Is this game just more grindy than it is hard?

[iGGTheEnd]

So every time I look at someone's post on /r/trophies about getting the plat everyone praises the person for this game being hard.  So far I have only played normal mode but it it seems pretty easy, my first try fighting Satan I only got hit once. Some runs you are basically God just one shitting everything.

 

Is there something specific that is a wall for some people?  How hard is hard mode and are the challenges really tough?  I am just curious what I am in for I would hate to play 80+ hours and then get stuck without the plat

[ShubaMan]

Replays and the randomness of it was the wall for me, but havent played in years and this was on steam.

[TOAST13TOA5T]

9 minutes ago, iGGTheEnd said:

Snip

Theres lots of variables in it. Depends if RNG was on your side, what character you were using etc for instance; if you were playing as ??? that one hit would have ended your run as they dont have health. Personally I found Satan on of the easier bosses, I always had more trouble in the beginning with Isaac. Then you've got picking up all the items, there were 4 I just never found at all through my runs and had to resort to different methods to obtain them.

 

Personally it took me well over the 80 hours to get the plat, I'd say that's very, very low on the scale. I'd say 90% of it was fun, 10% stress but when the plat finally came it was awesome. I've platted rarer games since then but this will most likely always be my proudest beside Rogue Legacy.

Edited November 1, 2019 by TOAST13TOA5T

[aZombieDictator]

The only hard parts of the game is playing as Lost, Greed, and fighting Delirium or Hush. (You can't be OP in those fights which really sucks)

 

The game can be super easy if you get god tier items as well, or you can get stuck with garbage and then it becomes hard.

[iGGTheEnd]

3 minutes ago, TOAST13TOA5T said:

Theres lots of variables in it. Depends if RNG was on your side, what character you were using etc for instance; if you were playing as ??? that one hit would have ended your run as they dont have health. Personally I found Satan on of the easier bosses, I always had more trouble in the beginning with Isaac. Then you've got picking up all the items, there were 4 I just never found at all through my runs and had to resort to different methods to obtain them.

Wait you have to pick up every item I thought you just had to unlock them?

[ShubaMan]

each run is randomized and fresh start as far as i remember, got bored of it after 10 hours or so haha

[TOAST13TOA5T]

8 minutes ago, iGGTheEnd said:

Wait you have to pick up every item I thought you just had to unlock them?

I felt your heart drop from here ?? 

 

Platinum God; collect and unlock all secrets and endings.

 

Real Platinum God; 100% the game.

 

See the inventory from the stats screen? With all the ? ? ? In it. You have to fill that and filling a space requires you to hold the item for at least a second. Stop picking up something and swapping it immediately will still count as it collected, just so you know.

 

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by TOAST13TOA5T

[Demek97]

I have 1000+ hours on PC (Steam) and all achievements. What can I say, it is a really hard game if you are new into this type of games. The base characters are pretty easy because you can hold R (restart runs) and get a good starting item making the game 10 times easier. Its still like solid 100h of grinding with some luck you need from RNG. The difficulty comes from The lost and Keeper. Firstly unlocking both of them is time consuming and with The Lost you need to have a specific item and die in a special place so is heavy RNG based (it took me like 5h) . The Lost after some buffs and beating Greed mode is pretty alright because you start with really good item Holy Mantle (befor that you need to find some items that gives you a second life or beat the game without taking a sinlge damage ). Keeper in other hand is pain. The base floors like chest and dark room are still hard but with good items not so tough  (on 10 difficulty scale 6/7). The real challenge comes from Mega Satan, Hush and Delirium. Mega Stan is the easiest from all of them but again RNG based. You need to get 2 key pieces from angel statues. After some updates you can get them to spawn in secret rooms and sacrifice rooms so its safe to make a deals with the devil who gave you the most overpowered items in the game. You can cheese Hush with chaos card killing him instantly so again RNG or a really tough fight with a boss who have a ton of Hp + a shield so almost every run even the most overpowered looks the same (I dont know how this work exactly but he has damage reduction/scaling). Delirium... you cant cheese (ofc you can use some broken combos like Gnawed Leaf + orbital but it takes ages and I'm not 100% sure if it works), its the hardest challenge in the game and even for someone like me who streaks with The lost on hard mode it took like 10-20h to beat with Lost and Keeper. 

 

Summarizing all of this you can clearly see its slightly RNG based and I would say a pretty hard game to 100%. From my own opinion its something between 8 and 9 if  you looking into difficulty scales. 

 

For the Challenges same as normal runs hold R or whatever button to restart, get good item like Tech X and gg its over. 

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by Demek97

[JohnCenaSong-]

It's is just a time-sink. I adore the game so it's not a grind at all to me and I still ocassionally play it despite having all 3 save files fully completed, mostly checking out the dailies from time to time or if I want something calm and relaxing to play.

 

You can stack a few things each run, especially if you get favourable RNG to meet the requirements for multiple tasks per run but for the most part you'll be taking on one thing at a time and doing run after run trying to get certain things or beat certain things as certain characters etc., collecting all the items is probably the most time consuming because of the limited areas some items spawn in (like secret room items) and hoping you get what you need or have the right setup to reroll those the spawns until you get the one you need on your checklist.

