Platform: PC DLC
Genre: Rogue-like, 2D, Dungeon Crawler, Action
Gameplay stats: 449 hours (~275 are Rebirth), 100% of Steam achievements
I decided to wait to write this review until I was done with the game because this game has been evolving since release through a couple of weeks ago. Before I launch into the Afterbirth review, I'd like to say a bit about The Binding of Isaac Rebirth that was released the previous year, for which Afterbirth was released as DLC.
The Binding of Isaac Rebirth is pretty damn amazing. It's fun, it's got loads of replay value and in general is pretty bug free. The game is fantastic, difficult, and hours of fun for people that are a little cynical and are not offended by religious overtones in a game. I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone. It's great fun, there's an excellent community, and the creators of the game (Edmund McMillan and Tyrone Rodriguez) are really active and supportive of the game and the community that follows it so closely.
9.5/10
Now onto Afterbirth...
This is another game that I have no hope of objectivity about, but I'd like to write about it a little anyway to dovetail my experience. This won't follow my normal formula for game reviews.
I think that Afterbirth added a sufficient amount of content to keep things more fresh than they were in Rebirth and that's great! Adding new floors, items, and bosses into the mix increased the variability in the game to keep it from getting stale for an even longer time than. And then with the release of Afterbirth+ coming sometime in 2016 I'm sure that this game will be fresh into perpetuity.
That being said, I think that Afterbirth was crafted especially for those that already have a lot of experience in Rebirth. Most of the new bosses/floors are pretty significantly harder than the previous inclusions. The Burning Basement is a giant pain, ditto the Flooded Caves. They both add a filter over the level that when paired with Curse of Darkness makes the game nearly unplayable unless you crank up the gamma (contrast) of the game in the pause menu. With the addition of a lot of harder content, I spent more time restarting the game until I felt like I could get a good enough item to make progress. With Rebirth this wasn't the case as you could take practically any item at the start and be fine for the first couple levels.
The new music and voice overs are an excellent addition to the game! They add a lot to the experience and once again, keep everything fresh. The narrator (Matthias Bossi) that reads the pill/card effects sometimes is great. I really like the new pills/cards added as well. They keep the game interesting and with the right strategies can be used to pretty significantly change the game in some cases.
I like the changes made to the item pools and the overall rarity of items. I think everything on that level feels more balanced. I had a couple runs with Godhead in Afterbirth where I had to deliberately reset over and over again to get the item in Rebirth which was nice. The buff of the Sacrifice Rooms to make it easier to get Angel Room items is also great. Having this be an alternate way to earn the key pieces to fight Mega Satan is much needed as well since he now has a spot on each character's post-it note. It's too bad that mechanic/buff wasn't added until like a month after the release of the DLC, it would have saved me quite a bit of frustration.
I really liked the ARG put on by Edmund and Tyrone at the release. They didn't give everyone the content that they paid for at the release, but the people that were likely to care are the same ones that were probably interested in following the ARG that led to the release of the Keeper. It was great that it played out as they had imagined instead of the discovery of The Lost when Rebirth released. Good on ya, guys!
So, overall... I'd only recommend Afterbirth after you've played Rebirth for a long enough time to be decent at it. Otherwise, I fear that Afterbirth's difficulty might turn off new players. 8/10
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