The Binding of Isaac: Repentance thread of peepeepoopoo

[madhair60]

The gross and grossly brilliant top-down-ish roguelike childhood abuse simulator that's Perfectly Problematic recently got a Big Update that has, quite frankly, fixed the fucking game. Lots of stupid bullshit is gone (item tiers getting locked out if you collect a good item in your run! IN A ROGUELIKE!!) and lots of new floors, bosses, items and mechanics have been added. Sensibly, the new endings are adjacent to the old ones rather than tacked onto the end.

Anyway, um, the game is... fixed now? For me. Anyone playing it?

 

[jpfriction]

Been a minute but I’ll boot it up and take a look this week.

Needless to say, I’ll expect fair compensation if I get sucked back in and lose my job because of your senseless recommendation.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I love love LOVED the original version of BoI, but in order for that to happen I had to seriously get over the art style. Ten years later, I'm not sure I have it in me to get over it a second time, sadly. I have no doubt the game is better than it's ever been, but the ick is real.

 

[lincolnic]

I spent over 500 hours between the original Flash version of this game and Rebirth, culminating in beating Hush and the boss rush with The Lost. I would be all over Repentance, except it's PC-only and I'm on a Mac. It's probably better for me that I can't play it, because I'd most likely never do anything else ever again.

How are you liking the new content, madhair?

 

[SabreCat]

I played a ton of the original Flash game and Rebirth with the Afterbirth expansion. (A fair stretch of which I played with a mod that gave all the characters Undertale skins, ha.) I skipped Afterbirth+ when the reviews said it was a big nothing sandwich. If Repentance is a stronger offering, I might well consider it!

I feel a bit sorry for the dev. He seems to be on a cycle of burnout, working on overclock to meet all the fan demands, then getting sick of his own creation until the lure of its enduring success draws him back into it. Hopefully Repentance felt different.

 

[madhair60]

How are you liking the new content, madhair?

It's good. I want to avoid spoilers as best I can, but my favourite thing about the new routes are that they are not further extensions to the endgame - they're a different endgame. A full run to the bottom of the new route takes about 30 minutes and that's playing pretty slowly, so the game has been made breezier, too.

I love the redrawn graphics - it seems like almost everything has been polished up and there's so much new stuff it's almost like a sequel.

There's one section of the new major route that I think is a misfire, but even that isn't too bad:

Spoiler

stripping the player of their earned buffs and items in a roguelike for a purely reflexes-based section feels like an idiot move to me - who wants to lose a run to that when you've had so much fortune getting there?

I disliked what Afterbirth+ did to this game - it went from being my no. 1 favourite game of all time to probably not even top ten. Repentance, as per the name, has fixed it for me. It's not no. 1 - it's never been as good as the original, pre-expansion Flash game imo - but it's a stone-cold banger once again.

 

[Bongo]

I was over this game back after really enjoying the original version, when it became clear that all the added content was just making the game harder and stricter rather than more fun and interesting. But you say this version removes stupid bullshit...? Intriguing.

 

[nosimpleway]

What Bongo said.

 

[madhair60]

I was over this game back after really enjoying the original version, when it became clear that all the added content was just making the game harder and stricter rather than more fun and interesting. But you say this version removes stupid bullshit...? Intriguing.

It balances it more than it removes it, in my experience. It is still bloated compared to the original but the worst excesses of Afterbirth/+ have been curtailed. You have more options now that are viable and fun. But crappy room designs are gone, boss orders make more sense and there's markedly less eagerly screwing the player over for no reason. It's still very hard to win, but if you die it will be because you messed up rather than necessarily because you got a super bullshit pull.

 

[Bongo]

I got out of this game earlier than much of what you're referencing. The problem I remember becoming aware of was that many of the new items didn't increase your attack power, so the more of them were added to the pool, the harder it became to keep up with the damage curve.

 

[Bongo]

I don't suppose this version puts the Danny Baranowsky soundtrack back, does it?

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I bought the game on Steam years ago and could not figure out the control scheme, since most computer games I’ve played have been strictly point and click. I‘m on a new-ish PC now, and I’m going to try once again to get into this very bizarre videogame. Is the big update for the Rebirth version only? I have the original version.

 

[madhair60]

Yes it is Rebirth only

 

[Serephine]

Did they strip out all the fucking useless cruft items in the item pools that made it impossible to actually feel powerful? I stopped playing due to the pools getting so bloated with useless garbage that made it so fucking difficult to not spend literal minutes on standard rooms because you had shitty joke items instead of damage and tears up equipment.

 

[madhair60]

Um, no? They removed the terrible mechanic that prevented you from getting any more Good Items if you picked up a Good Item though. I haven't noticed the issue you're describing in the current incarnation of the game

 

[jpfriction]

Been plugging away at it bit by bit. Tough to know where to start so I’ve just been trying to beat mega satan which is where I left off 6 years ago or whatever.

I’ll have to remind myself how to tweak the odds in my favor, my usual strategy of “use cain and hope for an early arcade to farm in” hasn’t paid off just yet. Had one run where the game gave me BFF, a few babies, a monster manual and quick charge. That was pretty fun, just a mess of helpers.

 

[Rosewood]

Between Rebirth and Afterbirth, PS4 and Steam, I also played this game for over 500 hours, and had a great time, though I never surmounted the skill floor. The new content looks way too hard for me, and the idea of playing BoI for another several hundred hours makes me feel more tired than excited. Though I do really like the idea of the game being rebalanced in the ways I saw Edmund describe in an interview.