 

The Lost used to be somewhat difficult because 1 screw up = dead but now since you can unlock a starting item that nerfs the heck out of the difficulty (he can take 1 free hit for EVERY room he enters) and he can now shoot through rocks when hiding behind or on them plus he was always able to just take devil deals for free so it's easy to build his damage capabilities up, it's not quite so intimidating, I'd say Keeper is the difficult choice now. Dead Cat also makes The Lost much easier because of the whole 9 lives thing, so if you do slip up and take 2 hits in a room you'll just respawn outside of it with one life taken away (handy for late-game bosses mostly where taking a second hit is more likely)

 

The DLC can be a tad more tricky because of Hush and Delerium but they're still nothing much and it's perfectly possible to beat them with base stats so it's not like you're dependent on RNG or anything, though good builds obviously make it significantly easier to chew through the game. This applies to the whole game, it's never RNG dependent, good builds make the game a lot easier but the game isn't overly difficult to beat without having a single item, and you're at least guaranteed to have items from bosses and the first free treasure room if you get no keys, even if they're mediocre, you'll get something.

 

Greed mode is easy, but a lot of fun so there's nothing worrysome there, a couple characters struggle a bit more compared to others in this environment but for the most part it's easy pickings. 

 

It's more just a fun game of discovery and once you've got an understanding of what's what and what items do what then it becomes a more of a purely relaxing game. You don't need any crazy reflexes or mechanical skill, if you're new and have got an item wiki beside you then you're probably set for glory lol, but I think discovering the items naturally, at least just to start off your experience is more fun, just my personal take though.

[iGGTheEnd]

2 hours ago, TOAST13TOA5T said:

I felt your heart drop from here ?? 

 

Platinum God; collect and unlock all secrets and endings.

 

Real Platinum God; 100% the game.

 

See the inventory from the stats screen? With all the ? ? ? In it. You have to fill that and filling a space requires you to hold the item for at least a second. Stop picking up something and swapping it immediately will still count as it collected, just so you know.

 

 

Should I be popping every ??? Pill I find as well to have them as collected?  Or does it count it even if not identified?  And yes my heart kinda dropped there haha.

[TOAST13TOA5T]

30 minutes ago, iGGTheEnd said:

Should I be popping every ??? Pill I find as well to have them as collected?  Or does it count it even if not identified?  And yes my heart kinda dropped there haha.

Some of them are useful and some of them are troll items, if you're on a great run I wouldn't bother a great deal as some can take bites out of your health etc when you get majority of the way into the game, doing things like that will be the least of your worries and you will probably have them all done by then anyway. I wouldn't fret about it, advice I wish I knew when starting that I knew more at the end;

 

you gain something from pretty much every run, whether it be a single item on the checklist or just some more knowledge of what items do and better survival tactics. Theres times when a run might not be going so well, just see it through and dont restart. The amount of times I was ready to pack in a run as it wasnt going anywhere then got 3 powerful items and then Brimstone or Moms Knife, I lost count. If you wanna get more knowledge I'd have a look over the wiki for item descriptions etc

[iGGTheEnd]

5 hours ago, JohnCenaSong- said:

It's is just a time-sink. I adore the game so it's not a grind at all to me and I still ocassionally play it despite having all 3 save files fully completed, mostly checking out the dailies from time to time or if I want something calm and relaxing to play.

 

This is exactly why I like roguelikes/lites every run is different so I never really feel a "Grind" unless I dislike the roguelike,  Slay the Spire is the best example, took me about 120 hours to plat and it didn't feel grindy at all, I also go back and do dailies regularly of that game.  

 

Do you know if there are some items that only show up in the mini levels that are found under rocks?  I found a few in one run where I could smash rocks by standing on them but other than that I feel like it would take a ton of bombs to find those areas consistently.

 

[jmartinez8089]

1 hour ago, iGGTheEnd said:

This is exactly why I like roguelikes/lites every run is different so I never really feel a "Grind" unless I dislike the roguelike,  Slay the Spire is the best example, took me about 120 hours to plat and it didn't feel grindy at all, I also go back and do dailies regularly of that game.  

 

Do you know if there are some items that only show up in the mini levels that are found under rocks?  I found a few in one run where I could smash rocks by standing on them but other than that I feel like it would take a ton of bombs to find those areas consistently.

 

 

The mini areas that are found under rocks don't have specific items only found in them however the secret rooms found by blowing up walls do. 

 

https://platinumgod.co.uk/rebirth this site tells what every item does and what rooms they are found in. It even has has pages for if you have the dlcs.

[TOAST13TOA5T]

^ This, that site was very useful, I'd also say if you wanted to go the extra mile, if you you've got spare time look up Northern Lion on YT. I learned a lot of good combos and how certain items get used in other ways from watching a few of his runs.

 

I managed to find all but 1 item from under rocks (Crawlspace rooms etc) by just bombing for items behind them or when I picked up the Leo starsign (Let's you move through rocks, while destroying them, be careful in Womb/Utero, they throw blood) so again I wouldn't worry loads about it. Save your Eden tokens from doing completed runs too, they helped me right at the end with my last 4 missing items.