When Afterbirth came out, some fans of Binding of Isaac felt that many of the new changes ended up damaging the game more than helping it. For all the cool things it did (Tech X, Restock, Item Reroll Machines, new item synergies, making the Lost playable, among others), it also did some very nasty things. You had harmful treasure rooms, boss rush rooms with less items or spikes in front of items, bosses with scaling health like Hush and Ultra Greed, annoying challenges which rewarded you with useless pill effects (like Relax, ???, Addicted and Percs), the awful Keeper character and the list goes on. Afterbirth+ had a lot of challenges to overcome; could it solve the issues that cropped up with Afterbirth and dragged down the core gameplay? Would the addition of mod tools also help people overcome design issues that people had with the game?

The answer is no.

Afterbirth+ is like putting up a new coat of paint over the previous one, only though you ran out of paint before you even started the job. Not only all of the faulty designs of Afterbirth are still present and unchanged, but AB+ adds so little that you’ll often have a hard time believing you’re playing a different game. And whenever something new finally appears, you’ll just sigh at how dumb or pointless the addition is. There’s only 6 new enemies to the game, most of which are recolors and reskins of existing enemies. Except for two: out of place looking mushrooms that sometimes replace the Hosts and... the enemy spawning portal. Appearing as early as Floor 1, these will make your life a living hell by flooding the rooms with new enemies to fight all the time, and sometimes even bosses. There’s also only 4 new bosses; three of them are reskins of existing bosses in the game with a new name and with way too much health considering their point of appearance in the game. The last is the new final boss of the game, Delirium, which is a glorified boss rush with scaling health that will destroy you by teleporting on you all the time. Apparently the designers liked this fight so much that the Chaos Card can’t be used against it for an easy victory. You gotta play all the way.

In Afterbirth, we had a bunch of new floors that were yet another alternate floor you could have upon entering the level: Burning Basement, Flooded Caves and <adjective> Depths and Womb, which was lazy but added some variety nonetheless. In Afterbirth+ you get... nothing. Instead, we have a new final floor, the Void, which consist of all possible floors in the game and reminds me of the Final Fantasy 5 Void, only less interesting because the rooms add nothing new. The concept could have been neat; it symbolises that Isaac is going crazy in his final moments and his whole journey becomes a blur where everything merges together, but it's executed poorly and it just comes across as a low-effort way to introduce a new floor while doing as less work as possible. If the Void had some personality and way to set itself apart from every other floor, it could have been good. Alas.

The main draw of the game would be the new items, right? Unfortunately, not even this part is interesting. Either the items are just more of the same we've seen ever since the beginning, or you get items like the Clicker which feel more harmful than useful to you. Why would you turn into an other random character and risk losing an item in the process, multiple times during a run? What if you turn into The Lost? There's also the Shard of Glass, which is just like the item Anemic, only it has a chance to not trigger upon contact! How fun! The only interesting items would be the Void and Smelter, which allows you to respectively consume pedestal items and trinkets to gain their effects or stat bonuses. Even then, the item pool is so bloated at this point that you'll rarely get to see the new items anyway. Plus you'll have to unlock them. At least the new character Apollyon starts with the Void and is available from the getgo. That's about the only interesting thing with this character, because he has no other particularities.

The biggest problem of the game is that in its ensemble, the game feels incredibly spiteful to the player, and thus more than ever. It takes so many steps into antagonizing the player and not making them feel welcome at all. Afterbirth already had a few measures like this as forementionned in the review, like Krampus suddenly deciding that his brimstone lasers rotate, without any additionnal warning. In Afterbirth+, instead of always shooting his lasers in all cardinal directions, he can now shoot them diagonally instead. Without any new animation or anything. It also adds mimic chests, which are impossible to tell apart as such until you're so close to it that you probably touched the chest anyway and took damage. Treasure rooms can have no item in them whatsoever (or sometimes two of them, but the odds of it happening are so low). Most new bosses have way too much health and have attacks that are almost impossible to dodge (the Vis Sisters being the worst offenders in that regard, with their wiggling giant brimstone laser that covers close to the entire room). The Delirium fight is awfully mean as said above. You even have a trinket that will make you drop all your items on the floor when you get hit because.

All of this pales in contrast of Greediest Mode, AKA the worst addition in the whole game. It allows the spawning of Champion monsters and bosses, involves more waves per floor, gives you less time in overall to clear them and gives you way less coins. Even clearing the early floors with these odds against you is a feat. But the mode caps off in a hilarious middle finger way by giving Ultra Greed a second phase. You know, that boss fight which already took you over 3 minutes to beat. Have yet another 3 minute long murder fest in which even the overpowered character will perish. Because it's only fun if you lose. And it's not as if it's especially rewarding. The whole room will all be covered in gold but what's the point if you can't pick it up? Also, you'll have to beat this with all your characters because there are unlocks hidden within it.