The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Complaints about specific content come mostly from players with 50 hours or more, and most sit inside positive reviews. Jacob and Esau ("Jacob and Hitbox") are named more than any other character, and because they gate unlocks, players can't simply avoid them. Tainted Lost, Tainted Lazarus, Tainted Eden and Blue Baby also draw complaints. Among fights and modes, players curse Greed and Greedier mode (the donation machine in particular), the Bloat, Delirium, Mother, Hush, Ultra Hard and the April Fools challenge; among regular enemies, spiders, Hosts, bomb flies, red poops and the heart-and-mask enemies. Some veterans flip to negative over this content, and a few ask outright for Jacob and Esau to be reworked or removed ("Please remove Jacob and Esau tyty").

The technical complaints cluster around DLC and the Repentance+ update, each reported by a handful of reviewers. Some say the game will not launch with Afterbirth+ or Repentance+ enabled (sometimes fixable only by owning or disabling every DLC) or hit a missing-file error. Others lose winning runs to crashes mid-run, or report CPU temperature spikes and random lag that one fixed only with the community REPENTOGON script. After the multiplayer update, Steam Decks and some controllers are detected as two players, menus and buttons are remapped, PS5 controllers lost native support, and Brimstone-style charged attacks misfire on controller. Players also mention no borderless fullscreen, unclear keybinds and no way to change language in Repentance+.

A small group lost progress: saves deleted after buying DLC or updating, a Repentance+ upgrade that one player says deleted all their data, Steam Cloud failing to restore a file, achievements disappearing or re-unlocking all at once with wrong dates, and online sessions overwriting a local file. Reactions range from "Never been happier to lose a save file" to "Top 10 worst games," and several advise others to back up saves manually.

Mac players note that Repentance and Repentance+ have never come to macOS, some after buying the full bundle, and a few say the Mac build crashes or stopped launching. On Linux, the native port only goes up to Afterbirth+, so players must force Proton (with some saying newer Proton versions struggle). Several feel their money bought content they cannot run.

Some players find movement slippery and hitboxes unforgiving, especially on Jacob and Esau and Tainted Lost. Others point to readability: red projectiles on red floors, dark enemies on dark backgrounds, tear effects hiding spikes, projectiles with a hidden "height," enemies that teleport or attack off-screen, and a lack of colorblind-friendly options.

Curse of the Blind and other curses, enemies stuck behind rocks that must be waited out, and bosses that give little warning (the Bloat comes up by name) strike some players as difficulty that feels arbitrary rather than earned.

At launch, the game closed on start for some players with the DLC enabled, crashed when entering the Blue Womb after It Lives, and imported Rebirth saves with scrambled completion marks or achievements players had not earned. Bugs, crashes or glitches come up in 13% of the longer reviews overall and in 23% of those from the month after launch day. Some players briefly thought their saves were gone until others pointed to the import button ("For those that are saying your save files are gone, there is an import data option on the file selection screen."), while others warned, "Do not import your save without backing it up first." Patches fixed some of this within weeks, and a few critics edited their reviews to say so. One reviewer only flipped a negative vote much later: "I cannot believe I had an oudated negative review sitting here for almost a year based on a problem that was resolved long ago." Launch failures never fully went away, though. 37 reviews written from 2016 onward still describe crashes or a game that will not start, some of them right after a DLC was installed, for example "GAME WILL NOT OPEN AFTER INSTALLING AFTERBIRTH PLUS." and "Buying all the dlc reset my save file".

Players name Azazel's attack, Lilith's Box of Friends, the Stopwatch and Judas's Book of Belial, and several argue a single-player game does not need nerfs at all: "they keep nerfing crap and apparently NO FUN ALLOWED". Nerfs come up in 6% of the longer reviews and 24% of the longer negative ones, and 90% of those mentions date from 2015. The lack of patch notes added to the anger, because players learned of a change only by picking up an item that no longer worked: "There have never been any patch notes for this." One reviewer added, "I still hold a grudge on the stopwatch nerf". A few defended the changes as necessary once the new synergies made some builds too strong.

Part of the advertised item list and the second new character were missing for the first days and were patched in over the following weeks, and 4% of the longer reviews (15% of the longer negative ones) say the expansion was incomplete at launch. Some players enjoyed the community hunt for secrets around launch; others felt the missing content should have been stated on the store page: "this was not a complete product on launch." The promised new final area also disappointed people who expected a full floor: "The new chapter/area is a tiny prep room and a single boss room."

