I honestly don't get what's so fun about this game.

[Hobosaurus]

Let me start off by saying, this isn't meant to be a hate thread. I'm really trying to like this game but there's just so many things that I just find terrible about it. I've played this game a little at a friend's house and he recently let me borrow his N3DS to try the game out some more.

Ignoring the fact that the 3DS port is probably the worst thing on the EShop, which is to be expected of a Nicalis port, I just can't get into the game. I love roguelikes, but this game feels a lot like playing the lottery.

Yeah, you can beat each and every run with base stats, but if it's going to take me 5 minutes to beat each room simply because the game keeps throwing range upgrades at me, what's the point? Everything is way too random.

Some items simply ruin your run just by picking them up and some just win you the game on their own. Half the item pool is just worthless.

Some room layouts feel extremely lazy, especially in the cellar. Finding a 2x2 room filled to the brim with spiders in the cellar just makes it practically impossible to reach boss rush, since you'll be spending the next two minutes or so chasing tiny spiders or avoiding those spiders that just jump at you at the speed of light from across the map.

What bugs me the most however are the curses. What I love about roguelikes is the whole risk/reward aspect. The best example in this game would be pills. Should you risk using a pill and get a tears down? Curses just throw that straight out the window. I was extremely confused when I first got cursed, I thought I had done something wrong, but no. You get cursed for no reason. There is no reward. Why even have curses on the first floor when there's a restart hotkey on the PC version?

I recently heard about Afterbirth and decided that I'd like to give the game another chance once it comes out. I know mods are a thing in this game, are there any good mods that could help deal with some of the things that bug me?

[MementoMori]

Are you serious binding of isaac is one of the best games dude are u new to this game

[Huffulufugus]

since you dont seem to understand how things work around here
1. this is a forum post, not a review post
2. no

-sincerely,

99% of all rebirth players

[Stick]

i just wanted to say when i first got binding of isaac i ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hated it and now i love it not sure how that happend but it did

[Hobosaurus]

Originally posted by Jacob Huff:

since you dont seem to understand how things work around here
1. this is a forum post, not a review post
2. no

-sincerely,

99% of all rebirth players

Not sure what you're answering here with both of your points. This was never meant to be my review for the game, I would have made a review if that was the case. Read all the way to the end.

[Toad]

What roguelikes you played before? Because you say it feels like a lottery, but many roguelikes are like lotteries. You die on the first few floors/locations some times until game generates a good set of floors that is ballanced to have good items and good amount of beasts

[EnD]

Originally posted by Hobosaurus:

Very long ramble because whatever the reason. I dont really mind thou.

To start off this conversation, if randomisation eats in your opinion in rebirth, boy, are you lucky, that you never played vanilla. Back to the topic then. As somebody who put over 100 hours in the game and is at the point, where I need to unlock ultra rng pickup item and beat the game with "imposiburu" character, there are about three items, which I almost never pick. Those are naimly, dr fetus (cause its still broken. McMillen pls), bum friend and Bob's Brain. The first is sadly broken (STILL :( ), second is counter productive to my strats for the most part and third is kinda good but will end up killing you if you cant use it properly. About usable items, almost all of them are good if you dont have any to spare. So from the entire pool of 340 items, there are about 3 which i believe arent as good as the rest. You claim you like roguelikes. How many times have you encountered garbage in a chest, or shop, or anyplace you get gear in your favourite RL? Cause that number might be quite high, from my experiences at least. Not to mention, R gives you guarantee 2 items per floor (with high chance to get more). That nullifies a bit the randomness, and believe me, until you unlocked every single thing, you have no idea how cruel RNGaben can be.

The game is kinda slow on the first two floors, but any game really is at the beginning, so this argument is invalid. Hey, there are spiders which takes 2 hits each, oh my god, i will have to spend almost a minute in big room. Hell, that this room takes almost half of the floor, and the rest of the rooms contained nothing at all. SPEEDRUN IMPOSSIBURU! Yea. Sure. Moving on.

The quote about items ruining a run is adressed halfly in the first segment of my post. Second part with be harsher. In Rebirth there is no such thing as a bad item. Or game ruining one. Or whatever. You either are good with said item, or are bad, simple as that. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Reddit is full of argues about whenever this or that is OP/UP. For instance, most people hate Soy Milk to death, I like it pretty much, its not my favourite item in the game granted, but its fun to play. Oh, right. The items in this game are not made to make you op, but to make runs fun. You are basically, over the course of playthou, collecting stuff to make a build, and have fun. You can have scythe minigun, you can have explosive shotgun, you can have pretty much anything. The point here is not to be able to beat the game every single time (althou its possible, believe me) but to HAVE FUN! Well, thats something extravagant, having fun in a video game. Also as I said, there is no such thing as useless item. You just cant use them properly, its normal. If you dont know how to drive a car, you dont drive it, unless you want swift death of yourself and those around you. Simple as that.

