I've been playing The Binding of Isaac since 2012, just after the Wrath of the Lamb update to the original game. Following this game through all its iterations has been at times frustrating, but there were always aspects that kept me coming back. I stopped playing quite so much as I developed a love for other roguelikes, and I hadn't touched it in over a year by the time Repentance came out.

Let me be clear: Repentance an incredible way to cap one of the most important games in my life.

Repentance is brutally hard, and it revived my love for Binding of Isaac in a way that I didn't think was possible after the distaste I had for Afterbirth+. The music is amazing, the new characters are unique, and the small facelifts to animation remind me of the charms the original Flash game had. There is enough content in this DLC that I could frankly call this a new game in the series, and it's going to keep me occupied for years to come. This is the definitive version Binding of Isaac.

I wasn't expecting much out of this latest Binding of Isaac expansion, after the disappointment of Afterbirth+ and the train wreck that was the Legend of Bum-bo, but after several weeks with this game, I can safely say that Edmund McMillen has redeemed himself.

While I do still have to dock half a star for the fact that there are STILL several quality-of-life issues that have lingered since the Flash days (along with some new ones in the content ported from Antibirth), I can't really be mad because I've played this game almost every day for the past month and a half. Hëlp

The amount of content this expansion bring to the game is MASSIVE, I'm talking your mom kind of massive. A fuck ton of bosses, enemies and new items, two new routes with their respective final bosses, endings and floors, two new characters, 17 alternate versions of all of them, SEVENTEEN and new music tracks. The new hard mode also makes the game actually hard. The only downside I can think of is that they nerfed a lot of great items which makes picking them up not that interesting anymore but you eventually forget about it in the great scheme of things. It's fun as fuck and a must get if you are a fan of the game

"OVER 500 HOURS of new gameplay", threatens Isaac.

This expansion is essentially the point where I took my first real plunge into this game. I was interested in Isaac after years and years of hearing "no two runs are ever the same"-esque platitudes, but it's kind of just "you'll never see this specific concoction of a handful of +/-1 stat passives ever again" so far. I'm fully willing to accept that the game only really opens up dozens of hours in; seeing the item list with like 600 greyed out boxes is very enticing, but I'd also be lying if I said I'm having any fun with this early game.

Dull item pools bloated with effectless stat ups and active items, with next to no wriggle room for rng manipulation - It really doesn't feel like I'm playing Isaac as much as the seed is stringing me along to whatever predetermined end it has devised for me, until I'm cut down by a slew of terrible and untelegraphed zero-delay room-wide lasers or pounces. The options to manipulate your luck with characters and items that synergise like mad just don't feel present at all until apparently tens of hours in? I had a 15 loss streak broken by a run that was so ridiculous I saw Delirium for the first time and killed him with such ease I could spare the time to play with my cat. It kind of shredded apart my honeymoon period. Nobody likes a pity win - which is how it feels. The variance is peaks and valleys with no in between. My successes feel obvious and detracted because I'm given a loadout where it's almost impossible to fail, not even helped when one follows a string of runs where I feel underpowered to the point where failure appears inevitable.

Granted, I could just read a wiki or watch some streamer with thousands of episodes of playtime so I can get a grasp of how to play efficiently. I COULD. But I'd rather just hold R until the shop stocks Chaos. A man can only Lemon Party so hard.

Exceeds at being addicting as fucqe, though! This soundtrack is filled with hummable earworms, and it's easy to get lost in a cycle of "just one more go" in the hopes I'll find two items that go together like olive and feta. (I think I'm just gonna aim for all the endings, then I'll bounce.)

EDIT: Finished the Repentence content finally! Well, Final Ending - I don't care for anything else. I can honestly say without a hint of stockholm syndrome that the content of this DLC is genuinely fuckin incredible. These new floors look STUNNING, with rooms, encounters and bosses that are tough but completely fair. As a basic rule of thumb; if I like something, it was added in Repentence. Hilarious to think that this game took nearly ten years for there to be bosses that ACTUALLY TELEGRAPH their attacks with great animation quirks. Nice surprise to see it end on a deus ex machina sequence i was convinced was beyond the scope of the engine. would prob have hit harder if this game wasn't mostly just a boring trial by fire that bothered to ingratiate me with the setting but hey. They said "what this game needs is a Wonderful 101 finale" and they were right.

The item pool expands to fit passives and active items that greatly alter your approach to a given run - made better with outright upgraded crown rooms and item shops. What was once an absolute pittance of reward, ensuring that you had to follow the RNG's rigid script laid bare; you eventually become able to make risky decisions that let you feel more in control of your fate.

It absolutely fuckin should not have taken this long, my first tens of hours of playtime could mostly be chalked up to sheer spite playing, frantically trying to see the appeal - which thankfully rears its head up to a point. An honest to god easy improvement you could make would be to reduce all "Kill X boss Y times" unlock criteria to just one. Just dump items on you for beating a boss, who wants to fucking grind.