History ScrappyMechanic / TheBindingOfIsaac

* [[spoiler:Delirium's]] shapeshifting and TeleportSpam can create unavoidable damage due the fight being unpolished. If [[spoiler:Delirium shifts from Mom's foot to anything else, if it hasn't stomped, you take instant damage, and it can shift into a DualBoss right on top of you]]. This renders winning with the Lost a LuckBasedMission for the most part.

* Haunted Chests are considered a PowerUpLetDown. They are pale-tinted chests that have a Potly carry them and throw them at Isaac, dealing damage if he touches the chest even before the Potly appears. It comes off as the reverse of a reward. And it doesn't help that you unlock it by beating [[{{Superboss}} Mega Satan]] as Tainted Lost. It's another case of doing something very hard to make the game worse.

* Haunted Chests are considered a PowerUpLetDown. They are pale-tinted chests that have a Potly carry them and throw them at Isaac, dealing damage if he touches the chest even before the Potly appears. It comes off as the reverse of a reward. And it doesn't help that you unlock it by beating [[BonusBoss Mega Satan]] as [[TierInducedScrappy Tainted Lost]]. It's another case of doing something very hard to make the game worse.

''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'' has a load of content, thanks to being worked on for nearly a decade. Unfortunately, said content is bound to come up with [[ScrappyMechanic infuriating design choices and mechanics]] that feel [[FakeDifficulty plain unfair]] [[SpitefulAI at times]], particularly after updates that introduce [[{{Nerf}} nerfs]] and [[BalanceBuff buffs]].

** Curse of the Maze, causes you to, at random times, warp across the map to a random room when passing through a door. This can transport one from a cleared room to another cleared room, and sometimes even warp you to the room you already came from, wasting time instead of increasing the risk of traversing the floor. The curse will also shuffle around some of the contents of the floor, which can send something in one room clear across the map. At best it's considered an annoyance that barely raises the difficulty, and at worst you could be pushed just over the 20/30 minute mark and get locked out of the BossRush/[[spoiler:Hush battle]] due to the time spent fighting against a particularly large Curse of the Maze floor and hoping that the RNG will just let you go where you want to. ''Repentance'' changed the curse so that it can only send you to undiscovered rooms, reducing its annoyance.
** Curse of the Labyrinth merges both floors of a chapter into one single massive level with two bosses and two item rooms. Unlike other curses which just have a good chance of ruining an otherwise good run but can be weathered no worse for wear, this one is a guaranteed turd to the face as it means you are ''guaranteed'' one less Devil/Angel Room, one less shop, and two less secret rooms. This can ''massively'' hold you back, especially if you've rolled particularly unlucky on resources so far.
** Curse of the Unknown makes it so that you cannot see your remaining health. This is no problem if you're playing The Lost/Tainted Lost, but as any other character, this becomes worrisome. It may cause you to constantly feel uncomfortable, [[ParanoiaFuel not knowing if the next hit will be your]] [[GameOver demise]].

* The "special items" pool was a mechanic in the Flash version of the game to lower the chances of getting tons of overpowered items, but only became disliked in ''Rebirth''. While less items are counted as special, merely seeing any of them is enough to increase the chance that a later special item will be invisibly re-rolled into something else, regardless of whether you take it or not. This even applies during Curse of the Blind; if you go into a devil room with the curse active, and one of the hidden deals you don't take is Brimstone, you'll have your special item chances cut and never know why. Being locked out of game-breaking items is generally considered an unfair disadvantage, especially since the pool originally contained unfitting and controversial items like Soy Milk, Lil Brimstone, and Stop Watch. Later expansions stopped considering these to be special items, and ''Repentance'' cut the mechanic in favor of item quality and weight.
* Greed and Super Greed. When you encounter them in a secret room it's great, since they go down easily and give a decent dose of coins or the Steam Sale item. But they're far more annoying to see ''instead of a shop'', since you're very likely to encounter them when you already have enough coins and are wanting to buy items -- in other words, you miss out on one of your limited shop visits in exchange for either a mediocre handful of coins or an item that doesn't serve any purpose without access to a shop. If that's not bad enough, it's possible to run into both of them in the same run, losing ''two separate opportunities'' to buy stuff. They're even worse during challenge runs, since these runs lack free item rooms, which means Greed and Super Greed in effect steal one of your very rare opportunities to get a new item. They hurt [[spoiler:Tainted Keeper]] especially, because the character is heavily reliant on shops to get good items early in the run.

