Hmm, mixed feelings about this. I'm a big ol' Binding of Isaac fanboy so I figured I'd have to play this at some point. I was very nervous of its Bejeweled/Candy Crush-style central puzzle mechanic, but it is honestly a lot better than I was expecting from first impressions... but that doesn't necessarily mean I liked it.
The set dressing is pretty damn good; stylish and nicely themed in an unexplored part of the Isaac canon (it definitely helps to have the context going in to this one, otherwise its just going to come across as kooky and weird). The music is pretty solid throughout, better than Isaac: Rebirth even I'd say; the music is by the same people for both Bum-Bo and Rebirth, and the little musical references to the main game in the Bum-Bo soundtrack were nice touches. I was also a big fan of the voice acting; again, you definitely need the context for it, but I really think it nails for what its going for. And the ending cutscene (which I won't spoil) is great.
To some extent, the gameplay is also /substantially/ better than it could have been. At the start of the game, yes, you are just solving these Bejeweled-type puzzles to fire off 1-damage attacks at enemies, and it all feels pretty mobile-gamey and reductive. But before long, you can end up with a bunch of different spells (moves independent of the puzzle grid) that chain off each other to do brutal combos and it feels really good. The spells mechanic really do save the gameplay here; without it I would be giving this a /much/ worse review. But I cannot deny that, at its best, this game is really pretty fun.
But at its worst, it isn't. Sure, it's hard; so are the original Isaac games. But Bum-Bo comes off as brutally unfair at times. If you start a level with a bad puzzle grid, you're screwed and there's nothing you can do. If a bunch of enemies all decide to attack on the same turn and you don't happen to have a load of defence poop lined up to deploy, you're screwed and there's nothing you can do. If you build a gross combo character that relies on spell chaining (a.k.a. the fun half of the mechanics) and hit a room of spell-immune enemies, you're screwed and... you know the rest. Add to this a suite of gimmick and puzzle bosses that will probably just kill you before you work out the esoteric condition required to harm them, or at least deal so much damage that your run is dead.
I had a couple of glitches too in the form of achievements not popping and unlocks not working correctly (annoying but not exactly deal-breakers), but the final straw for me was finding out about the 'Jackpot Ending' system. When you beat the final level on a run with a character, you put a coin into a slot machine. This machine has a chance of 'winning': a high chance at first, decreasing with each win you've had on that save. If you win, you win! The character gets the 'run complete' mark by their name, you get the unlocks for 'Get the Jackpot Ending X times' (/many/ things in the game have that unlock condition) and everything's great. And if you don't win the slot machine... that doesn't happen. Even if the odds line up for you throughout the run, you beat every room and make it to the ending, the game has a chance to just nullify your progress based on a single RNG call. What the fuck. It feels like the game is going out of its way to /try/ to feel unfair at this point.
If I'm going to play a game where most of my runs are going to end in failure, I want that failure to be on my terms, because I made a mistake or I wasn't good enough. Ideally I would also like said game to have fewer Candy Crush elements. Perhaps I should just go back to playing the original Binding of Isaac...
The set dressing is pretty damn good; stylish and nicely themed in an unexplored part of the Isaac canon (it definitely helps to have the context going in to this one, otherwise its just going to come across as kooky and weird). The music is pretty solid throughout, better than Isaac: Rebirth even I'd say; the music is by the same people for both Bum-Bo and Rebirth, and the little musical references to the main game in the Bum-Bo soundtrack were nice touches. I was also a big fan of the voice acting; again, you definitely need the context for it, but I really think it nails for what its going for. And the ending cutscene (which I won't spoil) is great.
To some extent, the gameplay is also /substantially/ better than it could have been. At the start of the game, yes, you are just solving these Bejeweled-type puzzles to fire off 1-damage attacks at enemies, and it all feels pretty mobile-gamey and reductive. But before long, you can end up with a bunch of different spells (moves independent of the puzzle grid) that chain off each other to do brutal combos and it feels really good. The spells mechanic really do save the gameplay here; without it I would be giving this a /much/ worse review. But I cannot deny that, at its best, this game is really pretty fun.
But at its worst, it isn't. Sure, it's hard; so are the original Isaac games. But Bum-Bo comes off as brutally unfair at times. If you start a level with a bad puzzle grid, you're screwed and there's nothing you can do. If a bunch of enemies all decide to attack on the same turn and you don't happen to have a load of defence poop lined up to deploy, you're screwed and there's nothing you can do. If you build a gross combo character that relies on spell chaining (a.k.a. the fun half of the mechanics) and hit a room of spell-immune enemies, you're screwed and... you know the rest. Add to this a suite of gimmick and puzzle bosses that will probably just kill you before you work out the esoteric condition required to harm them, or at least deal so much damage that your run is dead.
I had a couple of glitches too in the form of achievements not popping and unlocks not working correctly (annoying but not exactly deal-breakers), but the final straw for me was finding out about the 'Jackpot Ending' system. When you beat the final level on a run with a character, you put a coin into a slot machine. This machine has a chance of 'winning': a high chance at first, decreasing with each win you've had on that save. If you win, you win! The character gets the 'run complete' mark by their name, you get the unlocks for 'Get the Jackpot Ending X times' (/many/ things in the game have that unlock condition) and everything's great. And if you don't win the slot machine... that doesn't happen. Even if the odds line up for you throughout the run, you beat every room and make it to the ending, the game has a chance to just nullify your progress based on a single RNG call. What the fuck. It feels like the game is going out of its way to /try/ to feel unfair at this point.
If I'm going to play a game where most of my runs are going to end in failure, I want that failure to be on my terms, because I made a mistake or I wasn't good enough. Ideally I would also like said game to have fewer Candy Crush elements. Perhaps I should just go back to playing the original Binding of Isaac...