Why do people hate Jacob & Esau so much

[Mäverick]

I was wondering why people hated them so much, I just find them interesting to play

[kone]

It's their double hitbox, its hard to get used to. I enjoyed my time with them, it's challenging and unique but I can understand how easy it is to suffer with it.

[Joshua Kurayami]

Because for most people, playing as Jacob and Esau is like using Isaac's heart, except the character you are using for everything is not immune to damage. Any item that gives you health has to be shared between the two and some items and synergies that would be fun on one character, is horse manure on J+E.

Did you find flight? Is only useful to get items after battle, because in battle, whoever's your "Isaac's heart" gets stuck on rocks and takes damage from spikes. Found Gnawed leaf? Can't use it because only one's invincible. OP Dr.Fetus synergy that blows up the entire room and Host hat? You're dead because you're literally asking to be shot with your one weak spot exposed to everyone.

If they both shared items and health between each other and made it so they both did 50% damage or something similar, maybe it would be tolerable, but as of right now, the ultra hard challenge seems more appealing for me to play rather than do another J+E, which sadly I still have to do both for completion.

[JellyPuff]

The main reason is the new muscle-memory, which needs to be learned (which also makes it one of the more interesting new characters) and the inability to bind character gimmicks to dedicated buttons. That is sometimes a real pita. T.Jacob is 10 times easier, if you bind "Use Consumable" and by extend, Anima Sola to shift. BUT WHY CAN'T IT BE A SEPARATE KEY? I DON'T WANNA USE THAT JERA I JUST PICKED UP, I WANNA USE ANIMA SOLA. AAAAAHHHHH.

And once you've gotten used to that, even though, they're pretty strong, have double bombs and start with high DPS, unavoidable damage never feels good. And J&E's double hitbox makes this much more likely, than with most other characters.
But that's more of a general problem with this game, than J&E specific. Getting rid of all unavoidable damage-scenarios would be a fools errand. Especially for J&E and T.Jacob, which would require testing most room-layouts and blacklisting or tweaking them accordingly. Instead, just give players more tools to deal with that, relative to the played character (e.g. T.Lost gets more Holy Cards).

[Joshua Kurayami]

Originally posted by JellyPuff:

The main reason is the new muscle-memory, which needs to be learned (which also makes it one of the more interesting new characters) and the inability to bind character gimmicks to dedicated buttons

Yeah, that is one other thing that I forgot to mention. I don't even know why they didn't do it the same way as the forgotten where you can just swap between the two and keep the same controls, instead of space (active) and ctrl space (consumable) for Jacob, and q (active) and ctrl q (consumable) for Esau.

[Danizk0]

Very bad at the game + refusal to learn new things

[DizzyLizard]

They are just frustrating to play and their upsides (Double bombs, innate backpack/moms purse/polydacaliy + double angel/treasure room items) are not as flashy as other characters, though still useful.

[Zoobi]

Im not good with that character

[UnTalHector]

Originally posted by Danizk0:

Very bad at the game + refusal to learn new things

At the time I learned how to play J&E I've already completed their post-it and no, the process wasn't fun at all

[Danizk0]

I don't see how that's related to what I said