Some owners find the game still launching as Rebirth, or Steam listing the DLC in the library but not installing it, or Steam refusing Afterbirth+ and Repentance because it no longer recognizes Afterbirth: "it sucks i have afterbirth and its not letting me get afterbirth+ or repentence". Problems getting the content to run or to count come up in 4% of the longer reviews and in a steady trickle of short ones across the later years. Others report being told to buy again ("need to re-purchase if i want to play repentance or repentance+") or object to the later expansions being sold only as a bundle. A few Mac and Linux owners add that later expansions dropped their platforms, leaving them stuck on Afterbirth. From Repentance's launch onward, 42% of the negative reviews (35 of 84) are about launching, crashing, mods or Steam purchases, against 17% (14) that criticize the content itself.

3% of the longer reviews, and 10% of the longer negative ones, complain about room design that makes damage unavoidable: tiny, narrow and L-shaped rooms holding big bosses, enemies that spawn on top of Isaac, item pedestals fenced in by spikes, and devil deals that spawn outside a small boss room where they cannot be reached. One player put it sarcastically: "I'm sure everyone asked for smaller rooms that make enemies more difficult to dodge."

The Keeper is the secret character unlocked by feeding 1,000 coins into the Greed machine. He heals only with coins, holds at most two coin hearts and cannot use devil deals, and his own unlocks are described as weak. He comes up in 3% of the longer reviews, and the reviewers who judge him mostly dislike playing him: "the secret character is horribly unfun." Another reviewer wrote, "Keeper is broken, plain annoying to unlock, and rewards suck."

Weak, situational and joke items crowd out the strong ones, say 3% of the longer reviews, so good runs come along less often, and new pill effects make unknown pills riskier: "It dilutes the already existing pool with 120 more items, some great, some trash."

The store lists multiplayer and co-op, but co-op is local only and the second player joins as a familiar ("they should only have the local co-op tag"). Co-op comes up in 2% of the longer reviews, and the other complaint is about rewards: many unlocks, including the rewards for beating Mega Satan, are new co-op babies that solo players never use: "Dozens upon dozens of disgusting and awesome babies that the vast majority of players will never even see in action".

25% of the reviews written in January and February 2017 call the content lazy, rushed or reskinned, or hold it up against Antibirth, the free fan expansion released shortly before, and 16% of that window's reviews name Antibirth outright. Reviewers point to enemies built from existing sprites, new bosses that are larger or merged versions of old ones (Big Horn from Little Horn, Rag Mega from Rag Man and the Haunt, Sisters Vis from the Cage), and recolored items. "It's sad when a free mod adds more interesting content then a paid dlc." Defenders answer that Afterbirth+ was announced as a small expansion built around mod tools and that Antibirth had years of development behind it. The comparison fades after 2017, and later reviewers mention that Antibirth's developers went on to work on the game's later content.

Reviewers report startup failures in every period. At launch, many buyers could not start the game with Afterbirth+ installed ("I can't even launch Isaac if I have this DLC installed."), and the fixes passed around included reinstalling Visual C++ 2015 and working around antivirus programs that flagged a bundled editor. The store page listed only Rebirth as a requirement, so buyers without Afterbirth found the game refused to load. Early patches also hid or wiped some save files ("Purchasing A+ cost me my save file."), and a few reviewers lost runs to crashes in the Delirium fight. Reports kept coming after the launch patches, among them "Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ cannot even launch.", written years later.

The share of crash reports grows after Repentance: 17% of the reviews written since its release describe a black screen, a game that closes itself, or a launch that only works with Afterbirth+ disabled, peaking at 28% of the reviews written in 2022. Reviewers disagree about the cause. Some say "For TboI to work with DLCs, you have to own every single one, including Repetance+ Beta." Others blame a broken mods folder ("it works fine without mods"), though more of them say deleting their mods changed nothing. Mac players say it stopped running ("Afterbirth Plus is no longer compatible for Mac users"), one of them after an operating system update, and Steam Deck players write that "afterbirth+ is broken on steamdeck since november and theres been no fix". 34% of these crash reports still recommend the expansion, and several of them say they like the game and ask for a fix.

22% of the reviews written in January and February 2017 bring up the ways Afterbirth+ made the game harder, mostly to complain. They name portals that spawn enemies from the first floor onward, invulnerable stone fatties that push the player around and block shots, chests that turn into spike chests ("No one slowly walks up to a chest to open it."), treasure rooms with no item, rooms packed with Blastocysts, tanky bosses with untelegraphed attacks, and an unlock that adds half soul hearts after repeated restarts, which one reviewer summed up as paying "to have your game actively penalize all of your future runs, forever." Their objection is that luck now counts for more than skill: "Portals increase the random factor and not the skill." A minority welcomed a harder game, told critics to "git gud", or wrote that "the portals aren't that hard and itemless item rooms almost never happen stop complaining". The early patches toned most of these down, and this complaint largely disappears after 2017.

