If I had to be completely honest, I think the most competitive genre in the videogame market are roguelikes. For those who don’t know what a roguelike is, it’s essentially a type of game where all the rooms, enemies, and items are randomly generated. It’s a tough game to design. It has one driving factor that makes it a roguelike: amount of content. I mean, you have to attempt to make every run feel fresh, make the player continue to play in order for them to unlock new stuff to mess around with, and make the game hard to 100%. It is a competitive market. But, there is one game that I hold in a special place in my heart. It is a game so good, so chaotic and bombastic, I believe it is one of, if not the, best rougelikes. That game is the Binding of Issac: Rebirth. This game and its DLCs have been an absolute blast to play. Now before we can get on to the actual game and the DLCs, lets go back to its original roots.
Before Rebirth + Gameplay
Back in September of 2011, Edmund McMillen released the Original Binding of Isaac as part of a game jam. The game had a format like the original Legend of Zelda with some key differences. For one, the sprites of the original had a unique style, such as the characters and enemies looking as if they were doodled by a child. In terms of gameplay, it had a simple control scheme. You used your tears as projectiles, using either the letter buttons on the controller or WASD on the keyboard. You moved with the analog stick or D-pad on the controller and arrow keys on the keyboard. The main goal was simple: go through rooms filled with enemies until you reach the boss room. Then after you defeat the boss, you go down the trapdoor into the next floor and rinse and repeat. The first 2 floors are the basement, the next 2 are the caves, the next 2 are the depths, and if you defeat Mom for the first time, you unlock the womb, which has 2 more rooms, with the final room having Mom’s heart. During your run, you might stumble across many pickups and items. For pickups, there are coins, which you can spend in the shop, keys, which are used to open certain chests, treasure rooms and shops, bombs, which can be offensively against enemies or used to remove obstacles or move them into gaps. As for health, you have regular hearts, which can be recovered based on the character, soul hearts, hearts that aren’t permanent and can be depleted fully unless replenished, black hearts, which are the same thing as soul hearts, but once depleted they damage all enemies in the room, and white hearts, which if you pick up, you could either find another white heart or take no damage until the next floor to earn an additional heart container. Now for the items, there is a ton. In the base game, there are a total of 196 items. These items acted as upgrades, which range from adding a triple shot to your main attack, making all your projectiles homing, exploding, or on fire, to replacing your main attack with a laser, brimstone beam, or even a knife that is close range, but deals insane damage, or just simply upgrading your stats like your max health, damage, range, fire rate, shot speed, speed, or luck. Some items can also be active items, which range from spilling lemonade in an area that deals damage, to spawning bombs that damages both you and the enemies, or a dice that can reroll items. All of these items come in quality. Quality 0 is the worst and Quality 4 is the best. You can find these items on top of pedestals in treasure rooms, shops, chests, as a reward for completing a boss or in secret rooms. Secret rooms can be found randomly by placing a bomb near a wall. There are pickups and sometimes items. For the boss variety, there are a total of 15 different bosses, which isn’t a lot to work with here.
Now, Edmund McMillen saw this game as a career ender, as in his eyes it was seen as too risky and too different. But surprisingly, it was received well, though it lacked some polish. But, he would fix that in his DLC for the game called Wrath of the Lamb. This DLC adds a whole new secret floor which can be found by sacrificing your health in a sacrifice room to have a chance to even fight the new secret boss. They added at least 6 new bosses, not including the secret one. And that’s about it. This DLC for the original game was more of a small update which kind of made the game more buggy and somehow less polished due to the dev team driving the flash engine the game runs on into the ground. But, Edmund and his team got to work and made a remake of the game 3 years later, and it would go on to be one of the best rougelikes.
Rebirth
Released on November 4th, 2014 by Edmund and Nicalis, The Binding Of Isaac Rebirth is an amazing remake of the original and it’s better in every way. First off, the item count went from 196 to 341 items. Secondly, most of the bad items from the original have been reworked to be way better. Next, the boss count went to 50-60 bosses, adding more variety and making runs feel less of the same. Then, they completely replaced the old game’s flash engine and completely remade the game from the ground up. And finally, they redid every sprite and art style and it went from looking crudely drawn to having a pixelated art style. Alongside these changes, they also added a new feature. If you complete a floor without taking any damage, then you have the chance to get a devil room at the end of the floor’s boss. Devil rooms contain powerful items that come at the cost of your health. If you ignore the first devil room you get, you have a lower chance to spawn an angel room instead of a devil room after the boss. Angel rooms have their own lootpool of powerful angelic items. If you aren’t that skillful to obtain these rooms, don’t worry. There are items that boost the chances of both rooms. My only complaints for the remake is that it kind of does away with the original artstyle, but that’s fine. My other complaint has to do with the item balancing. It was an issue from the original game, but it does carry on to the remake. If you get at least 3 quality 4 items, you practically won your run. But, this will not be the end of Rebirth, as Edmund and Nicalis added DLCs to the game.
