After a year of playing this game I'm finally ready to review it. The binding of Isaac is a Roguelike, THE Roguelike you've all heard about. I believe most people have the wrong perception of what this game actually is. So i will show you.

Looking at how the game plays looks pretty normal but in practice a few unique things stand out. First is aiming. Your tears have velocity when shot based on your movement. With this you can aim shots diagonally but it is time consuming. It seems pretty cool but it is over tuned. If you were to aim and move in a circle around a normal enemy about 65% of your shots will miss. And while this can work for something like counter strike, That game was expressly designed with lower accuracy while moving in mind. Isaac on the other hand is a bullet hell game, And those two go together like peanut butter and a loaded shotgun. There are a few enemies and room layouts that take advantage of it, But it just serves to make the games action slow to a crawl. A lot of these problems come down to the game being 10 years old and the design philosophy has changed a lot since then.

The biggest way this shows is in the characters. About 1/3 of the roster are the exact same character, But with less range and 1 extra item (they really brought their A game with this one huh?). While the other half are so radically different it feels like playing a different game altogether, for better and worse. This game has some of my favorite characters in any game, and some of my least favorite. Tainted keeper is a character that embodies greed. every enemy you kill will now drop a coin, used to buy items, but the coins disappear shortly after. Which means you need to get greedy to do well as this character. Not to mention normal free items now cost money. Its such a fun back and forth trying to collect money. And on the other hand... you have tainted Eden. how they work is simple you start with three random items, every time you get hit you randomize all of the items you have collected into random new items from the same pool. And not to mention this game has something I've never seen a game with the gall to do. Some items are bad and I don't mean bad as in not as good compared to other items. I mean bad as in lose the run because each time you get hit you teleport out of the room needing to restart the boss fight type of bad. And there are plenty other really bad items that are almost always detrimental. Not to bring up the fact that a lot of these items are unlockable which means you are punished by playing the game with useless or detrimental items. Anyway I don't think I need to tell you why tainted Eden isn't a well made character. And would you believe me if I told you there were 5 other really bad characters? I won't mention them here but trust me.

There is one really unique mechanic this game has, I've only personally seen twice. Its using health as a resource. In most games taking damage is always bad and never leads to any thing substantially good happening. Here's an example of using health for a good cause in another game. In Team Fortress 2 you can aim an explosive at your feet to blast into the air for crazy movement options, at the cost of some HP. For Isaac it works a bit differently. You can spend HP in three ways machines, devil rooms, and sacrifice rooms. First machines and devil beggars. You can spend red health (easily obtainable) to get devil items from a beggar or health ups from a blood bank. Second you can spend red heart containers for very powerful devil items. Third you can use health for sacrifice rooms. They will take any of your hp going from most recent to least, for a chance at a angel item. I should explain the types of HP. you have red health which can be refilled or spend and soul hearts are one time shields from enemies. but beware taking red heart damage on enemies will lower your devil/angel room chance. When you take this altogether, trying to utilize your health for maximum gains can be very fun but also very slow. Which leads this game to have a inconsistent pace with fast combat and slow Minmaxing. It ends up not appealing to action fans or Minmaxers. Coupled with the fact this game scales faster than you in DPS. And no reliable way to get damage ups beacuse the boss item pool is bloated. makes enemy rooms slow and boring.

TL;DR This game undeniably gets better the more you play it. But it isn't worth the slow start, archaic progression, inconsistent pace, boring combat, vague item descriptions, and a mixed character roster. I think people forget the problems this game has because they've been playing for 10 years and forgot how bad the game is when you start out. If you plop a new player into this game, they just won't have fun. the game is new player unfriendly in every sense of the word. However I think this game is good unlike the thumbs down I gave it, Its just that I can't in good faith recommend this game to anyone who isn't crazy into strategy and Minmaxing. If your want an action Roguelike Enter The Gungeon is next door. My final verdict is 7.3/10 Thank you for reading.