* Greed Mode ends with a special version of the donation machine, which unlocks new items and starting bonuses for characters as it is filled up. However, it can jam just like the donation machine on a normal run, meaning that all the coins you gather across a Greed Mode attempt can be rendered worthless if it jams after just a couple of pennies. The machine's jam percentage varies per character to encourage switching around, but even with optimal luck it takes a ton of runs of a 20-minute arena mode to max out the machine. The same patch that added [[spoiler:Keeper]] made it take many more coins to jam the machine, allowing the process to go by quicker.
* ''Afterbirth'' introduces damage scaling for its two new superbosses. To encourage more defensive builds, in addition to having high health pools and focusing a lot more on learning their different attacks, the bosses also have a mechanic where their defense increases based on how much damage you're outputting. As a result, a run that would normally stop every other boss is forced to have a [[MarathonBoss long endurance match]] against them, which can get tiring across several playthrough. In very rare cases, having too high of a damage output can break the damage resistance and make the boss nearly impossible to kill. But on the bright side, it does keep bosses like Hush and Ultra Greed from becoming [[AntiClimaxBoss Anti-Climax Bosses]].
* Half-size rooms are not ideal to see due to the number of enemy encounters that aren't designed around cramped spaces. For example, Krampus and the Forsaken have rotating Brimstone attacks, which become unavoidable if they're hugging the wall, and in a half-size room that's virtually always the case. A patch reduced the odds of half-sized rooms appearing, with ''Repentance'' removing half-sized boss rooms entirely.

* Defeating the BossRush as Keeper unlocks Sticky Nickels, which are unable to be picked up unless they are hit with an explosion. While they're intended to have a chance of replacing pennies, effectively making nickels more common with a trade-off, they instead have a chance of replacing regular nickels, making the unlock strictly a downgrade.

** In order to get to Mother, you need to go to Downpour to get Knife Piece 1 and Mines to get Knife Piece 2, then stab the fleshy door to beat Mom's Heart. The alternate floors are very hard compared to the normal floors, making Mother the hardest boss to access in the game. Although Cracked Orb and Sharp Key can make the unlocks easier, skipping Knife Piece 1 and 2, it doesn't make it much harder compared to accessing The Beast, Mega Satan and Delirium. Oh, and the worst part is if you want Infinity% you have to do it 34 times.

* The primary gimmick of [[spoiler:Tainted Jacob is having to run from Dark Esau. After a short time on every floor, he'll spawn in and start chasing after you, damaging enemies he touches. If he makes contact with Tainted Jacob, he "dies" and turns into The Lost for the rest of the floor, meaning you gain flight and spectral tears, but [[OneHitPointWonder the next hit you take will kill you]].]] Kind of annoying to work with, but learnable, and easy to use to your advantage--you even start with an item that can freeze him in place for a few seconds. The issue is that [[spoiler:you also turn into The Lost if Dark Esau dies (yeah, he's not invincible)]]. And unfortunately for you, [[spoiler:Dark Esau is an idiot. He can, and will, blindly fly into damaging hazards, troll bomb explosions, and enemy Brimstone lasers that shave massive chunks off his HP, which can result in you turning into a OneHitPointWonder due to something out of your control. What's more, auto-firing familiars like Demon Baby or Boiled Baby will shoot him if he's nearby, whittling down his HP even more.]]

* [[spoiler: Tainted Forgotten's]] gimmick is also liable to make you tear your hair out, though to a lesser extent. [[spoiler: Rather than switching between the two, the Forgotten is invincible but immobile, requiring the Soul (who can't attack whatsoever and has to rely on the Forgotten) to pick him up and throw him at enemies. While this can result in some pretty strong damage, this comes at the downside that any items involving character placement (like familiars) or placing bombs are all centered on the Forgotten's location... instead of, you know, the Soul, the character you're actually controlling for the most part. Similarly, while you can throw the Forgotten through doors to shorten trips through the level and get into Curse Rooms without taking any damage, this benefit ends up becoming risky regarding bosses that spawn in the middle of the room, like Mom's Heart/It Lives!. For that boss in particular, the entrances to Sheol and the Cathedral spawn in the middle, and if the Forgotten happens to be sitting on either when they appear, you have only a microsecond to react before it registers the Forgotten being present and forcing you to enter the next level (which can ruin your plans if you want to do Hush, or try to go for the Chest with the Polaroid but get forced into Sheol instead). This can be fixed if you quickly dive in and throw the Forgotten anywhere else, but the fact that you have to do this after a boss kill reeks of FakeDifficulty.]]