Afterbirth and Afterbirth +
I’m combining these 2 together because all afterbirth + did was add 2 new characters, more items, a new secret area and boss, and the ability to mod the game through the steam workshop. That’s it. Anyways, Afterbirth and Afterbirth + kind of suck. Afterbirth added a new mode called Greed Mode, where instead of going through floors like normal, you have to stay in a room, defeating 10 waves of enemies. The first 8 waves are normal enemies and the last 2 are boss fights. When you survive a wave, you receive 2 coins in the first 8 waves and 4 coins in the 2 boss waves. Now, what will you use these coins for? Well, you use these items in the shop to buy your upgrades instead of going to treasure rooms like usual. Once you are finished on that floor, you go down the trapdoor into the next and repeat. But, there is a twist. Once you reach the last floor, you have to fight the final boss of that floor, Ultra Greed. After you beat him you win. It’s a really chill mode compared to the normal mode. The normal mode also got a new addition with a new endgame boss, Hush. Now, out of all the big bosses that you are required to fight, it’s kind of a pushover. First off, before entering his room, you have 2 treasure rooms near you, 4 chests, and a shop. So, you have enough prep time to change up your build and this makes the fight easier than it should be.
They also added 120 new items. Now about Afterbirth +. It kind of sucks. All it adds is another secret area as usual, two new characters that suck, and in that secret area holds one of the most annoying, most frustrating fights in the game: Delirium. You are required to fight this boss in order to get certain unlocks, so there is no way of getting out of it. Now, the boss fight on paper sounds interesting and fun. It mimics all the bosses you fought in your run with more projectiles and faster movement. Sounds fun, right? Well, it’s one of the most annoying bosses in this entire game. First off, it switches between bosses every 5 seconds, it teleports you, and it’s actually so much happening on screen. Now, let’s look at the items. Out of 2 DLCs, literally 95 out of the 200 new items in both DLCs are actually good. But, the DLCs don’t stop there, because Repentance blows all the others out of the water
Repentance
This DLC is absolutely nuts. It’s practically a whole new game and. Not only does this DLC add 150 more items, it also adds 2 new characters and new tainted versions of all previous characters plus the new ones. It also adds 25 new bosses as well, which adds more variety, as well as an alternate route. When you complete the first floor of a new run, a new door will appear, go through it and you get to go down an alternate path with brand new floors replacing the old ones, such as a downpour replacing the basement, the mines replacing the caves, and the mausoleum replacing the depths. You are forced to go down this route if you want to fight the new secret boss of this DLC: Mother. Unlike the previous 2 secret bosses, this one is tough to unlock. You have to retrieve 2 knife pieces from the alternate routes and then make it mausoleum in order to unlock the corpse floor. Make it there to fight Mother. This DLC brought many quality of life changes and new features such as co-op and a bestiary to look at all the enemies and bosses. But more importantly, it improves on one big issue I had with the previous DLCS: balancing. It nerfs almost every good item and buffs every bad item to make it viable. I really like this change because now it gives me options and lets me choose whatever build I want. This is a really good change. So now, let’s review the game’s content. In total, including all the DLCs, you get 34 characters, 22 endings, 102 bosses, and 718 items. Good luck trying at even 100% in this game. This is the best way to play Issac. Now, let’s talk about the characters and story.
Characters and Story
You don’t just play as Isaac in the Binding of Issac. You play a total of 34 characters. Each of them are unique and have their own abilities, upside, and downsides. You have Issac, who is the default character that starts with the D6 that can reroll items to better or worse, Azazel, who can fly but has a short ranged brimstone beam, Bethany, who can summon spirits at the cost of not being able to pick up spirit hearts, and Lilith, who relies on her demon familiar to shoot for her and she can double the number of familiars she has. That’s just mentioning some of the characters. We also have tainted versions of the characters. We have Tainted Cain, who can’t pick up pedestal items and has to craft his items using hearts and bombs, Tainted Samson, who over time goes into berserk mode and becomes a melee character temporary, Tainted Isaac, who can hold only 8 items, but has better luck at getting good items, and Tainted Lilith, who uses a demon child as a whip. All of these characters have completion marks, which you can get from defeating Mom’s Heart, Isaac, Blue Baby, Satan, Lamb, Mega Satan, Ultra Greed, Hush, Boss Rush, Delirium, Mother, and the true final boss that I will not spoil. Completion marks unlock new items that will appear in your runs. Now, you might have noticed that some of these names come from the Bible and that’s not a coincidence. The entire game’s story mirrors the story of Abraham and Isaac. Isaac’s mom wants to kill Isaac, which isn’t true as that’s what Isaac thinks. In reality, Isaac thinks that he’s the embodiment of evil and deserves to be punished. So, he decides to take his own life and now he has to fight through his purgatory filled with monsters from his imagination.. All the characters are a version of Isaac and don’t know who he is. It’s a story that is the result of being too devoted to a religion and the consequences facing others. But man, does it create some actual creative ideas.
Final Review
Overall, the Binding of Isaac Rebirth absolutely rocks. It has such a replayable gameplay loop with seemingly limitless possibilities and achievements. It tells a story that is so dark and depressing that it can actually be related. It is a hard game in every aspect, so I would recommend it to someone who is up for the challenge and has the endurance to try and 100% this game. And when it comes to unlocks, the game constantly feeds you new things to mess around with without being too overwhelming. This game really holds a special place in my heart and I would rate it a 9/10. The devs made something really special here.
