A Critical Analysis of the Alt Floors: Do They Belong In Isaac? (Part 1/2)

after the last video's success that being the devil deal versus angel deal debate i wanted to take a stab at a larger more controversial aspect of repentance and probably its biggest addition the alternative floors these alt floors are a set of four newest chapters added into the game as a way to bridge access to the new mother boss as well as adding some extra padding to the game to make it feel a bit less repetitive thick of them is a sort of in-between chapter you can access at the end of most normal floors in the game within these four chapters there are seven variations of floors to explore these floors change the way isaac is played immensely and i could not be happier at that prospect while we did get the blue room in the void floor in the previous dlc they weren't game changing additions blue room is hardly a floor more of like a glorified boss fight and void is only accessible through blue women with a percentage chance spawn after each major boss and because the void floor came at the end of the game there was not much throughout your normal run that it could change it's kind of a tiny bonus if you run with straight heat but these alt floors are different one thing i think a lot of people thought was missing from after birth or after with plus even was the inclusion of a new path or a set of floors that influences the run directly but we got our wish when it was announced the fan favorite rebirth mod anti-birth would be getting a direct port into isaac now there was a lot to be excited about within that statement but the biggest thing for me personally wasn't the new characters items or bosses it was the new floors floors you could choose to go to in place of the main path for extra bonuses and a challenge for feeling up for it something that actually directly impacted your running can be used to boost your power the first thing i'm going to cover are the floor share mechanics such as the item room mechanic and after that we'll take a look at each of the seven individually and assess their design and answer that burning question survived of this community since release do the alt floors fit in isaac as a side note i'll be saving the bosses for a different video because this one is going to be long enough i'll be going into room design and enemy design as well as the extra bonuses you can find while entering these floors and then i'll be comparing it to the way rebirth has functioned since 2014 and if it truly feels like isaac and before we do that i want to remind you all that i can't do these videos without your guys support so if you like what i do here consider subscribing it may seem arbitrary to you but to me it means a lot another great way to support me and this channel is to come follow my twitch if everyone who watched this video came to one stream i would hit twitch partner in no time which is my 2021 goal anyways how do you even access these floors well after you finish any floor up to and including depths one a secondary door will spawn off of your boss room which either leads to the downpour of the dross the mine to the ash pit or the mausoleum or gahanna if you're going for a mother after you fight the mom boss in the mausoleum you also get the option to go to the corpse floor if you break up on the flesh door with your completed knife pieces starting off both basement 1 and basement 2's doors will bring you down to the downpour 1 and downpour 2 respectively i should also mention that once you enter these old floors you cannot leave them until you've reached the end of that chapter meaning you can't go back to your main path until you've beaten downpour 2 minus 2 or johanna 2. and these will always put you on the second floor of the next chapter for example if you go back to the main path on downpour 2 we put on the floor caves 2 minus 2 brings you to depths 2 and mausoleum 2 brings you to womb 2. got it hopefully before we examine chapter 1.5 directly let's first examine the benefits of these floors in a more general sense before we go into the design of everything individually for starters the big pole of these old floors is the double item rooms well sorta okay yes there are two items in each room but one of the items is always a curse with a blind effect on it so it's more like a one and a half item rooms but it's still better than the normal floor right i wanted to take a minute and look at the mechanics of these item rooms so for those of you who didn't play anti-birth which is the original version of repentance the item rooms on these old floors were truly double with both items being visible am i really gonna nitpick this tiny tiny change yes i am i'm not saying having the choice between a visible item in a random item isn't a fitting reward but i think the old way fits better but not for every single floor when we delve deeper into these floors difficulties they're going to see just how well difficult they can be specifically the secondary variations joss ashpit and jihana these secondary alt floors are unlocked after you've beaten one of every boss at least once on its counterpart for example beating one and every boss in the downpour unlocks