Tainted characters review and opinions (dead god achieved)

[Tobbby™]

After getting all completion marks on the tainted characters, I just wanted to give my thoughts on them. Here they are:

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Tainted Isaac

A very good fusion of the D6 and Isaac himself. Isaac is one of the characters that is bound to it's active items, like the wooden nickel on the Keeper or the void on Apollyon. The fact that you can have other active items while still having the option to reroll is very powerful and fun. The downside that you can only have 8 passive items at a time is harsh, but definitely manageable. It was a good idea to be able to keep heart containers even if you switch the item out, unlike the D4 or other passive rerolls. You can combine effects like no other character because you can choose which items you keep, which is both an upside and a downside because of the limited space. One of my favourite alt characters to play.

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Tainted Magdalene

A character that at first goes against everything you have learned so far, which is activly running into enemies to hurt yourself and activate the lethal hug mechanic. HP upgrades became very important in repentance, and I would say tainted maggy gets the most benefit out of them. Soul hearts are pretty much lost as soon as you get them, so having a good amount of health is crucial. One of the largest downsides to this character in my opinion is that you constantly loose health over time which kinda makes every run into a speedrun. I usually like to explore a lot of the floors. You can take your time if you have a bunch of red hearts on the ground, but you usually pick them up to use them in the next room. That is of course to balance the almost unlimited hp you get from killing enemies. It was also the first character I played that had the active item in the pill/card slot, which was a good idea to not make her bound to yum heart. Quite fun to play.

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Tainted Cain

One of the most tedious characters to play. Not the most difficult, but the most time consuming. I played him intentionally not looking up recipes for items, because I wanted to have an authentic experience. I don't feel is was a very good ecperience. The recipes felt very inconsistent for the pickups I put in. I even made a meme how I thought about the bag of crafting: https://old.reddit.com/r/bindingofisaac/comments/mvocit/damn_you_bag_of_crafting/ After ginding the entire floor for all the good things like soul hearts or keys or cards and getting a mediocre item was frustrating. Of course if you know the recipes you can easily break the game on floor 2. I think it would be better if all recipes would be random. Not really a fun character.

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Tainted Judas

I would say tainted Judas is one of the strongest alt characters. Dark arts is very powerful and the fact that it recharges itself makes it a bit too strong in my opinion. You get all curse rooms for free. You can run through bullet hell and enemies. You get increased damage for every bullet or enemy passed. Sure you can only get black or soul hearts, but that's not that much of a downside. Not much else to say about him, fun to play.

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Tainted Blue baby/???

A very interesting and cool character. It definitely takes some time to learn what all the different poops do and all the interactions they have with each other. Like blowing youself up because you held a burning poop in a fart cloud, and then doing it again and again lol :D. It took me after I finished him to figure out what the stone poop does, smashing enemies. I just threw it away because I thought it was meant as a shield you can hide behind. Well it kinda worked, but not that good. The fact that you have no bombs is not that bad because you can just poop youself a butt bomb. Unless you ran out of poop. Oops. A difficult but fun character.

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Tainted Eve

The start of a run always feels like a struggle. You have a horrible tear rate and in order to get more dps you have ot sacrifice health and hope that your babies don't die too soon. But because the clots get all your tear upgrades you start to get exponentially more powerful. My major complaint about her is the usefulness of suptorium, especially on later floors. When you have like 20 or 30 clots but only a few health containers and suck up the clots, all surplus hearts get wasted. It should not suck up all clots at once, but one by one at a managable rate as long as you hold the button. Or just suck as many as you have health containers etc. Still a fun character to play.

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Tainted Samson

Also a very strong character, however a bit more difficult to controll. With every damage you take or receive you turn into a sanic speed forgotten ever so often, sometimes a bit unexpected. You get a damage boost as well, but turn into a glass cannon. Tho while the effect is active you are literally too angry to die, you still have to expect that you will run out eventually. And when you are stranded with no or little health it gets a bit dangerous. Especially in the later boss fights which are more bullet hell or less predictable I found myself just dodging and waiting until the effect ends to continue to shoot. While you can deflect projectiles, the speed makes it difficult to time the swing and sometimes you just run into the enemy. In the end I would say it's a good reimagination of Samson.

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Tainted Azazel

Probably the most boring alt characters from a technical standpoint. You get a longer brimstone and loose flight. Thats pretty much it. There is the sneeze mechanic that gives you additional damage, but it doesn't feel very natural or essential. For a long time I didn't even know it did damage, I just thought it was a visual indicator that I didn't fully charge up my brimstone. But brimstone is still brimstone, so I had fun playing him.