The new final floor and boss draw complaints in every period. At launch, reviewers objected that the Void stitches together rooms from earlier floors ("Final floor is a bunch of rooms from other levels stitched together with literally zero new assets added.") and that reaching it depended on beating Hush quickly or on a random portal. Reviewers describe Delirium, a boss that shifts between earlier bosses, teleporting onto the player, and complain about its huge health pool with damage scaling, its immunity to the Chaos Card and, at launch, its single frame of animation. "Delirium is the worst boss in the game, and despite the balance changes, he can and will telefrag you." Reviews written after Repentance still name it ("even in repentance delirium is still a horribly designed un-fun boss fight, even if the concept is cool"). A minority like the fight and its place in the story: "I genuinely enjoy The Void and Delirium, you guys are just mean".

Greedier, the hard version of Afterbirth's Greed mode, is described as Greed with fewer coins, faster waves, more champions and a second phase for Ultra Greed full of explosions: "greedier mode is just greed mode but less fun". Reviewers say a run is decided by whether an early item drops, and that the mode is required for unlocks, so completionists must grind it with every character. Some launch reviewers who found Greed too easy welcomed it ("This is the ACTUAL Greed Mode I was looking for in Afterbirth."), and one credits its lower jam chance with making the Holy Mantle and Keeper unlocks reachable. Later reviews still single it out, and a 2026 review asks for it to be rebuilt with the newer room types.

Some reviewers complain about how the expansion is sold. Shortly after launch it became available only in bundles, so owners cannot gift it to friends who already own part of the set ("LET ME GIFT IT TO MY FRIEND WITHOUT BUYING THE BUNDLE"), and later buyers ask "Why in the kentucky fried fluck can you not buy this directly?" Others object to a DLC that requires another DLC and to paying for Workshop access ("Real nice i have to spend $10 just to use mods. Thanks"). A few launch reviewers said the store page's multiplayer listing implied online co-op when only local co-op was available. One later review asks to "PLEASE MAKE THE DLC PURCHASE PROCESS MORE STREAMLINED".

Launch reviewers describe crashes, broken item interactions and content that felt incomplete, including "various unfinished items (the worst offender being Birthright)." Bugs, crashes or glitches come up in 7.3% of longer reviews, and 59 of the 83 reviews that mention crashes were written in 2021. Mod support was also switched off at launch. Nearly every review about it (53 of 58) dates from 2021, and later ones report that "Mod support got readded and the community goes wild with mods!"

Rebirth and its earlier expansions ran natively on Mac and Linux, and Repentance is Windows-only. Only 4.1% of longer reviews bring it up, but its share of the negative reviews grew: 6% of 2021's negative reviews mention it, against 23% of negative reviews from 2022 on (81 of 345), more than any other complaint in those years. "Not sure why macOS and Linux support are gone for this one," one reviewer wrote, and another asked the store to "put in the description in bold letters or something that this doesn't run on linux." Mac owners describe buying it and then finding they cannot play. Linux players report mixed results through Steam's Proton layer, from "it runs perfectly on Proton so that doesn't even bother me that much" to "Running this via proton results in waaaay to many crashes."

"I CANT SEE WHATS HITTING ME," one reviewer wrote in launch week. These complaints name Curse of the Darkness, dark new floors, reflections and lightning flashes on the water levels, and projectiles that blend into backgrounds. They turn up in 3.5% of longer reviews, and 75 of the 93 reviews raising them were written in the launch month. A few raise photosensitivity, and one colorblind player wrote: "The game is still impossible to play when colorblind without mods".

Repentance requires every earlier expansion and was sold through bundles, and a small group of reviews ran into trouble around that. Players could not gift it on its own ("cant buy as a gift due to dlc being only listed in a bundle."). Reports of saves wiped on install, or old Rebirth progress that would not carry over, run from launch through reviews written in 2026. One review headed its warning "BE CAREFUL IF YOU'RE BUYING THE COMPLETE BUNDLE AFTER PLAYING THE BASE GAME" and explained: "I guess the devs couldn't figure out how to make a rebirth save transfer seamlessly from vanilla to repentance."

Lag and input delay come up in 36% of longer reviews, more than any other problem, and most of those reviews complain about it. Players describe the online mode keeping everyone in sync by delaying every input, "giving everybody about half a second of input lag, akin to how most Nintendo online games work," and slowing the whole lobby to its worst connection, which one reviewer called "several minutes of The Binding of Powerpoint for everyone in the lobby." Hosts, players alone in an online lobby and friends who live in the same town report the delay too. In a game built on dodging projectiles, one reviewer wrote, "the input delay with this ruins the fun of it." 5% of longer reviews compare the mode with Steam Remote Play or Parsec, and most of them say the workaround played better: "Somehow official online has worse input lag than steam remote play." A smaller group pushes back, calling the delay tolerable, blaming slow connections, or reporting that it improved once an input delay setting arrived: "Finally they added a how much input lag option in the settings which is weird but it fixed the issue!" Lag mentions fell over time, from 53% of longer launch-week reviews to 16% of longer reviews written in 2026.