the dross think of it as the seller of the first chapter while both downpour and dross are very similar the difficulty spike from mines to ash pit and especially mausoleum to gehana is very striking they feel like completely different chapters i think a more fitting reward the game could give you for making you play these secondary variations would be having the double item rooms both be visible items now i have no issue with how the game plays out now but a very frustrating thing to me is that i'm going to fight mother and i end up on the gehana or even the astropin it's just a quick thought to make finding these secondary variations a bit less daunting maybe making both items visible seems a bit too overpowered you can instead have a higher chance to find a better quality item in these rooms just some thoughts but if it stays the same i'm just as happy anyways let's hop on down to the downpour and see what's waiting for us the downpour costs one key to enter after either basement one or two's boss fights for starters when you first enter this floor you find some of the coolest looking aesthetics in isaac ever if there is one single thing i'll gush over on every single old floor it's how amazing they look look at the colors the lightning the lighting itself even the water makes bethesda jealous it's insane when the music kicks in you feel like you find yourself in actual sewers full of bloated slow-moving and lazy creatures that are more or less mindless just doing things for the sake of well doing things you feel fear for the enemies not because you know they want to hurt you but because they don't know what they want either and the beautiful aesthetics don't stop there the shops look incredible the boss trap rooms as well every single room on this floor seamlessly fits the mood perfectly and again it doesn't stop there let's take a look at the enemies now keep in mind i've played over 600 hours of repentance alone whether it being co-op a streak or gunning for dead god so i may have more practice on the average player but you gotta believe me when i tell you this if you find most of these floors too hard you are just under practice i'll be ranking the enemy design under classic tier list ranking with s being the highest followed by a b c d and f and as a whole the downpour has an s tier design most of your normal enemies can be found here with slight variations such as gapers headless gapers and clotties all of which function more or less the same i'll be more focusing on the new enemies such as bubbles a fatty type who went killed reigns a tower of tears down at a small radius from his last position a tier unique idea fits the aesthetic leads for some very unique and dynamic encounters when paired with other enemies such as wraith a shadowy gaper who can only be seen in the reflection of the water s plus plus plus it's not like the coolest gimmick ever it's like a vampire god damn that is so cool and it makes for quite the challenge and paired with willows a tier only because they aren't called fireflies seriously you guys really missed that one anyways these little guys circled around you and occasionally fire tears it's like a reverse it's an admiration they can really do a number on you and found among some deep gapers which are enemies that appear after everything in the room has been beaten beats here while scientists have a little extra oomph to make a room seem a little more insurmountable but with the randomness of their spawns it can lead to some tight and almost unfair situations but with how weak they are they aren't hard to defend against at least not as bad as blurbs which are like gapers but upon getting close enough for taking enough damage they shoot a tight compact monstrous lung type attack at you aids here easy enough to dodge but that shot can come at crazy angles sometimes almost takes you off guard it's even scarier to find them with level 2 willows again calling them fireflies gives them an extra rating boost we're off to say b tier here they aren't super common and they kind of act like orbitals for enemies which can be pretty annoying but they aren't that bad but the more annoying enemies are the small leeches beats here these guys are easy kills but just fast enough and just hard enough to see that they can sneak up on you kind of similar is the strider which is pretty much just a water spider aids here it's like a regular spider but with 360 degree movement and longer dashes it can really help rooms feel a bit more challenging kind of like the sub horse which are stationary heads that only shoot when they move whether it be by you or shooting them or even an enemy pushing them hey tier they make for some pretty fun rooms and good challenges they really shine when they're paired with the polti a rock flinging ghost esteer not only are they adorable but they're also hella fun to dodge around i love how they use them to open up paths and rooms super genius can almost do the same for the fissure a little skull that hops out of pitch and jumps around the room whatever direction that they're flung they have good telegraphs unique room design and overall are a great part of any room just like the prey essentially a leech mulligan