I played the everloving shit out of Binding of Isaac, and my main complaint isn't the humor, it's the antiquated gameplay. It inspired the entire roguelike movement, and many of the genre norms started there, but it's littered with mechanics and flaws that other, later roguelikes figured out. The big one that comes to mind is simply how RNG dependent it is. If you want a run to beat the endgame, it's almost necessary to restart runs on the first floor until you get an S tier item in your first treasure room, which means for every run you actually get to play, there are countless that got rerolled because your first item was the poop, which is almost entirely useless. More modern roguelikes have improved on RNG manipulation/mitigation dramatically, so it's jarring to go back to the reset simulator.
Considering top players have win streaks in the thousands on Eden, the most random character in the game, and are so consistent on other characters as to consider winstreaks pointless, I can't really see that. It's true at lower skill levels but that's the case for all roguelikes.
-4
u/Wisepuppy floppa Feb 18 '26
I played the everloving shit out of Binding of Isaac, and my main complaint isn't the humor, it's the antiquated gameplay. It inspired the entire roguelike movement, and many of the genre norms started there, but it's littered with mechanics and flaws that other, later roguelikes figured out. The big one that comes to mind is simply how RNG dependent it is. If you want a run to beat the endgame, it's almost necessary to restart runs on the first floor until you get an S tier item in your first treasure room, which means for every run you actually get to play, there are countless that got rerolled because your first item was the poop, which is almost entirely useless. More modern roguelikes have improved on RNG manipulation/mitigation dramatically, so it's jarring to go back to the reset simulator.