The Binding Of Isaac: Repentance – Game Review

This year, I played a game that I’ve been putting off for a while. It’s an amazing game that I’ve been playing nonstop. The game in question is “The Binding Of Isaac: Repentance.” This game is incredibly comprehensive and so unbelievably fun to play that I just can’t get over it; I’m constantly playing it to find more secrets, endings, and fun.

The Story

In the game, you play as Isaac (Or others, like “???” and “Azazel” but we’ll talk about that later), a small young boy who loves to draw and lives with his mother. One day, while Isaac is drawing in his room and his mother is watching Christian broadcasts, God comes down to speak. He speaks to Isaac’s mother, telling her that her son is corrupt. So, Isaac’s mother takes away all that she thinks might corrupt him. She takes away his books, games, clothes, and even his crayons. Then, God comes down to speak again to Isaac’s mother. He tells her that her son is too corrupt and that she must kill him thus absolving him of sin. She grabs a knife from the kitchen and begins to walk towards Isaac’s bedroom. Through a crack in the door, Isaac sees his mother coming and begins to panic. In his panic, he sees under his rug a small trapdoor and, just as his mother bursts in, goes through the hatch into the depths below…

The Gameplay

TBOI’s gameplay is extremely fun because it’s so simple. You see your character from a third-person view and move them around as such. You walk into a room, and the door closes, leaving you to deal with a plethora of enemies before you can move on. You can walk around with the arrow keys and fire tears with WASD while dropping bombs with E and using items with SPACE or Q. Pretty simple right? Well, that’s where the items come in. Items are scattered all over, and each does something unique and game-changing. Take, for example, Brimstone. It’s an item that can only be obtained by sacrificing two heart containers in a devil room, that of which can only be found when having a high enough evil rating and defeating a boss hitless (Again, don’t worry, I’ll explain it all later). With Brimstone, you don’t fire tears but instead, fire a charged laser. This changes how you play, how you develop new strategies, find new spots, and create new ways for your items to interact with each other.

The Miscellaneous

The greatest thing about the TBOI is the everything else part of it. It has so many small, seemingly insignificant details which add up to a great and amazing game. First off, there is the “Angel and Devil” mechanics. Doing certain things in the game can raise your evil or holiness, such as giving to beggars or killing them. When you beat a boss without getting hit once, whichever stat is higher will spawn an Angel room (Holiness) or Devil Room (Evil), which hold amazingly powerful items. Next, there are secret rooms all over the game. They have no signals, other than seeming like a gap in the map sometimes, and after having played the game for a while (As I have), you start to get a smell for them and will place bombs next to seemingly random walls and get the secret room. You can also unlock new characters from doing certain challenges or difficulties in game, such as unlocking “Eve,” who has two special items and is unlocked by not gaining health for two floors. The secrets keep going and going and going. You can find secret rocks, secret items, secret bosses, and more and more as you keep discovering and adventuring in this wonderful Roguelike, of which I still have not found even half of all the secrets to find.

Concluding

All in all, TBOI is an absolutely amazing game. Over its many years of remakes and refurbishings, from rebirth, to afterbirth, and now to repentance, it has been molded into a perfect game to fall in love with and spend tons of time with. I have played this game non-stop recently, exploring, discovering, and unveiling all there is to unveil. I would rate it a 10/10 and can’t wait to play even more of it in the future.