* Curses. Unlike similar mechanics that serve as a risk/reward type thing like Champion monsters that are harder but drop better items, things you can choose to opt out of like Curse Rooms (take damage for the chance of items), Planetariums (that require you to skip several Item Rooms for one higher-tier item), or a DealWithTheDevil (trade vitality for a new power), curses are nothing more than a mechanic where the game arbitrarily decides to greatly hinder, annoy, or generally screw over the player while offering nothing in return. It's exacerbated by how the odds of a curse steadily increases as you complete aspects of the game -- defeating [[spoiler:Isaac]] even once jumps it to a brutal 20% chance of a curse ''per floor'', meaning you're more likely to get a curse than you are to get a Devil Room and making the game borderline unplayable. While losing a run due to a bad item combo or because you chose to gamble and lost feels like your fault, losing a run due to a curse just feels unfair, and it's very telling people were so fed up with this mechanic that there exist several mods to remove them outright.[[labelnote:*]]While the BLCK CNDL cheat code already does this, turning it on disables achievements, making it nigh-useless for hundred percent completionists.[[/labelnote]] To wit:

* Curses. Unlike similar mechanics that serve as a risk/reward type thing like Champion monsters that are harder but drop better items, things you can choose to opt out of like Curse Rooms (take damage for the chance of items) or a DealWithTheDevil (trade vitality for a new power), curses are nothing more than a mechanic where the game arbitrarily decides to greatly hinder, annoy, or generally screw over the player while offering nothing in return. It's exacerbated by how the odds of a curse steadily increases as you complete aspects of the game -- defeating [[spoiler:Isaac]] even once jumps it to a brutal 20% chance of a curse ''per floor'', meaning you're more likely to get a curse than you are to get a Devil Room and making the game borderline unplayable. While losing a run due to a bad item combo or because you chose to gamble and lost feels like your fault, losing a run due to a curse just feels unfair, and it's very telling people were so fed up with this mechanic that there exist several mods to remove them outright.[[labelnote:*]]While the BLCK CNDL cheat code already does this, turning it on disables achievements, making it nigh-useless for hundred percent completionists.[[/labelnote]] To wit:

* Curses. Unlike similar mechanics that serve as a risk/reward type thing like Champion monsters that are harder but drop better items, things you can choose to opt out of like Curse Rooms (take damage for the chance of items) or a DealWithTheDevil (trade vitality for a new power), curses are nothing more than a mechanic where the game arbitrarily decides to greatly hinder, annoy, or generally screw over the player while offering nothing in return. It's exacerbated by how the odds of a curse steadily increases as you complete aspects of the game -- defeating [[spoiler:Isaac]] even once jumps it to a brutal 20% chance of a curse ''per floor'', meaning you're more likely to get a curse than you are to get a Devil Room and making the game borderline unplayable. While losing a run due to a bad item combo or because you chose to gamble and lost feels like your fault, losing a run due to a curse [[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous just feels unfair]], and it's very telling people were so fed up with this mechanic that there exist several mods to remove them outright.[[labelnote:*]]While the BLCK CNDL cheat code already does this, turning it on disables achievements, making it nigh-useless for hundred percent completionists.[[/labelnote]] To wit:

* Curses. Unlike similar mechanics that serve as a risk/reward type thing like Champion monsters that are harder but drop better items, things you can choose to opt out of like Curse Rooms (take damage for the chance of items) or a DealWithTheDevil (trade vitality for a new power), curses are nothing more than a mechanic where the game arbitrarily decides to greatly hinder, annoy, or generally screw over the player while offering nothing in return. It's exacerbated by how the odds of a curse steadily increases as you complete aspects of the game -- defeating [[spoiler:Isaac]] even once jumps it to a brutal 20% chance of a curse ''per floor'', meaning you're more likely to get a curse than you are to get a Devil Room and making the game borderline unplayable. While losing a run due to a bad item combo or because you chose to gamble and lost feels like your fault, losing a run due to a curse [[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous just feels unfair]], and it's very telling people were so fed up with this mechanic that there exist several mods to remove them outright even though a cheat code (BLCK CNDL) already does this. To wit:

* Angel Rooms were guaranteed to contain a free item in the Flash version, but in ''Rebirth'' they more often than not contain pickups, which generally aren't nearly as helpful. Additionally, to get them to appear, you have to pass up a DealWithTheDevil, which more often than not grants items whose power more than justify the health cost and are usually much better than the standard Angel Room fare. Players usually only deal with Angel Rooms in order to take on [[spoiler:Mega Satan]], which requires you to find two of them in the same run (or mess with a Sacrifice room), which doesn't always happen even with optimal circumstances and can force you to skip items like Brimstone. This was addressed in the second booster pack update for ''Afterbirth+'', which makes item spawns more frequent and sometimes allows you to choose between multiple items, increasing the chances for players to get something useful out of the Angel Rooms. ''Repentance'' gave them even more buffs, both indirect (many devil items were nerfed to become much less game-breaking) and direct (an angel room is guaranteed to spawn the next time a special room appears if you skip the first Devil Deal to spawn; the Angel Room's item pool received many rare yet extremely powerful items like Revelation and Sacred Orb), to the point that there is now a very good argument for Angel Rooms being better than Devil Rooms.