i'll give it an a you can't go wrong with the good old classic design but it's nothing groundbreaking same goes for the mullegual same deal as the prey but for willows same deal same rating good name eight's here you can also say the same for bloaty which is almost the same as the conjoined fatty but they're blind to shoot the creep out in random directions along with a few tears i'm gonna have to say c tier because random shots lead to some really really dumb situations and impossible dodging oh man okay that was a lot of enemies to cover but we did it overall the downpour has an s2 aesthetic music enemy design and is pretty on par with difficulty for where it is in the game one thing i really fast wanted to say before we get too far in people get more and more mad at me for actually enjoying the alt floors and new enemies is that they have every right to be among the harder floors in the game a very common criticism i see is that for where they are in the game chapter 1.5 to 3.5 is that they don't scale with difficulty and that you're not strong enough by this point in the game for the old floors and that is incredibly wrong the people that i've seen say that are the same ones who only played repentance off of a one million percent save thought from after birth plus if that's how you were introduced to repentance then well there's your issue this update came with quite a lot of changes ones that you wouldn't really notice until you start over from scratch and are introduced to them gradually and get used to the new buffs nerfs floors bullet speeds deals etc in the grand context of isaac the old floors are some of the last floors you unlock on a file aside from ascension they're unlocked after you beat hush three times so unless you're playing the 30 character run you'll be doing one run to mom 10 runs to mom's heart and three more runs for hush assuming you win all of these that's 14 runs of reunlocking and being reintroduced to the changes then you gotta play let's say best case scenario three runs through every old floor to unlock the secondary variations and by that point you should be readjusted at the new difficulty these floors are quite literally the last fours you unlock in the game aside from ascension they are supposed to be gauntlets of skill more than anything and for new players it'll take way more than 14 runs to see any semblance of the alt paths anyways back to the video once again moving on to dross we have a similar situation to downpour cool enemy designs cool aesthetic and more stellar banger music tracks let's take a look and examine the different enemies you can find down here drip a little ball just kind of rolls around think of it as this floor's dip it's a b tier a classic but once again again nothing super groundbreaking corn basically a dip but shoots upon death a tier fantastic name splurt he's like a mini dingle dashes twice the shoe and drops two drips upon death he can easily catch you off guard but it's a cool design a nice little challenge beats here again it's nothing new cloggy this guy will mess you up if you don't know what you're doing he looks super intimidating but just watches patterns and you'll learn pretty quickly he shoots in this rotating circular pattern that inverses every other shot and you can usually quite literally just walk straight through it's a nice fresh change in bullet pattern choice to add some more life to the game definite a tier for me fly trap it's like a husk that can only spawn attack flies that orbit him he also occasionally throws him out into a larger orbit personally i think he has a bit too much hp for this floor in the game but he's never too much of an issue i'll say beats here fartigan a mulligan that'll cough up gas clouds and throw an explosive shot on death if that explosion shots hits a gas dude i can't even this is so hard to say back to back oh my god if that explosive shot hits a gas cloud it'll explode the gas cloud this enemy is fine but if you find them in a cramped room you could be taking some pretty unavoidable damage overall tough but you know what he's a fun little puzzle eight's here put mine pretty much a fartigan but it's stationary it's alright but it doesn't add too much beets here it's got a pretty funny name as well dump slowly slides towards you and after enough damage it'll launch its head off its body and it'll roll around the room while the body still stays there and expels some tears really cool design but it can trap you a bit too easily if you're not careful i like him though hey tier okay so overall i'm gonna give dross an a tier i like the aesthetic but not as much as the downpour enemies are cool but again they're nothing too special as a whole i'll give this chapter an a because there is one thing i haven't mentioned yet but first we need to talk about parallel universes aka the mere world this mirror world can only be accessed on downpour or drast 2 and it is entered by touching that little white fire you find on those floors and becoming the lost then flying through the mirror door in one of the rooms in this place you'll get your first knife piece and have the opportunity to re-complete every room backwards for more drops more tinted rocks etc