AKheon | The Binding of Isaac: Repentance - acquiring Death Certificate @AKheon | Uploaded May 2022 | Updated October 2024, 6 hours ago.
It took a while, but I managed to unlock everything in this game. (Well, almost everything, I'm still missing the achievement where you need to find all the items, but that should come naturally if I try doing some Eden streaks next.)
This highlight features the final battle vs Beast with Tainted Lazarus, which was the final mark that I needed to collect. It was a really arduous run where I felt underpowered for most of the time. That last minute Almond Milk was a game changer.
Sorry about the slightly distorted mic audio, I had placed it a bit too close to my face during this stream.
To be honest, I liked Repentance less than Afterbirth. As for the reason? I think one of the most unique and endearing things about The Binding of Isaac is its flexible "meta puzzle" aspect, where you try to gain an advantage over the game in both short and long term using all the resources and information you have.
It's still there in Repentance, but to a lesser degree. The balance has been changed so that the game is now much more about raw skill and managing RNG than the larger "meta puzzle". The player has less control over each playthrough for various reasons: shops are less powerful, it's harder to gain an edge since a lot of the most powerful item combos have been nerfed, not to mention some characters like Tainted Eden and built around randomness to such a degree that you can't really plan ahead. The difficulty has been increased with some bullet hell elements too.
The problem is that I don't think the game really has the fundamentals to be a brilliant twin-stick shooter. The design has too many gimmicky elements, fake difficulty, visual clutter, etc. to make it possible to f.e. consistently no-damage a run. This is why I feel it was a mistake for the devs to double down on the gameplay at the expense of the "meta puzzle".
Furthermore, as much as I love the game's sandbox of mechanics, the rule set could really be much more cohesive. There are so many little exceptions upon exceptions on how items work that it's not exactly intuitive a lot of the time.
I felt like my 100% playthrough of Repentance was fun around 70% of the time. It's a shame, since the game has so much potential. Inspired setting, great graphics & music, a ton of content. It occasionally borders genius, but it has so many things that could be better...
-- Watch live at twitch.tv/akheon
It took a while, but I managed to unlock everything in this game. (Well, almost everything, I'm still missing the achievement where you need to find all the items, but that should come naturally if I try doing some Eden streaks next.)
This highlight features the final battle vs Beast with Tainted Lazarus, which was the final mark that I needed to collect. It was a really arduous run where I felt underpowered for most of the time. That last minute Almond Milk was a game changer.
Sorry about the slightly distorted mic audio, I had placed it a bit too close to my face during this stream.
To be honest, I liked Repentance less than Afterbirth. As for the reason? I think one of the most unique and endearing things about The Binding of Isaac is its flexible "meta puzzle" aspect, where you try to gain an advantage over the game in both short and long term using all the resources and information you have.
It's still there in Repentance, but to a lesser degree. The balance has been changed so that the game is now much more about raw skill and managing RNG than the larger "meta puzzle". The player has less control over each playthrough for various reasons: shops are less powerful, it's harder to gain an edge since a lot of the most powerful item combos have been nerfed, not to mention some characters like Tainted Eden and built around randomness to such a degree that you can't really plan ahead. The difficulty has been increased with some bullet hell elements too.
The problem is that I don't think the game really has the fundamentals to be a brilliant twin-stick shooter. The design has too many gimmicky elements, fake difficulty, visual clutter, etc. to make it possible to f.e. consistently no-damage a run. This is why I feel it was a mistake for the devs to double down on the gameplay at the expense of the "meta puzzle".
Furthermore, as much as I love the game's sandbox of mechanics, the rule set could really be much more cohesive. There are so many little exceptions upon exceptions on how items work that it's not exactly intuitive a lot of the time.
I felt like my 100% playthrough of Repentance was fun around 70% of the time. It's a shame, since the game has so much potential. Inspired setting, great graphics & music, a ton of content. It occasionally borders genius, but it has so many things that could be better...
-- Watch live at twitch.tv/akheon