* Angel Rooms were guaranteed to contain a free item in the Flash version, but in ''Rebirth'' they more often than not contain pickups, which generally aren't nearly as helpful. Additionally, to get them to appear, you have to pass up a DealWithTheDevil, which more often than not grants items whose power more than justify the health cost and are usually much better than the standard Angel Room fare. Players usually only deal with Angel Rooms in order to take on [[spoiler:Mega Satan]], which requires you to find two of them in the same run (or mess with a Sacrifice room), which doesn't always happen even with optimal circumstances and can force you to skip items like Brimstone. This was addressed in the second booster pack update for ''Afterbirth+'', which makes item spawns more frequent and sometimes allows you to choose between multiple items, increasing the chances for players to get something useful out of the Angel Rooms.

* Some unlockable collectables like Haunted Chests are PowerUpLetDown, as the wiki describes them "A haunted chest deals collision damage while the Polty is inside it. When Isaac tries to open a haunted chest, or after a few seconds of waiting, the Polty will emerge and throw the chest at him, breaking it open and dealing half a heart of damage if it hits.". Which seems in general the reverse of a reward. And it doesn't help that you unlock it by beating [[BonusBoss Mega Satan]] as [[TierInducedScrappy Tainted Lost]]. It's another case of doing something very hard to make the game worse.

** Curse of Darkness makes the game so dark it's almost impossible to see, which basically means you'll be taking a lot of damage you'd normally not be taking since you'll constantly be running into small dark enemies like spiders or getting caught on terrain trying to dodge an attack. On an already dark map like the Necropolis or Sheol, you might as well reset.

* Greed and Super Greed. When you encounter them in a secret room it's great, since they go down easily and give a decent dose of coins or the Steam Sale item. These two buttholes become this trope when you encounter them ''instead of a shop'', since you're very likely to encounter them when you already have enough coins and are wanting to buy items -- in other words, you miss out on one of your limited shop visits in exchange for either a mediocre handful of coins or an item that doesn't serve any purpose without access to a shop. If that's not bad enough, it's possible to run into both of them in the same run, losing ''two separate opportunities'' to buy stuff. They're even worse during challenge runs, since these runs lack free item rooms, which means Greed and Super Greed in effect steal one of your very rare opportunities to get a new item.

* In order to enter the alternate floors, you need to spend one key to reach Downpour, two bombs to reach the Mines, and two hearts to reach the Mausoleum. This requires you to sacrifice pickups early in the game that could otherwise be spent to give you an advantage, and running out forces you back onto the main path, locking you out of getting the two Knife Pieces you need to reach the Corpse. The heart requirement for the Mausoleum is especially annoying, since it takes temporary hearts before red hearts and cuts into the health of characters that can't gain permanent heart containers. Additionally, trapdoors always lead to the next "classic" floor, which means that doing anything that locks you in the ERROR room can deviate you possibly permanently from the alternate path and its final boss.

* Some unlockable collectables like Haunted Chests are PowerUpLetDown, as the wiki describes them "A haunted chest deals collision damage while the Polty is inside it. When Isaac tries to open a haunted chest, or after a few seconds of waiting, the Polty will emerge and throw the chest at him, breaking it open and dealing half a heart of damage if it hits.". Which seems in general the reverse of a reward. And it doesn't help that you unlock it by beating [[BonusBoss Mega Satan]] as [[TierInducedScrappy Tainted Lost]]. Basically the equivalent of "do this really hard thing to make the game worse".

* Greed and Super Greed. When you encounter them in a secret room it's great, since they go down easily and give a decent dose of coins or the Steam Sale item. These two buttholes become this trope when you encounter them ''instead of a shop'', since you're very likely to encounter them when you already have enough coins and are wanting to buy items -- in other words, you miss out on one of your limited shop visits in exchange for either a mediocre handful of coins or an item that doesn't serve any purpose without access to a shop. They're even worse during challenge runs, since these runs lack free item rooms, which means Greed and Super Greed in effect steal one of your very rare opportunities to get a new item.

