I've won 1/9 runs so far and I've had fun but there are definitely BS moments and annoying nerfs to fun items. I need to play more to have a more in-depth opinion but I think only the top of the top tier of Isaac players will be able to fully engage with its current difficulty.

[mr worldwide]

Originally posted by Marceloid:

Don't give up and hang tight - new bosses & enemies are amazing and super rewarding once you beat them

losing half my health on rotgut fights and getting marbles after that doesn't seem that rewarding

[willy bammy]

Yeah they should just make the game butt butt easy, the new DLC areas should just be a breeze with no challenge