Recent reviews by Epsi

It pains me to admit, but this expansion was a big step back from what made Isaac fun. The base gameplay is still there, but your chances of having a strong satisfying build is way down. All of the carry items have been nerfed, but there are still a huge chunk of useless items so more often than not you'll run into mom with base damage. Beyond the nerfs there are a few other head scratching decisions that were made. The massive increase in difficulty for hard mode, the changes to the devil room, the changes to item shops.

I really want to enjoy the expansion, and will probably keep playing it as I had Isaac 100%ed before the expansion, but it is going to be a slog.

Great game. Yea, i kinda wanna not work today and just play it... but i have too much to do

The game is fun, but I've played early access games with more features. I'm sure a lot of these issues will be fixed and I'll revisit my review when they are, but let’s break down the issues I've ran into in my brief 2.5 hours of gameplay.

Achievements: None of them work. At all.

Game Options: When you launch Lend of Bumbo you can choose screen resolution, graphics quality (between fantastic and beautiful, those are your only choices, no idea which is supposed to be better) and which monitor it's displayed on. That's literally it. There are no sound options, no further graphic settings, no settings that you’d expect from a modern game. What I the above settings are the exhaustive list.

Cloud saves: They're not a thing, it's disappointing if you like to game on multiple computers. I get that this one is a bit nitpicky, but there’s a good number of early access games with this feature, yet this fully launched game doesn't have it.

mid run pauses: If you want to walk away from a session for whatever reason you have to leave the game running, there is no save feature allowing you to put it down and come back to it at a later time. Not all roguelikes have this, but it _probably_ should be a thing.

Bugs: There's a lot of them. Some rooms have zero audio at all (which to be honest is a nice break from the blasting music which you can only turn down in your windows volume mixer). Multiple softlocks including: picking up a 4th trinket has a chance to lock the game, killing the last enemy in a room with poison locks the game, the item that breaks rocks and poop will lock your game. I get that they're not a large team, but this is an unacceptable amount of locks which force you to abandon a run. Those are just the bugs I've personally seen or have had friends encounter, definitely not an exhaustive list. Oh by the way, don’t hit accidentally hit the 'D' key while playing or you'll lose a heart. Things like that are honestly mind boggling.

UI: It's very very basic. There is no option to skip a turn if you're waiting for a mob to be vulnerable. There is no bestiary that describes the enemies you encounter, there is no streak counter for those of you that are coming from Isaac.

Summary: The gameplay _is_ fun but everything else about this game is a buggy and incomplete mess. I'm disappointed by the quality that Bumbo was shipped in and I frankly can't recommend it at this time. Bumbo is in an early, _early_ access state but being sold as a fully launched game, wait a few weeks until they get their ♥♥♥♥ together and actually offer a complete and finished product.

I really enjoyed this game for awhile. Some spoilers ahead.


Up until the 3rd brand was given out I really enjoyed the 'explore kill and kill bosses' nature of the game. After that it sort of becomes a 'now explore with puzzles and get lost and figure it out'. I get that the game is supposed to be difficult, hell I really enjoy that part of it. But let me fight the monsters, let me fight the bosses, don't make me fight convoluted puzzles and a map that requires backtracking (which doesn't explain when you need to do this). You just have to wander aimlessly to try and figure it out.

This game was good, the combat is fun, the weapons are fun, the bosses are fun. The amount of running required in the later parts of the game were almost enough to get me to put down the game, and were enough to make me give a negative review.

I was ranting and raving about how good this game was telling my friends to buy it, but now I'm telling them not to unless they want a strange progression which isn't explained anywhere.

This game isn't for everyone, it's brutal, unfair, and completely insane. Nuclear Throne, is a game where you feel yourself slowly improving, and has a high degree of mastery. As you get better, it because a bit less unfair, but the insanity and brutality don't really go away. I can not remember the last time I was this satisfied after beating a game. 10/10 will buy for friends when it goes on sale.

The game is advertised as having online co-op. It doesn't. I've been playing single player and it seems alright enough. Performance does start to chug in later levels, but that's not unexpected with the amount of mobs on the screen. If you think the game looks fun to go for single player go for it, but if you're looking for a multiplayer game, this one is falsely advertised.