Game: The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+
Developer: Nicalis
Publisher: Nicalis
Publisher: Nicalis
Platform: PC/Mac/Linux/PS4/Switch/XBOne
ESRB Rating: M
I'm not exactly proud of the amount of time I've sunk into The Binding of Isaac. Not to say that I'm not proud of my accomplishments over the years of playing this game, but when you consider that I have sunk more than 558 hours into this game over the course of 5 years of playing this game on PC alone (not counting my time on the Switch), I think it is safe to say that I have a problem. Recently though, my playing with this game has slowed down considerably. Instead of doing daily challenges and doing a run or two nearly every day, my time with The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ has slowed to playing maybe one run every few weeks. Could this be me having a falling out with one of my most played games of all time? I'm not sure. Today, I felt like doing something slightly different. I want to take an honest look at one of the games I've played to death and give a fair review on it. Or at least what I see as fair. Let's begin.
The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ is a top-down, roguelike dungeon crawler where you play as a naked boy named Isaac who is on the run from his mother who is looking to sacrifice him as an offering to God. You as Isaac must traverse your basement and the underground caverns beneath your house, picking up items that affect your attacks and stats while fighting hordes of monsters that get in your way. As you play, you unlock new items and new characters to play as, each with their own special characteristics. Being a roguelike, each run is randomly generated and when you die, you lose everything in that run.
Each character you play has their own unique attributes to them that set them apart. Isaac is able to reroll items on pedestals (when unlocked), Azazel can fly and has a short range brimstone laser attack, The Lost dies in one hit but can take devil deals for free, and Lilith is blindfolded and can only attack with her familiar, just to name a few. There are a plethora of items you can obtain throughout your runs of playing this game, all of which affect your playstyle in some way shape or form. These can affect your tears, your main way of attacking, movement speed, offense, defense, and so on. These items can range from simple household items like a potato peeler to grotesque bodily disorders like proptosis. Almost every item is unique in what attributes they alter upon the player's character, but depending on the character, these items lead to no change at all.
Like the items, there is a myriad of enemies you can encounter in this game. The enemies you encounter have different attack patterns that need to be memorized to best deal with them in each room. Some enemies are area exclusive while other enemies make a wide range of appearances throughout your runs. Every floor you explore has a boss fight at the end where you must kill the boss in order to proceed to the next floor. There are a wide variety of boss fights for each floor, each fight, for the most part, being a fair challenge with patterns to recognize in their attacks.
When it comes to difficulty balance in the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth expansions so far, I feel like there has been trouble for Nicalis getting the balance right. The fairest DLC expansion, in my opinion, was the previous expansion "Afterbirth." To me, that expansion had just the right balance of fairness and challenge, even if most runs came down to luck then and now. I feel like with Afterbirth+ with content being constantly added to the game through updates and the like, there seems to have been little playtesting time with some of the boss fights. For example, The Matriarch's boss fight is terribly balanced, with attacks and patterns that are heavily designed against the player having an advantage in the fight. Not to mention, still, for the life of me, I cannot get down the attack patterns for Brownie, as I still think that boss fight is just such a mess, especially when you get a weak build in a run. While I'm at it, the new final boss added in this expansion is still terribly designed, with attacks that fly all over the place in erratic patterns, along with attacks that are nigh impossible to dodge as the fight progresses. Needless to say, it's not a fun fight.
A lot of your success in this game is going to depend on the items you get in a run. Trust me, sometimes you need a good relationship with RNGsus in order to have success in a run. Some days are definitely better than others, with times of dying and/or resetting more times than you can count before you get the perfect run. This can be fun at times, since the gameplay is engaging enough already, but over my years of playing, it sometimes becomes exhausting to the point of where if I don't get good luck in 2 or 3 runs, I just stop playing entirely as I feel it isn't worth the hassle today, sometimes for the better really, considering my love-hate relationship with this game.
Over my years of playing Isaac, I feel like I've got plenty out of it so far. With new content coming out in the near future, and content that I have still yet to unlock (unlocking The Forgotten is too much for me), I enjoy booting up the game every once in a while. I'm not as heavily invested in the game as I once was, but it still holds a special place in my gaming library. I don't think Afterbirth+ tops Afterbirth in terms of enjoyment (personal bias since I was able to 1001% Afterbirth a few days before Afterbirth+), but I will say it does the job well and good for the content this behemoth of a game gets. I'm looking forward to Repentance when it comes out with more cautious optimism.
Rating: 8/10
The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ still has fun to be had with its addicting gameplay, dragon's horde of content, many ways to play and tons of secrets, but it's not without a few hiccups, such as some new boss fights not being very well balanced and some of the content being a little too cryptic and frustrating to unlock. I think taking a break from the game has given me a better perspective of how I feel in regards to the new content, both the good and the bad. Thanks for reading my flawed review. Hopefully, I get better at this over time.
When it comes to difficulty balance in the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth expansions so far, I feel like there has been trouble for Nicalis getting the balance right. The fairest DLC expansion, in my opinion, was the previous expansion "Afterbirth." To me, that expansion had just the right balance of fairness and challenge, even if most runs came down to luck then and now. I feel like with Afterbirth+ with content being constantly added to the game through updates and the like, there seems to have been little playtesting time with some of the boss fights. For example, The Matriarch's boss fight is terribly balanced, with attacks and patterns that are heavily designed against the player having an advantage in the fight. Not to mention, still, for the life of me, I cannot get down the attack patterns for Brownie, as I still think that boss fight is just such a mess, especially when you get a weak build in a run. While I'm at it, the new final boss added in this expansion is still terribly designed, with attacks that fly all over the place in erratic patterns, along with attacks that are nigh impossible to dodge as the fight progresses. Needless to say, it's not a fun fight.
A lot of your success in this game is going to depend on the items you get in a run. Trust me, sometimes you need a good relationship with RNGsus in order to have success in a run. Some days are definitely better than others, with times of dying and/or resetting more times than you can count before you get the perfect run. This can be fun at times, since the gameplay is engaging enough already, but over my years of playing, it sometimes becomes exhausting to the point of where if I don't get good luck in 2 or 3 runs, I just stop playing entirely as I feel it isn't worth the hassle today, sometimes for the better really, considering my love-hate relationship with this game.
Over my years of playing Isaac, I feel like I've got plenty out of it so far. With new content coming out in the near future, and content that I have still yet to unlock (unlocking The Forgotten is too much for me), I enjoy booting up the game every once in a while. I'm not as heavily invested in the game as I once was, but it still holds a special place in my gaming library. I don't think Afterbirth+ tops Afterbirth in terms of enjoyment (personal bias since I was able to 1001% Afterbirth a few days before Afterbirth+), but I will say it does the job well and good for the content this behemoth of a game gets. I'm looking forward to Repentance when it comes out with more cautious optimism.
Rating: 8/10
The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ still has fun to be had with its addicting gameplay, dragon's horde of content, many ways to play and tons of secrets, but it's not without a few hiccups, such as some new boss fights not being very well balanced and some of the content being a little too cryptic and frustrating to unlock. I think taking a break from the game has given me a better perspective of how I feel in regards to the new content, both the good and the bad. Thanks for reading my flawed review. Hopefully, I get better at this over time.
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