The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth: The Binding of Isaac: Repentance
Edmund McMillen · RPG, Action, Indie
Overview
The Binding of Isaac: Repentance is the ultimate version of Binding of Isaac, featuring all content from the Rebirth, Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ expansions, plus hundreds of new features and improvements. The ultimate edition of the genre-defining roguelike!
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PRAY FOR REPENTANCE AND BE REBORN
Experience the modern classic, The Binding of Isaac, like you've never seen it before. It's a game too big to be called a sequel: Repentance takes Isaac to new heights of roguelike dungeon adventure, as the brave boy descends into the basement for his greatest challenge yet! Isaac's new quest takes him to unknown places he's never been, filled with horrible new enemies and bosses, weapon combos you've never synergized before and items he's never seen... unholy terrors from his wildest dreams and worst nightmares!
BIGGER THAN A SEQUEL
The Binding of Isaac: Repentance is so huge, so new and so feature-packed that it makes previous updates look like prequels. There are more features, improvements and new secrets, too many secrets, than most games would include in an official sequel! It's an immense amount of new content to explore, even if you're at 1,000,000%!
THE "FINAL" UPDATE TO THE AWARD-WINNING CLASSIC
The Binding of Isaac: Repentance features hundreds of new features and quality-of-life improvements. It’s the ultimate edition of the genre-defining roguelike, now with OVER 500 HOURS of new gameplay!
KEY FEATURES:
- 130+ new items (more than 700 items in total)
- A full alternate path with brand new chapters and a new final boss and ending
- 100+ new enemies
- 25+ new bosses
- 2 new playable characters
- 5 new challenges
- 100+ new achievements
- 5,000+ new room designs
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT6,757 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Repentance is the last paid expansion for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and it is sequel-sized. It adds an alternate route through the main chapters, a new final stretch with a proper ending, new characters plus a tainted version of every existing one, a large batch of items and a new soundtrack. 82% of its reviews recommend it. Of the things players praise, the amount of new material comes up most often, followed by the ending, Ridiculon's music and the tainted characters. Smaller groups single out the quality-of-life fixes and true local co-op.
Balance is where reviewers disagree. Repentance nerfed many of the strongest items, made hard mode much stingier with shops, soul hearts and pickups, and sped up enemy shots, and 45% of the negative reviews written in 2021 bring up balance or nerfs. Long-time players split between those who welcomed a real challenge and those who felt the fun had been taken out. Some reviewers say later patches eased part of it, and reviews written from 2022 on ran between 87% and 90% positive in every calendar year. The expansion also dropped the native Mac and Linux versions earlier Isaac releases had, which became the most common complaint in negative reviews after 2021. Launch brought crashes, unfinished characters and items and mods switched off, and some buyers had trouble gifting the DLC or carrying old saves over.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
A sequel's worth of new contentHigh
30% of longer reviews talk about the expansion's content. The ones that list it name alternate floors, new bosses and enemies, a large batch of new items, new challenges and a far larger roster. "This DLC is more like The Binding of Isaac 2. The amount of content it adds is staggering!" one reviewer wrote. Several compare it with Afterbirth+ and call Repentance what that expansion should have been, or say it fixed Afterbirth+'s problems. A smaller group thinks the item pool was already too big: "The game is more bloated than the bloat now."
The true ending and the new final bossesMedium
Some long-time players read the new last chapter as an ending for the whole series, going back to the original Flash game, and describe being moved by it: "This DLC's ending is one of the few times a fictional series has made me cry." The ending, the new final bosses or the sense of closure come up in 12% of longer reviews. Reviewers call the last fights a fitting climax, and one nearly leapt out of their seat when the game switched from top-down to side-scrolling. The complaints here are about the long route needed to reach it.
Ridiculon's soundtrack and the visual overhaulMedium
"Ridiculon really outdid themselves with the new tracks," one reviewer wrote, and another called the new music "an actual banger." The music or soundtrack comes up in 7.5% of longer reviews. Players also praise the new floors' look, lighting and effects, calling the graphical rework beautiful and the new spritework gorgeous. Some Antibirth fans missed that mod's original score: "Also, the great Antibirth soundtrack is missing." Some of the same lighting effects draw visibility complaints.