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Tainted Lazarus

Oh boy here we go. The prime candidate for the worst alt character. Upside: none, downside: you only get half or the items. The idea is similar to Jacob and Esau, however ulike the twins you only play as one character each room. So you can't just beef up one of them and expect to win, because you will end up in a double Adversary room with base stats. I recently started on a second save file and there is a mod on the workshop I downloaded that does exactly that what I imagined tainted Laz would be like: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2491666917 Yes there is Flip, but that doesn't help if you get 2 bad rooms in a row. 0/10

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Tainted Eden

Tainted Eden is chaos, but managable. Every time you get hit all stats and items reroll, however the type of item stays the same. Boss room item rerolls into another boss room item and angel room item rerolls into angel room item. The difficult part is that health containers also reroll, so your best defense are soul or black hearts which don't get removed. I usually went with angel deals (like most of the characters in repentance :D) because there are a lot more useful items than in devil deals, and also free. Probably won't play for fun again but still pretty ok.

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Tainted Lost

Probably the most stressful but rewarding new character in repentance. And the one with the most misleading description. "Better items" means no health upgrades or similar useless items, however it also means no protective items like holy mantle or 9 lives. Also unlike scared orb, tainted Lost only gets a 20% chance to reroll items with a quality of 2 or less. So you still are able to get items that are borderline useless. But all in all it shows that you can play this game without getting hit once. Except if you run into a room like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBz8oZ7QNAk I liked the challenge, but would rather play normal Lost, especially now that he has the eternal D6.

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Tainted Lilith

Yeetus that feetus! The Johnny Test experience! Now draw her giving birth! Pretty fun character with a new take on incubus. Not everything has to be difficult, and tainted Lilith is just fun to play. Not much else to say.

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Tainted Keeper

Like tainted Isaac this character is a fusion of the Keeper with the wooden nickel, so you are not bound to your spacebar item. The better shops description is almost an understatement, they are amazing! So much that I usually skipped all item rooms to get a planetarium, since you have to buy the item anyway. And since you don't loose you devil or angel deal on damage anymore you can get a bit more aggressive. And yes I am still mad that I lost a dime that one time. No I don't care that I had 99 cent, I still wanted that dime! Fun character!

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Tainted Apollyon

I feel this character needed a bit more work on the abyss flies. I think Ed said they don't plan on implementing more unique flies for certain items, but that would make it more enticing to use abyss. I rarely had more than a few flies on all the runs I did since I didn't feel the impact of them. Feels a bit sluggish to play, but still ok.

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Tainted Forgotten

I don't understand why recall is locked in birth right for tainted forgotten. He is the only tainted character that has a special card/pill slot active item but doesn't start with it. It is a pain to run after the bones when you missed and can softlock in some cases. And my god the hot potato challenge. I would play ultra hard any day over this. Hutts did a good summary how it feels. The Forgotten is one of my favourite characters, but tainted Forgotten is close to tainted Lazarus.

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Tainted Bethany

When I first played her I got the glitch where Lemegeton disappeared after the polydactyly wisp died. So I thought there was a limit on how many items can be spawned before it despawns, so I was afraid to use it. Luckily I found out what happend and used it more. One of the few characters where I actually go into the first devil deal, just to get the book to draw from the devil pool. It would be nice to have a seperate item list like Jacob and Esau for the items spawned by Lemegeton, since it gets quite clustered if you have a lot of wisps. Still a fun character to play.

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Tainted Jacob

I gotta be honest, I can't really say a lot about Jacob because I found a way to get rid of Esau without turning into the Lost (exit to main menue when Esaus death animation plays before the explosion and then resume). From the few times before that I found it quite frustrating. Sometimes you get cornered and can't dodge. And if you were on low health before then you cant pick up health anymore and have to start the next floor with the amount you had when got turned into the Lost. There were a few ideas that I liked to change the effect when you get hit by Esau, like instead of turning into the Lost you get a broken heart or change it so you turn Lost-like, similar to when you walk into the white fire in Downpour 2. So you could still pick up health and get health upgrades.

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Tainted Random

Weird character. Has no stats and turns you into any of the tainted versions. Good thing you don't have to play him since there are no achievements tied to him, so it's alright. ?/?

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That's pretty much all, what are your thoughts?

[Bread Panda]

the brimstone sneeze on tainted Azazel can save you if you're in a pinch and can't wait for the laser to charge; like say if you're cornered or need to knock away enemies quickly. albeit yes once you get a high enough tear rate you won't use it as often, tho it is still fun for him. ^-^

[UwU]

Can't say same about T Forgotten, beat everything with this character without a problem.
But everything else is spot on.

