This is a strange one to begin, not because I don’t know what to say rather than it’s just an all-round strange game. At it’s core it’s a rogue like game with every dungeon run being different, as you’d expect, but that’s where the similarty ends.
What sets this one apart is the horror setting and it’s weird obsessions with scat and everything exploding into gore. The basis of the game is you play as Isaac and his mother has been hearing and talking to a voice whom she believes is God, who naturally tells her to kill her son to cleanse his sin, and in fleeing he jumps into the unknown.
Now the unknown in this case are random procedurally generated dungeons, which contain all sorts of enemies. From floating heads, headless bodies, flies, masses of flesh, poisonous spiders, even literal turd monsters along worm looking things that pop up through the floor and that’s just the tip of what you can run into. Most of them have variations that spew poison rather the shoot blood at you, and some may explode causing further damage, turn into other enemies or spew more out of themselves. You defeat these creatures by shooting tears at them, in a twin stick shooter fashion. Now along with basic enemies you have bosses. Which you have to defeat at the end of each level to progress. However with this being the sort of game it is you can easily run into multiple bosses just as you make your way through the rooms. Within the rooms as well are hidden chests, fires, spiked floors, piles of shit which along with the rubble you can destroy for items.
Luckily though you aren’t stuck with just the base stats of Isaac or any of the other characters you unlock along the way. This game gives you items aplenty, from random enemy drops, loot from bosses, chests you unlock if you find a key. Along with all the alternate rooms you come by on your travels. Some are just reward rooms with loot in, some are shops, others a ritual covens you make with the devil, or vice versa for angels along with arcades and challenge rooms. I’m sure I am missing some, however the only other to mention are secret rooms, where you have to use bombs to blast a hole in the wall to access. I should probably cover bombs as well, now bombs are one of two other methods of killing your foes. You pick these up like loot if you come across them, and the other is power ups you can get which usually require batteries to recharge or limited use.
Now this game which is loaded with various rooms to help buff you up and kill your mother faster which is the aim of the game to survive. Now you usually face her at the sixth level, so by then you should have picked up a plethora of items to help. On the downside like any game some pick ups are shit and detrimental to you. You want ones that increase your health, range and fire rate for your tears. Then you also want the bonuses that increase damage but also allow for you to shoot in 360 degrees and having a little devil friend that periodically shoots laser beams, or you leave a trail of damaging blood. Now some revive you but you only come back with 1 health, or some blur your vision up one stat but lower the other etc. The usual sort of quid pro quo style you get in games.
This is the bad part of the game, it relies heavily on constant play where you can learn all the enemies movements and knowing what all the items do without automatically collecting them. Along with everything being ties to spawn rates, so on some runs your pick ups are phenomenally bad and this can continue for multiple runs in a row. Now I get that this is how these sort of games run and it’s not a downside as such. But with multitude of updates and DLC that’s been added over the years, it’s not exactly beginner friendly nor something you can ease back into, if you want to play this game it’s something you’ll either get frustrated at an put down quickly or continue to play until you finally get through a full run.
For me this game is frustratingly fun, now I’ll be the first to admit that I am utterly awful at this game and my good save file died with my original switch which for some reason never backed my save data up. I had a good few completed runs and I’d unlocked a few more characters than I have now. Since returning to this game I just die, and again this ties into not being beginner friendly. As you need to know what to do get even more out of it which I find by looking a forums mainly. Learning that in shops sacrificing gold to the machine in the corner means the next shop that spawns will have better items, blowing up the shop keeper encourages more devil rooms to appear, knowing where to find secret rooms etc.
I am aware of the final DLC in repentance which adds even more of everything and I’ve been tempted to get it but whilst getting back into this game I think I’ll leave it a while longer. As I’ve got around 10 more endings to unlock, however many characters still. I’ve only filled out about half the bestiary and a third of the items, not to mention the alternate difficulty options and challenge modes I can run through still. For a game if you know what’s what, it won’t take you long to complete around 40 mins I’d say. It’s loaded with re playability, even more so than a lot of similar games. However with the weird horror and brutality of this game, along with it’s hundred of items and enemies its a real standout.
Overall I’d rate this game a mighty 9/10, Pure Tasty Gaming.
Over the 13 years I believe it’s been out, this game has masterful become a frustratingly addictive game with fine tuned balances and multitude of variation with in game rewards that benefit your time and dedication learning the ins and outs of every aspect of the game.
Released January 3rd 2017 on Nintendo Switch.
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