Tainted characters and a much bigger rosterMedium
The tainted characters, alternate versions of every existing character with their own rules, come up in 5.4% of longer reviews. One reviewer joked about how many there are: "False advertisement. It shouldn't say 2 new playable characters, it should say 19 new playable characters." Fans say the tainted versions play nothing like the originals and make them rethink strategies they had used for years. A few characters draw complaints. Jacob and Esau are named in 3.1% of longer reviews, and the detailed complaints describe two hitboxes, two health bars and brothers that get separated by terrain and enemies: "Please fix Jacob&Esau. It's universally agreed that it's the most frustrating character to play as." Tainted Lazarus and some others drew criticism in 2021 for feeling unfinished, with one reviewer calling several tainted characters "obvious placeholders thrown in just to fill up the roster."
Quality-of-life fixes and true co-opLow
Smaller groups praise changes that remove old annoyances, such as spike-room damage no longer costing devil deal chances and the first-floor shop no longer being locked. One reviewer found normal mode easier "due to some of the balance changes, like curse doors and blood banks no longer taking away devil deal chances." True co-op, where every player controls a full character, gets brief, happy mentions ("True coop is amazing."), though one buyer who got the DLC for co-op reported crashes and called the mode "VERY bugged." Online play only arrived later with Repentance+.
Where players are split
The nerfs and a much harder hard modeHigh
35% of longer reviews talk about balance, rebalancing or nerfs, and in 2021 the subject came up in 45% of negative reviews (379 of 851). Critics name the same changes: nerfs to long-time favourite items and builds, hard mode shops and tinted rocks giving less, fewer soul hearts, faster enemy shots and higher boss health ("Lets just get this out of the way, remove boss hp scaling please."). For them runs feel poorer and more dependent on luck, and 14% of all negative reviews call the game, or parts of it, no fun or less fun than before. "I paid $14 to make one of my all-time favorite games a miserable chore to play," one wrote. A player who had used Isaac to wind down for years wrote: "This game that I want to play just to kick back and relax is gone." Another compared it to starting over: "Learning how to play Repentance is as difficult as learning Isaac for the first time but without the joy of discovering the game."
Defenders answer that the old hard mode had become too easy, and the line "hard mode is actually hard" (or a close variant) turns up in 17 reviews. Some dismiss the backlash ("the negative reviews are just people whining about how their meta has been broken"), and others tell struggling players to switch to normal mode. One praised the end state outright: "The balance that they've crafted for Repentance once you have everything unlocked is pretty much perfect." Some reviewers say patches fixed part of the problem. One edited a review after a fix ("Now that they have fixed the shop and the tinted rock drop rates i think that normal mode is somewhat balanced."), and another wrote that it "was filled with to many nerfs to really be fun... but after multiple updates and changes it do really like where it is at now". Complaints about shops and tinted rocks almost all date from 2021 (158 of the 166 reviews that mention them), and from 2022 on balance appears in only 12% of negative reviews (42 of 345).
Antibirth folded in, and whether it is worth the priceMedium
Antibirth, the free fan mod Repentance grew out of, is mentioned in 10% of longer reviews, and 243 of the 281 reviews that name it come from 2021. Supporters are glad to have its content made official and tied to a new ending. Players who had already played the mod are less convinced: "While i enjoy the content its hard to recommend it given the content already existed as a free mod (Binding of Isaac - Antibirth)." Others liked the new ending more than the adapted mod material, summed up as "Antibirth bad, final chapter good." Price comes up in 5.9% of longer reviews. The complaints are about paying for what was mostly a free mod, and several point out that newcomers must also buy Rebirth, Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ first. About 6% of longer reviews call the expansion "worth it" or use a similar phrase, against 1.7% that say it is "not worth" it.