"Some room layouts are extremelly lazy"... ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, do you know how much it takes to make one part of the floor? No, seriously, this piss me off right there. Okay, imagine this. McMillen doesnt sit on every single room and doesnt make them as you progress. They are preset, implemented and then game takes layout from the pool and makes dungeon out of it. The fact that you encouter spider rooms is nothing more than the fact, that you get specific seeds. You think thats lazy? Try to balance stuff out in the 2x2 room so that it wont instantly kill bad player while still giving any sort of challenge to good one. Please, do so, then we will talk about extremely lazy, cause right now, you are extremely lazy because, as you said, its not a hate threat. Its a whine one. Its worse. You are whining over the fact, that this game is meh, because you cant play it properly. Yo, I dont really do this text all that often, but ffs, gid gut.

At this point I dont even think its worth to argue. Curses are made so that the game is more challenging and fun. Curse of the blind, all items that you get are unknown until you pick them up. It forces a player to take a gamble, possibly get item which he/she have no experience with or dislike it, and use it. Curse of the unknown, you dont know how much hp you have and how much you can gamble before you die. Those curses are to make things more spicy. Everybody and their mother cried when Rebirth came out, that its easier. Well, it is concidering, the framerate doesnt tank like a pro WoW player in every single room and item synergies work properly. Again, the curses are to make things harder but also more fun to play. If the only fun you have in games is to beat it, I dont even know what are you doing with RLs in the first place. The whole point in RL is not the destination but the journey itself. Thats the point of the ENTIRE GENRE. If you cant enjoy the fact that you lost and still got something out of it, and can try again with new items, enemies, curses, what have you, you are missing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point here.


@Jacob: well arent you a quiet one ;p you could have at least said the no in a sentence instead of one word :D

[RocketPotatoL62]

i didn't get into vanilla until i got past caves, and didn't really like rebirth until boss rush. just give the game a chance and don't rage quit like a casual :D

[timeformime]

Your reaction echoes a lot of my thoughts about Vanilla. What you find terrible is just part of the game's design - it's meant to be random, vindictive and difficult to figure out. If the game hands you lemons you can either complain about it and quit or make lemonade. Both are valid reactions! It's not exactly made for everyone. I've played about 30 hours each of vanilla and Rebirth, and only just started to consistently win. You'll fail and get cheesed off quite a bit when you don't know what you're doing, and that's ok.

Also, watch Youtubers like Northernlion or Bisnap if you want good examples of basic strategy. You won't be able to play at their level for quite a while, but you can glean a lot of information even just from their offhand comments.

Find a control scheme that works for you, whether it be WADS and arrows, or Dpad, buttons, or thumbsticks on controller. The best control scheme is the one you find easiest to dodge with, because dodging, not hitting, is your first priority.

What's fun about the game is the absurd randomness and interactions of all the different systems - it's up to you whether or not you would like to fail enough to understand and master the game. Those lazy room layouts are still doable, as are the not-so-lazy ones - you just have to figure out the best plan of approach. Like I said, watching Youtube videos makes learning strategies much easier.

Spiders will never stop being a pain in the butt, though, at least for me. Dodging them is about getting into their rhythm, and moving just far enough away at the right time, not about getting on the other side of the room from them.

Curses are just added challenge - I'm not sure what else there is to say about them.

Not sure about 3DS as a platform either ... not saying it's a terrible port, just that I can't speak to it as my only experience is playing with keyboard and various controllers on PC.

[Haloway]

It's a Rougelike, and it's based on random number generators. Some people like them, some don't.

[Hobosaurus]

Originally posted by Z.A.W.I.S.Z.A.:

Originally posted by Hobosaurus:

Very long ramble because whatever the reason. I dont really mind thou.

To start off this conversation, if randomisation eats in your opinion in rebirth, boy, are you lucky, that you never played vanilla. Back to the topic then. As somebody who put over 100 hours in the game and is at the point, where I need to unlock ultra rng pickup item and beat the game with "imposiburu" character, there are about three items, which I almost never pick. Those are naimly, dr fetus (cause its still broken. McMillen pls), bum friend and Bob's Brain. The first is sadly broken (STILL :( ), second is counter productive to my strats for the most part and third is kinda good but will end up killing you if you cant use it properly. About usable items, almost all of them are good if you dont have any to spare. So from the entire pool of 340 items, there are about 3 which i believe arent as good as the rest. You claim you like roguelikes. How many times have you encountered garbage in a chest, or shop, or anyplace you get gear in your favourite RL? Cause that number might be quite high, from my experiences at least. Not to mention, R gives you guarantee 2 items per floor (with high chance to get more). That nullifies a bit the randomness, and believe me, until you unlocked every single thing, you have no idea how cruel RNGaben can be.

