this game is like sort of capable of being fun sometimes if you manage to luck out on which items you get but for the most part it's not good. absolutely horrid game design through and through and isaac just is not a fun character to control at all, he feels so limp and weak, and shooting as him is a pain in the ass if you can only shoot in 4 directions which is somehow still inaccurate as hell. i think the most important thing in a roguelike is to make the gameplay loop feel good, and this simply does not have that

neat little gem. from what i've played and seen from treasure, their whole thing seems to be doing these absurdly awesome and cinematic 2d games and this one is no difference. three of these boss fights are just incredibly raw with multiple phases and crazy concepts, reminiscent of something from gunstar heroes or contra hard corps.
this game does a thing where it mixes actual 3d with the kind of pre-rendered 3d that donkey kong country did, and this gives the already cute artstyle a cool edge to it.
the gameplay is good, a lil hard to get used to at first but becomes pretty intuitive later on. a couple spots where the odd puzzles become a little cryptic, including one near the beginning of the game where you're just supposed to know which ball to wiggle. there's also an olympic games part where you basically have to button mash to win three seperate sprint races, each getting twice as long as the last one, which just felt stupid and reminded me of mario party or something. other than that, yeah the gameplay feels nice. it's overall a mostly easy game, with the exception of a couple notably tough bosses. if you like treasure's usual antics, definitely give this one a go

i honestly think this game is incredibly flawed, with a lot of the puzzles being sort of bad due to their crypticness and the fact that a big part of these dungeons was really tedious to complete. however, the story, the music and the world this game creates is absolutely beautiful and absolutely won be over by the end. i'm definitely gonna remember the first time i entered hyrule fields and got filled with wonder for the world ahead of me. the combat is also really damn fun and the bosses especially stood out as awesome, so i guess in the end this is a pretty alright game

(endings finished so far: all of them including the secret one)

yyyeah this goes really fucking hard lol. i kinda prefer the simplicity of the nes ones but i also absolutely adore the direction they went with, the whole multiple endings shtick is awesome and everything is just loads of fun to play through.
i do recommend getting a patched american version that brings back the 10 lives and 3 hitpoints from the japanese version if ur gonna play this tho. might make it almost too easy at points but also this IS a game where you die a lot. i would say its harder than the two nes ones but definitely easier than contra 3 if played the way i did at least

i love how cinematic this one can be, it just feels badass being the awesome cool contra man fighting all these crazy ass monsters and jumping through explosions n shit. unfortunately i feel like this can sometimes play a bit awkwardly and has the issue of occassional "Stupid Bull Shit". most notably the boss of level 5 is kinda complete nonsense in its second phase and the only way ive beaten it is by using up all my six lives that i had to use a bomb every time. the overhead levels in general feel very weird to control and are a stepdown from the 3d/overhead levels of the nes games. this one is still generally pretty cool tho and has only a couple things holding it down, its still contra so you're at least gonna have a bit of fun