[Pastapockets]

I love Tainted Forgotten. With one exception: greed mode. He's terrible at it.

[Viking Mana]

I disagree with your take on Tainted Lost. There is nothing fun, rewarding or even challenging about his design. You basically have to play a character that has a 1/??? of immediately dying upon entering any number of rooms, as avoiding damage is often impossible. And while a single unavoidable hit on any other character (Including the original Lost) sucks, but is acceptable, it's not something that you can do on T. Lost.

Part of the reason why the original Lost needed Holy Mantle was this very fact. The fact that sometimes, taking damage is just impossible to avoid. So when you strip that away from him, you're essentially playing a similar game to any regular character that's using Damocles. There's a small chance that whatever room you enter next will just be the end of you, and there is nothing you can realistically do to mitigate that risk, except if you manage to get a combo that renders you permanently immortal, such as permanent Mega Mush or Book of Shadows.

The fact that the character description is a blatant lie is obvious. T. Lost's Birthright is a 1-Up that respawns you in the same room, but doesn't even have the courtesy of giving you a single Holy Mantle charge. Apparently this is "offensive," while 1-Up, Dead Cat and others are strictly for defensive purpose. No, in reality, what it actually means is that all those items you might rely on for a regular Lost run have been stripped out of the game, leaving you with a "challenge" that is, for all intents and purposes, practically unwinnable. The absurd RNG you need is laughable.

You are almost always guaranteed an absurdly powerful run - but the fact that it'll be over in the blink of an eye, often due to factor entirely out of your control is equally guaranteed. It's the prime example of everything wrong with the lazy "Lol, so difficult!"-design that plagues Repentance.

[Omertoso]

I agree with most of what you said. Nice to see you had a lot of fun! Cain and Lazarus definitely suck, though, but glad it's over, right?

I've found Tainted Forgotten rather enjoyable, though. Not someone I would do casual runs with, I admit, but they're not that bad. Definitely feels strange to play, however, considering some interactions they have with some items that seem unintended.

Tainted Apollyon didn't feel that weird for me. I haven't played them much, but I found the Abyss locusts quite useful: Compared to Void, which gives a random stat boost, Abyss is more consistent with that almost all items give the same result, which is a slight dps in a weird form. Not arguing that it's better than Void, just that you might've missed the full benefits that Abyss gives. Or maybe once I play them more I'll come to the same conclusion you did.

I'd swap the "most stressful" title you gave for Tainted Lost for Tainted Jacob. Not to say Tainted Lost isn't stressful (definitely is!), but the way how Dark Esau makes all the usual, familiar rooms feel so different definitely adds to the experience. I admit in the beginning I was feeling annoyed about the difficulty just as you did, but the refreshing feeling slowly took over and I found them really fun to play, at least for as long as I could take the stress. Can't say I'm surprised some people find them a pain, 'cause they definitely are difficult. Non-tainted The Lost and The Keeper tier before Repentance, I'd say.

Originally posted by Viking Mana:

... leaving you with a "challenge" that is, for all intents and purposes, practically unwinnable. The absurd RNG you need is laughable.

I don't have much to say about the rest of your post 'cause I haven't played Tainted Lost much (though I haven't had an experience as bad as you despite giving them some tens of attempts), but I find it a little funny you say this in a thread where the OP has Dead God and said Tainted Lost had nice things going for it.

[Viking Mana]

Originally posted by Viking Mana:

I don't have much to say about the rest of your post 'cause I haven't played Tainted Lost much (though I haven't had an experience as bad as you despite giving them some tens of attempts), but I find it a little funny you say this in a thread where the OP has Dead God and said Tainted Lost had nice things going for it.

Well, if I parroted OP's opinion I'd hardly be disagreeing with it. I'm not sure what to take from this?

No, I don't think T. Lost has anything going for it. I think it's a really poorly designed character. The 1-hit gimmick doesn't work in a game where you can't guarantee that every hit can be avoided, and removing items that mitigate that randomness from the item pool is just a troll on the developer's part. [/quote]

[Rio]

The bad Tier

Tainted lost, tainted laz, tainted jacob, tainted eden

The needlessly frustrating Tier (Most due to pill/cards replacing the active item all the time)

Tainted eve, tainted forgotten, tainted judas, tainted maggy, tainted samson

The fun, but challenging Tier

Tainted keeper

The good Tier

All the rest

[Wanderer312]

Funny thing about T.Lost is T.Keeper and T.Isaac gets better items than T.Lost. T.Keeper is essentially T.lost done right, a glass cannon that's guaranteed to be OP. T. Lost just feels very lazily done and essentially relies on RNG even more so than normal lost(who has a D6 btw).