The game is kinda slow on the first two floors, but any game really is at the beginning, so this argument is invalid. Hey, there are spiders which takes 2 hits each, oh my god, i will have to spend almost a minute in big room. Hell, that this room takes almost half of the floor, and the rest of the rooms contained nothing at all. SPEEDRUN IMPOSSIBURU! Yea. Sure. Moving on.

The quote about items ruining a run is adressed halfly in the first segment of my post. Second part with be harsher. In Rebirth there is no such thing as a bad item. Or game ruining one. Or whatever. You either are good with said item, or are bad, simple as that. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Reddit is full of argues about whenever this or that is OP/UP. For instance, most people hate Soy Milk to death, I like it pretty much, its not my favourite item in the game granted, but its fun to play. Oh, right. The items in this game are not made to make you op, but to make runs fun. You are basically, over the course of playthou, collecting stuff to make a build, and have fun. You can have scythe minigun, you can have explosive shotgun, you can have pretty much anything. The point here is not to be able to beat the game every single time (althou its possible, believe me) but to HAVE FUN! Well, thats something extravagant, having fun in a video game. Also as I said, there is no such thing as useless item. You just cant use them properly, its normal. If you dont know how to drive a car, you dont drive it, unless you want swift death of yourself and those around you. Simple as that.

"Some room layouts are extremelly lazy"... ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, do you know how much it takes to make one part of the floor? No, seriously, this piss me off right there. Okay, imagine this. McMillen doesnt sit on every single room and doesnt make them as you progress. They are preset, implemented and then game takes layout from the pool and makes dungeon out of it. The fact that you encouter spider rooms is nothing more than the fact, that you get specific seeds. You think thats lazy? Try to balance stuff out in the 2x2 room so that it wont instantly kill bad player while still giving any sort of challenge to good one. Please, do so, then we will talk about extremely lazy, cause right now, you are extremely lazy because, as you said, its not a hate threat. Its a whine one. Its worse. You are whining over the fact, that this game is meh, because you cant play it properly. Yo, I dont really do this text all that often, but ffs, gid gut.

At this point I dont even think its worth to argue. Curses are made so that the game is more challenging and fun. Curse of the blind, all items that you get are unknown until you pick them up. It forces a player to take a gamble, possibly get item which he/she have no experience with or dislike it, and use it. Curse of the unknown, you dont know how much hp you have and how much you can gamble before you die. Those curses are to make things more spicy. Everybody and their mother cried when Rebirth came out, that its easier. Well, it is concidering, the framerate doesnt tank like a pro WoW player in every single room and item synergies work properly. Again, the curses are to make things harder but also more fun to play. If the only fun you have in games is to beat it, I dont even know what are you doing with RLs in the first place. The whole point in RL is not the destination but the journey itself. Thats the point of the ENTIRE GENRE. If you cant enjoy the fact that you lost and still got something out of it, and can try again with new items, enemies, curses, what have you, you are missing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point here.


@Jacob: well arent you a quiet one ;p you could have at least said the no in a sentence instead of one word :D

Imagine this. You start up the game and get instantly cursed with a curse of the blind. You pick up Soy Milk in the item room and you fight the Gurglings. You keep knocking them around all over the place because they can't run straight and Soy Milk gives you an insane amount of knockback. You win, somehow, and pick up your blind reward. The Match Book spawns troll bombs all around you. Nothing fun in this, just pure bad luck.

Here's another situation. You start up the game as Judas, you go into your first room and you're faced with a room where there's an exploding champion spider sack hidden behind rocks. The only way to kill it is to get close to it. You just lost because of the room layout. No skill involved here. This happened to me, I was baffled that no one thought about the possibility of this happening when making the room. I remember reading about some rooms getting removed/changed a while ago because they were just awful. This is bound to happen when you have to make hundreds of room layouts, but still.

Originally posted by Z.A.W.I.S.Z.A.:

If the only fun you have in games is to beat it, I dont even know what are you doing with RLs in the first place. The whole point in RL is not the destination but the journey itself.

I try to beat the games I play, ♥♥♥♥ me, right? Is beating a game not fun? I absolutely love the Mystery Dungeon series and some of the early Dragon Quest entries are tough as nails, yet it never felt like it wasn't my fault when I messed up. You seem to miss my point, I don't think TBOI is bad, I think it has some questionnable design choices.