and if you're good enough fight the boss for an extra item this bonus alone makes the floor even more valuable because it makes it possible to gain two boss items instead of one being the only floor in the game aside from the void floor that allows that i just love how unique that bonus is and i wish more floors had things like that so chapter 1.5 gets an s tier from your boy next up mind and ash pit this is that first pairing where the disconnect starts to form for me minds i absolutely love ash pit not so much let's first look at mines since you do see it first on a new file out of all the new floors mines and downpour have my favorite music mines also has another really cool aesthetic and great visual effects and also this is where we start to see some more trap rooms which i think are patents does so much better than afterbirth or plus ever did let's talk about trap rooms in this update they're insane like not even just cool they did things that base after birth never even tried to do which would seamlessly combine enemy attacks with buttons spikes and other unique mechanics this becomes extremely apparent in the mausoleum and the corpse but more on that later the introduction of instant death buttons is a great inclusion for the mines floor as once again it thematically fits and makes these rooms more dynamic the overall room design is chock full of mazes of rocks and pitch that add to the overall feel of these floors the cramped nature feels like you're actually walking through well an abandoned mine the clustered and almost randomly placed rocks feel like the place really hasn't been tread upon for a long long time it's such a really cool feel to elaborate further general feeling that these floors portray is also complemented very nicely by the enemy design these floors are meant to be you exploring new domains in isaac it's the newest fully fledged path we've had in quite a while it is an unknown place filled with things that have been there for quite a while that you're just stepping into for the very first time nearly every enemy in this path is able to move more freely than you which is where a lot of this floor's challenge comes from like all the flying enemies that can avoid the many rocks that populate the floor or these rocks charging things that are able to break away for themselves it really adds the feeling that you're not really supposed to be here a good comparison here is the game hades it's you trying to escape from some place you're supposed to be trapped in and having to adjust to the rumors that favor the enemies and while we're on the topic of enemy design let's take a look at all these suckers individually first off we have the rock spider who is pretty much just a spider with armor they can catch on fire if they touch anything hot like a fire which allow their rock shell to do even more damage after they're dead i'll give him a beat tier because while it does fit thematically it doesn't really add anything super ground breaking next up is the coal spider who is just a flaming rock spider it's the same deal b-tier tinted rock spiders these are spiders that pop out of rocks and on death drop soul hearts aids here as long as these guys can be it's a really cool design quirk fly bomb a really quick fight that darts around the room towards isaac and turns into a mini bomb when they're killed these guys are beat here to me the same kind of deal as the rock spiders but the bomb aspect is pretty cool dany dany is like the blurbs of the downpour but instead of shooting out tears it's rocks some of them could actually also be rock spiders i'm not a huge fan of enemies that can spawn other enemies i've got that after with plus void portal ptsd still but again these guys are probably a low age here they look really cool and definitely help you feel claustrophobic on these floors coal boy the same thing is danny's but they instead shoot out hot rocks so again aids here blaster these are the dudes that shoot out the bomb flies these guys are asked here for me they're almost like little mini bosses they have a ton of health which may seem daunting at first but the game makes you fight them differently you're not meant to shoot them to kill them but to knock the bomb flies back into them which is a one to two shot to kill cool cool cool design we need more of this in isaac definite s2 for me bouncer bouncers are sort of like mulligans but if you don't kill them fast enough their head puffs up and they chase you down depending on how late you kill them they could cover the entire room with a ton of tears while yeah they're a bit obnoxious they aren't that hard to kill clear to some really cool room dynamics definite b tier quake these guys are the fatties of this chapter they'll walk slowly towards you but will occasionally stomp on the ground firing eight tears out and causing rocks to rain down around them i've seen a lot of hate for these guys but i seriously don't get it i've literally never been hit by the falling rocks they have very clear telegraph shadows on the ground alva design and the attacks definite eightier gyro you know that wheel power up from kirby like the most fun power in the game yeah it's trying to kill you now and it