If I had to describe this game in one word, it would be 'Wacky'. This is by no means an insult and in fact, I adore games that I can describe as wacky. However the wackiness of this game is sometimes overbearing to the point that it all folds in on itself and can become an undecipherable mess. As a disclaimer, while my time spent on this game may seem small, I have the original (flash) game with all its DLCs and I own a copy of Rebirth with all the DLC on my PS4 as well.

To start off this review its important to understand the idea of Isaac games. The big draw to Edmund McMillens iconic roguelike The Binding of Isaac is a handful of things. Zany items, zany item combos, references to other games, and how messed up your character becomes as you collect the zany items. At the core, the games thrive on weird item synergies making the gameplay vary from run to run without becoming stale when you encounter similar or the exact same items/bosses/rooms every run. I have beaten the various final bosses with so many different item combinations that even items deemed mostly or entirely detrimental to the health of a run can still be carried by crazy synergies of other items. This is a game about getting items that will make you have fun and with a mix of the bad and good items, player knowledge of them can influence and let the player modify the difficulty of the run based on what they choose to take. This difficulty modification can even be applied to the character selection before every run. The fist character you have available, Isaac, is the most balanced character in respects to starting stats. He is the baseline in which every other character is compared to. The other characters deviate from him with a positive being counteracted by a negative. For example, Cain has higher speed, damage, and starts with an item that gives him more luck (literally) but he trades that for starting with less health. Magdelain starts with more health and an item that lets her heal every few rooms but starts with less speed. And if you haven't noticed, the game has a lot of biblical references, more than just the names of the characters, and theres a lot of biblical imagery too.

The base game, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, is a game that evolved from The binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb (the final iterration of the flash game). It has a near perfect balance of good, bad, seemingly useless, very useful, average, and must-have items. Every item can be utilized to benefit the player even if it has a massive amount of downsides. The best example being Isaacs Heart. It is an item that makes the player invulnerable but they take damage if the heart that now follows them gets hit by anything. The major downside to this item is that all the knowledge you have of dodging attacks is completely changed because the players hitbox is now attached to a literal heart following them instead of being them. But now objects that require the player to hurt themselves to use, like a blood donation machine, are now free to use. Is this a limited use application? Absolutely but it works with some items to be viable or even "good". Synergies like this were a big focus during the development of Rebirth, and while some things slipped through the cracks with some of the new items mixing with old items, the mix of good and bad synergies creates a learning enviroment that rewards experimentarion whether it results in a good or bad combo.

Rebirth also introduced character specific rules. By that I mean some characters have very specific rules that are always in play. While it may be true that flash Isaac had this with ??? (that's really their name) never being able to gain red hearts, Rebirth truly capitalized on this with 3 characters. Eve, a character originating from the flash version, has a low damage multiplier, meaning any time they get a damage increasing item it will give less than what it does for other characters, and starts with an item called ♥♥♥♥♥ of Babylon. Normally when you have the ♥♥♥♥♥ of Babylon item you get a damage and speed bonus when at half of a red heart or less, however when even has the item it triggers its ability at one red heart or less and changes her damage multiplier back to base while under its effect. The other 2 characters have rules as well, but this is not a review of the characters, this is a review of the overall design and attention to detail, so just trust me when I say that Azazel and The Lost are well designed and fairly balanced.

Enough about the specifics however, lets talk about general balance. Roguelikes have an interesting balance to design for with a bell curve of difficulty to aim at. Some runs may be unwinnable and some runs could practically be done with one hand, but generally most runs will end up in the middle as you would expect from a balanced game. I have 1 main issue with Rebirth, and its pretty minor in the face of all it did right, which is the curse system. To give context, each time you load a floor there is a chance to get 1 of 5 curses. The curses are Blind, Darkness, Lost, Unknown, and Maze. They each add a challenge to the floor and all but one can be mentally worked around. Darkness makes all rooms in the floor visually darker and if you are attentive its not a huge deal. Lost removes your minimap so you have to keep track of it yourself. Unknown removes your health count from the HUD so you have to keep track of it yourself. Maze adds a chance to change which room you are going to when you go through a door but it also can take you to a locked room without needing to expend resources to open them. And then theres Blind, which makes it so you don't Know what items you are picking up for the floor. If you remember earlier I stated that players are rewarded for knowing what items to take and what items to avoid, but this curse nullifies all item knowledge and sometimes you get an item that kills the run. In the base game there are only a small amount of items that kill runs by themselves but they still exist and therefore its still possible to lose a run to no fault of your own. This curse is more of an issue with the DLC but its still worth mentioning here. Complaining about a random thing like that curse may sound like i missing the point of a roguelike but the if a game about picking up items suddenly incentivises you not to for fear of being dealt a bad item that ruins a run, thats not a good thing to have.

All in all the game is amazing and if you had been following the development when the flash game was still at its peak in popularity then you would be satisfied with what got put out. If you are new to the genre of roguelikes then this is a good game to get into the genre. Do I reccommend this game? Yes, absolutely.