15% of longer reviews describe online runs breaking apart. A desync splits the lobby into separate solo games, a dropped player can only rejoin at the next floor ("you have to wait for the next FLOOR to reconnect"), and online runs are not saved. Reviewers name triggers such as holding R to restart, Ipecac and certain trinkets, and several describe crashes at the worst moment: "game CONSISTENTLY crashes when touching chest after defeating the final boss." In another run "the game crashed at the perfect moment during The Beast cutscene," and only the reviewer's friend got the achievement. "If the game is going to be unstable, it needs a quick-reconnect option," one player wrote. These reports did not fade with time: they went from 13% of longer launch-week reviews to 18% of longer reviews written in 2026.

5% of longer reviews report the game failing to start after installing Repentance+ or telling them to buy the earlier expansions, and the share rose to 9% of longer reviews written in 2026. A recurring group is players who claimed the free listing without owning Afterbirth, Afterbirth+ and Repentance: "the store page has it listed as free DLC to TBoI Rebirth, but it bricks your game if you do." One player's friend bought Afterbirth when a pop-up asked for it, and then "the pop-up changed to say Afterbirth+ was required." Another wrote that "new players constantly mess up and claim the dlc without noticing it requires previous dlc." Owners of every expansion report it too: "it launches a white screen for half a second then instantly closes. I have all the DLCs". Reviewers trade fixes such as unticking Repentance+ in the game's DLC properties, deleting its files or reinstalling, and several could not work out how to remove it at all.

Mod complaints appear in 12% of longer reviews, and more than half were written in launch week, when 17.5% of longer reviews raised them. Repentance+ moved the mod folder, changed the modding API and broke the community's Repentogon extender at launch; one reviewer called it "probably one of the worst things that has happened to modding this game since Afterbirth+ released." Online play also requires turning every mod off and restarting, even in a private lobby with friends, and a recurring request is an exception for client-side helpers: "QOL mods like EID or Planetarium Chance should be allowed since they help rather than add to the game." Some later and edited reviews say single-player mods work again ("now that the mods work native for single player i can recommend this to everyone"), and mod complaints fell to 7% of longer reviews written in 2026, though reviews from 2026 still ask for mods in online play.

Repentance+ copies the Repentance save the first time it is installed and keeps its own file after that, so progress made later in Repentance does not follow. One player's copy "did not update with any of my single-player progress following about 50 more hours of playtime." Others describe online sessions replacing their file ("The game overwrites your save with someone else's from multiplayer.") or crashes rolling progress back. Fixes circulate, such as syncing unlocks from Steam achievements in the Secrets menu, but one reviewer summed up the process: "getting your saves to transfer is like diffusing a bomb." A few defenders note that the game warns about the separate save at first launch.

7% of longer reviews say Repentance+ broke their controller, and the share rose to 15% of longer reviews written in 2026. The reports are specific: sticks rotated 90 degrees, the B button registering as a direction so menus cannot be exited, and a single pad detected as two players. A Steam Deck owner wrote: "Up was left, left was up, right was down and you cant pause!" Another found that "uninstalling the DLC fixed everything and made the game playable," a fix several others repeat. Some got their pad working through Steam Input settings or an older Proton version.

Players who stick with online play raise design problems. Treasure rooms give one item to the whole team while bosses drop one per player ("Bosses drop double loot so each player gets an item (free item rooms give 1 item only)."), so the best items pile onto one character. "for the love of god make item rooms have more than one item and the mode will be fun," one reviewer asked. Identical characters are hard to tell apart, public lobbies bring players who grab items and leave, the online daily run cannot be played with friends only ("PLEASE LET US PLAY THE DAILY CHALLENGE WITH JUST OUR FRIENDS WITHOUT RANDOM PEOPLE JOINING"), and the chat filter blocks mild swearing in an M-rated game.

A smaller group reports the add-on running hotter and slower than Repentance even in single player. One measured "Constant 93 degrees on CPU for no reason (compared to 50-55 on regular Repentance)", and others describe fans ramping up at launch and frame drops on the first floor.

4% of longer reviews bring up the three online achievements and the online completion marks. Some object that these put full completion of a long single-player game behind an online mode ("Please remove multiplayer-only achievements," one player asked), and others report achievements failing to unlock after an online win.

Repentance+ has no macOS version, and Mac owners say the store does not make that clear: "does not work on mac. this information is not easy to find." It also shipped in English only and dropped the translations Repentance had. "I'm stuck on repentance because translations were removed in this DLC," one reviewer wrote, and Chinese is the language reviewers ask for most often.