does it looking sick as s tier grilled gyro hell yeah dude straight s here even better than the last guy just hell yeah man fireworm besides being my high school nickname these guys are insanely easy to kill honestly they're a little too easy to kill i kinda wish they had more hp i never really get to see them attack beats here hardy these are like those mini dingles from before except they're rocks and a whole lot more deadly when it hits the wall it fires off some rock projectiles and the more hates it does to itself the more rocks that come off and the less hp it has s tier that is a sick as hell enemy design faceless it's a pretty standard isaac enemy nothing really special going on here as average as it gets beats here mole it's kind of like a tube worm but when it pops up it fires three shots at you you can also kind of track its movement for the rocks from the ground again pretty standard beats here soy creep like a wall spider but with soy milk it could add some pretty cool temporary barriers to rooms i love the design implication aids here dragonflies okay these guys are pretty cool right but i have one major major complaint i love how i telegraph their attacks with the eyes that's clever and based off their eyes you can see where the death fire is gonna spread when they die my complaint is this why the does the fire travel over rocks and past pits that literally makes like zero sense to me i hope that gets fixed but until then see tier hard hosts hard hosts are like hosts but instead of firing tears at you they create rock fissures these fissures can be used to break open rocks doors and chests and there's some pretty clever designs using this mechanic in mind the enemies themselves are beats here not the most unique but their application is a pawn brainless knight ever wonder what it's like to be preached take a look at the brainless knights and the pawns they're like your standard knight enemies but they function like massive infamy needing to kill the brain to kill the knight pretty cool design and application eightier and that is literally every new enemy found on the mines floor overall i'd give it an a tier some of the designs on these floors how the enemies interact with the environment feels so smooth and natural it makes you feel super smart when you flawlessly play a room out very very enjoyable you can't really say the same for the ash pit there's a reason this floor is nicknamed the ass pit now i know before that i said claustrophobia in the mines was a good thing but that was because it was perpetuated by the rocks and obstacles not just the enemies your goal on the minds was to play around with those enemies to have them break rocks for you or line up against the rocks to dodge the floor was confined and tight but the enemies helped interact with that to make it more manageable as well as there always being a safe path out of danger for you now the ash pit seems to double down on that claustrophobia in not the best way or just throws that whole design idea out the window entirely here either the rumors are extremely empty and devoid of anything interesting or they are the most cluttered and frustrating rooms yet i don't like calling things and games lazy because no matter what you add it's a time and effort to code that in but some of the rooms on this floor for a lack of a better word just kind of feel lazy i mean even the enemies don't feel inspired by anything i guess that's where the main issue really is there isn't really an aesthetic this floor is going for when you hear the word ashpit you think of fire cluttered vision smoke and ash the only thing you find on this floor is smoke i mean over half the rooms have no more than like four enemies in them the floor is practically one flat color and the smoke effect doesn't even really provide any kind of visual depth hell the most enemies i found in the room was a two by two and it was only eight now before we go more in depth on the enemy designs let's gather my thoughts the stage's theme is uninspired the floor is pretty much just one solid texture with nothing going on there's no connecting theme no cool mechanics and the enemies thematically fit more the depths of necropolis than the ash pit the designs are hardly anything new in the introduction of dust knox has floored on a whole nother tier let's dive into the enemy design aside from the boys added in the mines we also have bone flies flies out upon death split into three bone shots we've seen enemies like this before and there's nothing really new going on here at all beats here big bony a fighter that shoots out a rubber cement bone you can break just by shooting it's just a fatty with a tear while the bone can add for some extra dynamic stuff for rooms it's really nothing new at all b-tier pasty it's the mini skull x there is zero way to tell if the um just walked into has he's in there and while personally it's never gotten me hit i believe every enemy should be telegraphed to at least some degree c tier flesh maiden a floating badass looking isaac who swoops towards you great visuals cool attack pattern fresh hey tear dusty death's head invincible heads that move through rooms and only dies when the room is cleared