If I had to describe this game in one word, it would be 'Wacky'. This is by no means an insult and in fact, I adore games that I can describe as wacky. However the wackiness of this game is sometimes overbearing to the point that it all folds in on itself and can become an undecipherable mess. As a disclaimer, while my time spent on this game may seem small, I have the original (flash) game with all its DLCs and I own a copy of Rebirth with all the DLC on my PS4 as well. To start off this review its important to understand the idea of Isaac games. The big draw to Edmund McMillens iconic roguelike The Binding of Isaac is a handful of things. Zany items, zany item combos, references to other games, and how messed up your character becomes as you collect the zany items. At the core, the games thrive on weird item synergies making the gameplay vary from run to run without becoming stale when you encounter similar or the exact same items/bosses/rooms every run. I have beaten the various final bosses with so many different item combinations that even items deemed mostly or entirely detrimental to the health of a run can still be carried by crazy synergies of other items. This is a game about getting items that will make you have fun and with a mix of the bad and good items, player knowledge of them can influence and let the player modify the difficulty of the run based on what they choose to take. This difficulty modification can even be applied to the character selection before every run. The fist character you have available, Isaac, is the most balanced character in respects to starting stats. He is the baseline in which every other character is compared to. The other characters deviate from him with a positive being counteracted by a negative. For example, Cain has higher speed, damage, and starts with an item that gives him more luck (literally) but he trades that for starting with less health. Magdelain starts with more health and an item that lets her heal every few rooms but starts with less speed. And if you haven't noticed, the game has a lot of biblical references, more than just the names of the characters, and theres a lot of biblical imagery too. The base game, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, is a game that evolved from The binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb (the final iterration of the flash game). It has a near perfect balance of good, bad, seemingly useless, very useful, average, and must-have items. Every item can be utilized to benefit the player even if it has a massive amount of downsides. The best example being Isaacs Heart. It is an item that makes the player invulnerable but they take damage if the heart that now follows them gets hit by anything. The major downside to this item is that all the knowledge you have of dodging attacks is completely changed because the players hitbox is now attached to a literal heart following them instead of being them. But now objects that require the player to hurt themselves to use, like a blood donation machine, are now free to use. Is this a limited use application? Absolutely but it works with some items to be viable or even "good". Synergies like this were a big focus during the development of Rebirth, and while some things slipped through the cracks with some of the new items mixing with old items, the mix of good and bad synergies creates a learning enviroment that rewards experimentarion whether it results in a good or bad combo. Rebirth also introduced character specific rules. By that I mean some characters have very specific rules that are always in play. While it may be true that flash Isaac had this with ??? (that's really their name) never being able to gain red hearts, Rebirth truly capitalized on this with 3 characters. Eve, a character originating from the flash version, has a low damage multiplier, meaning any time they get a damage increasing item it will give less than what it does for other characters, and starts with an item called Whore of Babylon. Normally when you have the Whore of Babylon item you get a damage and speed bonus when at half of a red heart or less, however when even has the item it triggers its ability at one red heart or less and changes her damage multiplier back to base while under its effect. The other 2 characters have rules as well, but this is not a review of the characters, this is a review of the overall design and attention to detail, so just trust me when I say that Azazel and The Lost are well designed and fairly balanced. Enough about the specifics however, lets talk about general balance. Roguelikes have an interesting balance to design for with a bell curve of difficulty to aim at. Some runs may be unwinnable and some runs could practically be done with one hand, but generally most runs will end up in the middle as you would expect from a balanced game. I have 1 main issue with Rebirth, and its pretty minor in the face of all it did right, which is the curse system. To give context, each time you load a floor there is a chance to get 1 of 5 curses. The curses are Blind, Darkness, Lost, Unknown, and Maze. They each add a challenge to the floor and all but one can be mentally worked around. Darkness makes all rooms in the floor visually darker and if you are attentive its not a huge deal. Lost removes your minimap so you have to keep track of it yourself. Unknown removes your health count from the HUD so you have to keep track of it yourself. Maze adds a chance to change which room you are going to when you go through a door but it also can take you to a locked room without needing to expend resources to open them. And then theres Blind, which makes it so you don't Know what items you are picking up for the floor. If you remember earlier I stated that players are rewarded for knowing what items to take and what items to avoid, but this curse nullifies all item knowledge and sometimes you get an item that kills the run. In the base game there are only a small amount of items that kill runs by themselves but they still exist and therefore its still possible to lose a run to no fault of your own. This curse is more of an issue with the DLC but its still worth mentioning here. Complaining about a random thing like that curse may sound like i missing the point of a roguelike but the if a game about picking up items suddenly incentivises you not to for fear of being dealt a bad item that ruins a run, thats not a good thing to have. All in all the game is amazing and if you had been following the development when the flash game was still at its peak in popularity then you would be satisfied with what got put out. If you are new to the genre of roguelikes then this is a good game to get into the genre. Do I reccommend this game? Yes, absolutely.