The alternate path, Mother and the knife piecesMedium
Players like the new floors' atmosphere and music, and the alternate floors, Mother or the knife pieces that open the route come up in 11% of longer reviews. The route itself draws steady complaints. It needs keys and bombs early ("Going through the first 2 floors (even on normal) without finding a single key and/or bomb is simply not fun."), the knife pieces and chase sequences must be repeated every run ("The cave chase is an annoyance at this point and I hate doing it everytime I want to fight mother"), and Mother fights in a cramped arena with a lot of health. "The mother fight is an abomination that's 10 times harder to get through than any other boss in the game," one reviewer wrote.
The unlock grind and secrets that need a wikiLow
Unlocks depend on long chains of specific runs and hidden conditions, and some reviewers say they could not work out the way to the new areas without a guide or the wiki. 3.3% of longer reviews use the words grind or chore, about the unlocks on every character, the steps to reach Mother, or the game as a whole after the nerfs. Completionists who enjoy that work count the long unlock list as part of the value.
Repentance+ and online co-opLow
Repentance+, the later add-on that brought online co-op, is named in only 11 reviews, 9 of them written from 2024 on. Some welcome it ("Repentance+ has genuinely fixed most issues I've had with the game!"), while a Steam Deck player found that after the update "Previously working controls are ABSOLUTELY screwed". Before it arrived, the lack of online play was a complaint of its own: "Last expansion and still no online co-op for PC."
What frustrates players
A rough launch: crashes, unfinished pieces and mods switched offMedium
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!"
No Mac or Linux versionMedium
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."
Hard to see what is hitting youLow
"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".
Buying, gifting and carrying saves overLow
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."
3. The player conversation
Most of the conversation happened at launch. 38% of all reviews arrived in the first month, and 62% are under 100 characters: launch-night cheers ("Let me in."), thanks to the team and jokes that say little about the expansion. Launch-month reviews were 76% positive, and among weeks with at least 50 reviews the lowest was the week of 3 May 2021, at 68% (99 reviews). Longer reviews are more critical, at 69% positive against 82% overall, and the balance arguments happen in those detailed write-ups.
In 2021 the debate was among long-time players. The balance complaints compare Repentance with the Afterbirth+ builds and habits their writers had, and defenders answer that hard mode finally deserves its name. Returning and casual players add the learning curve and the loss of a game they could relax with. Even some negative reviews about the balance call the new content great. From 2022 on, balance faded from the negative reviews, and the missing Mac and Linux versions became the most common grievance, raised mostly by players on those systems. Save losses on install keep turning up in later years too.
4. What the developers could do
- Loosen hard mode's resource economy. Shops, tinted rocks, soul hearts and early keys and bombs are the concrete complaints behind the 2021 balance backlash, and one reviewer who updated a review after the shop and tinted-rock fixes called normal mode somewhat balanced.
- Restore native Mac and Linux builds, or label the store page plainly. From 2022 on, the missing ports are the most common complaint in negative reviews, and one reviewer asked for the Linux caveat in bold on the store page.
- Finish and test big updates before release, on every input. Launch reviews describe crashes, unfinished characters and items, and mods switched off, and a later Steam Deck player found working controls broken by the Repentance+ update.
- Cut the repeated chores on the alternate route. Players object to rebuilding the knife pieces and redoing the chase on every attempt, to needing keys and bombs early, and to Mother's cramped, high-health fight.
- Carry saves over automatically when the DLC is installed. Reports of wiped saves and Rebirth progress that would not transfer continue years after launch, and one reviewer described uninstalling every DLC and reinstalling them one by one to move a save by hand.
- Add visibility and accessibility options. Darkness curses, dark floors, water reflections and lightning flashes make projectiles hard to see, flashing troubles photosensitive players, and one colorblind player says the game is unplayable without mods.
- Rework Jacob and Esau's controls. Reviews that complain about them describe juggling two hitboxes and two health bars, and one called them "the most frustrating character to play as."
- Let players buy or gift Repentance on its own. Buyers could not gift the expansion outside a bundle, and one reviewer could not get a friend into multiplayer because of it.
