Recent reviews by Tadici

DISCLAIMER: I haven't looked into the mod tools yet. This is a review of the content of the expansion.

Okay, where to start?

I have been playing Isaac for years ever since the Original. I love the Original, I love Rebirth and I really like Afterbirth and yet I am dumbfounded by Afterbirth+.

Who would've expected such lazy and sometimes downright perplexing work from Edmund and Nicalis?

Let's start with the good : There are a couple of interesting new items. Also the new character is pretty neat.

Okay, now that we're done with the good let's see what's so disappointing about AB+ :

• The Difficulty : Now don't get me wrong. I am all for more challenging runs. I have probably put over 1000 hours in Isaac and its remake. I am ready for a new mode to test my skill and my knowledge of the game and its mechanics. Sadly either they let an intern make all of the design decisions or they just didn't give a damn. How else could you explain this lazy way of making the game more difficult. Throwing more enemies at you without making it interesting in any way whatsoever is just bewildering to me.
  
  
• Greedier Mode : So the way they made Greed mode hard and even less enjoyable (as if that was even possible) is to make the waves spawn faster (too fast most of the time), make more champions (and more enemies in general) appear and give you less money. So basically you get fewer ways to influence your run and they just throw more enemies with more health at you. How is that interesting in any way? If you don't get early damage upgrades then you basically are better off restarting the run than waiting for 30 enemies to overwhelm you on the 3rd floor.
  The other way that Greed Mode got harder is the second phase of the Final Boss. The second phase of Ultra Greed is just another Bullet Sponge that mostly randomly throws explosive tears everywhere. There's no way to dodge it effectively. You have to have a lot of health and luck or the patience to cheese it with Gnawed Leaf. (Bullet Sponge Bosses were introduced in Afterbirth and I feel that was the biggest mistake in the expansion. Now it just becomes more tedious.)
  
  
• The Void : This is the new area after the Hush fight and this has got to be the laziest design decision I have ever seen in an expansion. This new floor just randomly picks rooms from all the other floors with a couple of boss fights and a new final boss. Even if that wasn't lazy as hell, most rooms don't provide any challenge whatsoever. If you made it through the Hush fight, then it's basically just going through rooms until you get to the boss. You clear most rooms in seconds and basically all pickups are useless since you don't need money or keys at all. Most likely you won't lose any HP and bombs are useless in the Final Boss fight. Without giving it away, the final boss is extemely poorly designed. It just randomly throws stuff at you. You can't dodge effectively, you can't aim and shoot effectively, it's incredibly boring and tedious. I can guarantee that 99% of people will never go to that floor again after getting the achievements.

I just don't understand how that happened. It just seems like Game Design 101 was thrown out of the window. I would argue that overall (even if you ignore Greedier Mode and The Void) Afterbirth+ makes Rebirth as a whole less enjoyable. I'll probably get the achievements and then hope for the community to add the quality content I expected in AB+.

On a side note. You should definitely check out Antibirth, a fanmade free expansion for Rebirth. And it is really really cool!

pretty good. I'd put a couple of hours in it.