[Hobosaurus]

Originally posted by timeformime:

Your reaction echoes a lot of my thoughts about Vanilla. What you find terrible is just part of the game's design - it's meant to be random, vindictive and difficult to figure out. If the game hands you lemons you can either complain about it and quit or make lemonade. Both are valid reactions! It's not exactly made for everyone. I've played about 30 hours each of vanilla and Rebirth, and only just started to consistently win. You'll fail and get cheesed off quite a bit when you don't know what you're doing, and that's ok.

Also, watch Youtubers like Northernlion or Bisnap if you want good examples of basic strategy. You won't be able to play at their level for quite a while, but you can glean a lot of information even just from their offhand comments.

Find a control scheme that works for you, whether it be WADS and arrows, or Dpad, buttons, or thumbsticks on controller. The best control scheme is the one you find easiest to dodge with, because dodging, not hitting, is your first priority.

What's fun about the game is the absurd randomness and interactions of all the different systems - it's up to you whether or not you would like to fail enough to understand and master the game. Those lazy room layouts are still doable, as are the not-so-lazy ones - you just have to figure out the best plan of approach. Like I said, watching Youtube videos makes learning strategies much easier.

Spiders will never stop being a pain in the butt, though, at least for me. Dodging them is about getting into their rhythm, and moving just far enough away at the right time, not about getting on the other side of the room from them.

Curses are just added challenge - I'm not sure what else there is to say about them.

Not sure about 3DS as a platform either ... not saying it's a terrible port, just that I can't speak to it as my only experience is playing with keyboard and various controllers on PC.

Thanks for the serious answer. I have watched some videos, but it's never the same when you actually play the game yourself. I've got a good amount of time on the 3DS version, even though it's one of the worst ports I've ever seen, but I still manage.

Controls aren't a problem. As far as 2D shooters go, TBOI is pretty simple. I have beaten the game all the way up to the chest before on my friend's completed save file.

I find Afterbirth interesting because of the amount of synergies that it'll add to the game. The problem I have with Rebirth is that, winning because you picked up Epic Fetus or a lot of damage upgrades just isn't fun, yet not picking them up when you see them just makes for a slow and tedious run. I remember getting an item that gave me a remote controlled tear and it was a lot of fun. It was like playing an entirely different game. If there's more stuff like this in Afterbirth, it might just convince me to buy the game for myself.

I still think curses are dumb, though, especially on the first floor when you can just restart immediatly.

[Adze]

Well liking other roguelikes doesn't necessarily mean you'll like TBOIR, and vice versa, as this game is not a traditional roguelike. It's also really not that reliant on luck. Yes, you can get a run that's so OP that you get straight-up carried. You can also get a run so bad that it's almost impossible to win. However, the vast majority of runs lie somewhere in the middle, and a competent player can win most runs with some practice.

Originally posted by Hobosaurus:

Some items simply ruin your run just by picking them up and some just win you the game on their own. Half the item pool is just worthless.

All items have their upsides and downsides that can make or break your run. Even Soy Milk or Isaac's Heart can do wonderful things (Soy Milk + Libra is a HUGE dps upgrade, SM + Ipecac kicks ass, IH + Blood Rites straight up wins you the game, IH + Dry Baby makes you near immortal, IH + IV Bag gets you infinite money, IH + Razor turns you into a beast, etc). And as for half the items being useless, that's just a straight-up lie. Sure Range upgrades might not be amazing, but they're far from useless (you want range upgrades if you pick up Number 1 or play as Azazel)

Curses are meant to just increase the difficulty. Most of them are more likely to annoy you than actually screw you. It can also be good to pick up an item you usually don't use. Any game gets boring if you play the same way every time. The only one I don't like is Curse of the Darkness, because it could be called "Curse of turn your Gamma up for this floor"

And as for mods, you could try the Godmode mod. Basically, it makes you overpowered (item pools altered a bit, special rooms buffed, Devil/Angel deals massively buffed, free soul heart at the start of every floor, etc), but ramps up the difficulty (bosses get additional mechanics, a Guppy transformation is extremely rare, enemy health ramps up as you progress through the game, the Isaac/???/Satan/Lamb fights are changed, etc)

[EnD]

Originally posted by Hobosaurus:

Yet another massive ramble

Am I missing it thou? The two situations you described are valid and yet they are possible to overcome. Its totally possible to destroy gurglings with soy milk. Then even if by some chance you get 3 troll bombs from match book, you still get black heart, which with some skill, will protect your red hearts up to the devil deal on the second floor, where you can get, for instance, death scythe (which is overpowered in tandem with soy milk i must add). As for the Judas situation, its possible to take down the sack without taking any damage. You see, your tears inherit your momentum, and with some skill you can force your tears to damage the sack without being in effective explosive range. And since you are Judas, you wont take 2 hundred years to do so. With all my time spend in Rebirth i have never encountered situation where i was forced to take damage with something other than my own inability to play properly at the moment. And those situations, which you described, can help you scale the learning curve, which is steep but satysfying. And being honest for a second, again, even if you die, so what? Again, the last few sentences in your ramble just tick me off. I just told you, what the hell is all about in RL. And yet you still claim, that everything that matters is beating the game and progress and stuff. This thing doesnt work like that at all. And its not because you are playing it wrong or some ♥♥♥♥. The entire genre is like that. So I dont really see, why you like other RL's and Isaac doesnt suit your fancy. Idk, and idc tbh.

[Steelflame]

I've played a lot of vanilla+DLCs and rebirth, and honestly, RB is more fair to the player 90% of the time, without as much of a focus on the gimicky soul heart abuse in vanilla, where you sat in an arcade with some method of SH generation abusing an endless arcade session.

About the only issue I have with RB in general is actually how rare the real gameplay changing items are. I've seen like 3-4 Ludo tears period. But you know one of the most hilarious runs I've ever had thanks to a D1 room? Ludo tear + Guppy + Cricket's Body + Parasite. My mobile death star/tear would carve through whatever it touched, and generate thousands of flies. Bosses would get wrecked insanely fast.

Another fun run was the cyclops eye + Mom's Knife. Was one of the challange runs that had the eye + piercing upgrade, and got a knife from the devil room. I felt it was a bad call, but played through with it, noting how I killed everything I touched within my 2 bodylength range (Cyclo eye meant I had 0 range on the knife, and couldn't throw it without charging it for like 20 seconds due to having an insanely slow tear rate)... Up until I got to the first boss after said combo. I then 1 shot it. Legit 1 shot a boss. Was laughing my arse off when I realized just how much raw damage I had, with only 2 items. Went through till moms heart, and 1 shot that too.

Another fun one to get is Monstro Lung plus rubber cement. Charge a shot, cause havoc as it goes EVERYWHERE. Monstro + Cyclo eye was another fun combo. Took a month to charge each shot, but if I could dodge long enough to get the full charge off, I could kill 2 bosses at once in the chest with the nuclear blast it caused.

[Hobosaurus]

Originally posted by Z.A.W.I.S.Z.A.:

Am I missing it thou? The two situations you described are valid and yet they are possible to overcome. Its totally possible to destroy gurglings with soy milk. Then even if by some chance you get 3 troll bombs from match book, you still get black heart, which with some skill, will protect your red hearts up to the devil deal on the second floor, where you can get, for instance, death scythe (which is overpowered in tandem with soy milk i must add). As for the Judas situation, its possible to take down the sack without taking any damage. You see, your tears inherit your momentum, and with some skill you can force your tears to damage the sack without being in effective explosive range. And since you are Judas, you wont take 2 hundred years to do so. With all my time spend in Rebirth i have never encountered situation where i was forced to take damage with something other than my own inability to play properly at the moment. And those situations, which you described, can help you scale the learning curve, which is steep but satysfying. And being honest for a second, again, even if you die, so what? Again, the last few sentences in your ramble just tick me off. I just told you, what the hell is all about in RL. And yet you still claim, that everything that matters is beating the game and progress and stuff. This thing doesnt work like that at all. And its not because you are playing it wrong or some ♥♥♥♥. The entire genre is like that. So I dont really see, why you like other RL's and Isaac doesnt suit your fancy. Idk, and idc tbh.

That is some hardcore fanboying.

You can survive the first situation, but nothing guarantees the fact that you'll get one of the few items that gives you piercing tears.

As for the second situation, no, you can't avoid damage. I've seen that room a couple of times and you're so close to the spider sack that the moment you shoot a tear, it hits the sack. No amount of momentum can help when you're running down a 1 square wide corridor. Here's what it looks like, where O is a rock and S is a spider sack.

XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX
XOXXXXXXOX
XSOXXXXOSX
XOXXXXXXOX
XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX

Also, please don't put words in my mouth. I never said that all that mattered was winning and you keep talking as if I've never touched a roguelike before. Yes, I do try to win when I play a game, because who tries to lose? Yes, I do know what a roguelike is, I've been playing them for over ten years now, but thank you for reminding me what they were all about. I asked a question in my first post and you ignored it completely. Please don't bother answering this.