these would be fine if they weren't so obnoxiously close to each other they aren't even used for any unique rooms just button puzzles you can one cycle anyways sea tier underutilized and super annoying red skull a death's head that went close to you spits out a ring of fire it feels like an artificial way to expand the death's head's hitbox this guy can make for some tense situations beats here dust my least favorite enemy in the game and let me explain why so these guys have no indication they're in a room and they slowly move towards you the closer they are the faster they are such that you're dodging an enemy's attack and you dodge into a corner because you're both moving at each other and they're invisible you have no way to react there needs to be some kind of telegraph that this enemy is present in the room like how all the other ghost enemies have let's give me half a second to see where they all are before they disappear oh did i also mention they can literally combat log it's teleport away after you hit them and go somewhere random in the room i hate it f-tier for what clickety-clack they're just bony globins the only big difference is you can't kill them until you've knocked down every other clickety clack in the room again nothing special beats here bomb gagger also my high school nickname well minus the bomb these guys are rare as hell but also sick as hell they spawn gigabombs and run away cool design cool visuals aids here necro the name proves my point literally all of these enemies are better off being on necropolis and this guy also sucks he spawns bones randomly around the room and flings them at you it's pretty much an enemy who telefrags you not cool his bones can literally spawn like anywhere if you shrink that radius down you have a fun little challenge but as it is d tier princess carrion it's a mini version of carrying queen but they move diagonally it's a nice change of pace from the regular leech pattern and it actually almost fits the theme despite carrying queen not even spawning on these floors beads here loose night a night with the brain that will fall out after being hit an extra twist on the normal mask of infamy enemies it's all right beats here and that is every new aspect enemy found in the game and overall they're just not starting to feel like re-skins of other previous enemies you encounter or are just super basic i'll give enemy design a b for this floor and overall aesthetic a d as we go into the last half of these floor ratings i need to mention one other thing like i said in the intro one of the main points of the alt pass is to acquire the knife pieces so you can go fight the new mother boss knife piece 1 is found on downpour 2 in the mirror world and knife piece 2 is found on mines 2 in the mother's shadow section this mother's shadow section is an intense chasing sequence where an invincible boss chases after you and you have to escape it's a really cool sequence in the game but after your third or fourth time doing it it definitely gets a bit tedious i've seen a lot of complaints on how annoying it is to go to mother just for fun you gotta grab knife piece one on literally floor three so i'll give my take on it while yes i really truly do enjoy the alt path the way to get to mother is annoying whether you're going for unlocks or just for fun going to mother is abysmal with every other branching path in the game you get multiple choices you get to choose your end to goal path on floor 6 to picking up either the negative or the polaroid and or going to beast and you get one last chance to go back on that choice along floor 8 with the extra path to hush also appearing and you're always able to change paths to the use of a sacrifice room mother is different if you want to go to mother you have to make that choice by the end of floor 2 there are very very few runs you'll know if your run is good enough to beat mother buy floor 2. and if for some reason later on on the run you want to go to mother well good luck because you really need sharp key or broken padlock to open up the flesh door not even dad's key works so i have a couple solutions one being that after you completed mother with a given character that character now has access to the completed knife piece in the special room on mausoleum from there on forth allowing you to go to mother if you feel like it on a powerful run allowing you to again have more player agency in your choices the other option is to allow any knife or piercing item to open the flesh door after about maybe 10 or so mother kills to allow more experienced players to branch out into the new paths more these are just my thoughts i just think that after a while collecting both knife pieces becomes a bit tedious that's all anyways onto the mausoleum and johanna you

Channel: bd1p

Views: 27,149

Rating: 4.8965378 out of 5

Keywords: tboi, repentance, isaac, the binding of isaac, the binding of isaac: repentance, alt floors, downpour, dross, mines, ashpit, mausoleum, gehenna, corpse, analysis, repentance deep dive, deep dive, mother's shadow, critique, criticial, review, bd1p, alt, enemies

Id: 7DmgQ7FgAVs

Length: 28min 24sec (1704 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021