* TMTRAINER's effect is incredibly unique given its ability to replace a mundane item into a "glitched" one that potentially gives you a GameBreaker effect. The problem? TMTRAINER has absolutely no limits on which item gets affected (including plot-important ones), whereas other situations that affect item generation don't even touch fixed drops. This means that if you pick this up very early on, your run options just got severely limited.
** If that wasn't enough, the "glitched" generation isn't limited to this, as unlocking the Corrupted Data achievement [[spoiler:(unlocked by defeating Delirium as Tainted Eden)]] can potentially replace a secret room item into one, with no idea if its effects will be helpful until it's picked up. Don't forget, this is permanent on your save file!

** In the v1.7.5 update, Tainted Jacob was made even ''worse''. For starters, Dark Esau is now '''invulnerable''' to all damage. While this does outright remove the risk of him accidentally dying to a factor outside of your control, it becomes a problem if you wish to slay him manually, like in the previous patch, because you '''can't'''. [[FromBadToWorse And it only gets worse from here]]. The v1.7.5 update adds the rest of the missing Birthright effects for each character. What does Tainted Jacob get? Upon picking up Birthright, it '''''DUPLICATES Dark Esau into two copies of himself'''''. Now you have two demons following you that will [[OneHitKill slay you in one hit]]. [[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail RUN AWAY!!!]]

* The primary gimmick of [[spoiler:Tainted Jacob is having to run from Dark Esau. After a short time on every floor, he'll spawn in and start chasing after you, damaging enemies he touches. If he makes contact with Tainted Jacob, he "dies" and turns into The Lost for the rest of the floor, meaning you gain flight and spectral tears, but the next hit you take will kill you.]] Kind of annoying to work with, but learnable, and easy to use to your advantage--you even start with an item that can freeze him in place for a few seconds. The issue is that [[spoiler:you also turn into The Lost if Dark Esau dies (yeah, he's not invincible)]]. And unfortunately for you, [[spoiler:Dark Esau is an idiot. He can, and will, blindly fly into damaging hazards, troll bomb explosions, and enemy Brimstone lasers that shave massive chunks off his HP, which can result in you turning into a OneHitPointWonder due to something out of your control. What's more, auto-firing familiars like Demon Baby or Boiled Baby will shoot him if he's nearby, whittling down his HP even more.]]

* Curses. Unlike similar mechanics that serve as a risk/reward type thing like Champion monsters that are harder but drop better items, things you can choose to opt out of like Curse Rooms (take damage for the chance of items) or a DealWithTheDevil (trade vitality for a new power), curses are nothing more than a mechanic where the game arbitrarily decides to greatly hinder, annoy, or generally screw over the player while offering nothing in return. While losing a run due to a bad item combo or because you chose to gamble and lost feels like your fault, losing a run due to a curse [[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous just feels unfair]], and it's very telling people were so fed up with this mechanic that there exist several mods to remove them outright even though a cheat code (BLCK CNDL) already does this. To wit:

* Curse of the Blind has the effect of making you unable to see the pedestal items on that floor, replacing them with a question mark icon. This can screw a run in so many ways, given the risk of spending health/money on something worthless or picking up a very disadvantageous item by accident. The whole floor becomes a roulette wheel you can either try for potential help or ignore for a lost floor of items. The worst of it is when you manage to land the curse on [[spoiler:The Chest]], where the starting room gives you four free items.
* Curse of the Maze, causes you to, at random times, warp across the map to a random room when passing through a door. This can transport one from a cleared room to another cleared room, and sometimes even warp you to the room you already came from, wasting time instead of increasing the risk of traversing the floor. The curse will also shuffle around some of the contents of the floor, which can send something in one room clear across the map. At best it's considered an annoyance that barely raises the difficulty, and at worst you could be pushed just over the 20/30 minute mark and get locked out of the BossRush/[[spoiler:Hush battle]] due to the time spent fighting against a particularly large Curse of the Maze floor and hoping that the RNG will just let you go where you want to. ''Repentance'' changed the curse so that it can only send you to undiscovered rooms, reducing its annoyance.
* Curse of the Unknown makes it so that you cannot see your remaining health. This is no problem if you're playing The Lost/Tainted Lost, but as any other character, this becomes worrisome. It may cause you to constantly feel uncomfortable, [[ParanoiaFuel not knowing if the next hit will be your]] [[GameOver demise]].

* Pills became a scrappy mechanic around the time of ''Afterbirth'', with many players refusing to use them at all. Many new pill effects were introduced, most of which were considered neutral (meaning PHD, Virgo, and Luck Foot don't override them) despite having poor or negative effects. Some were also the reward for completing challenges, which diluted the effect pool even more. The worst by far is the Retro Vision pill, which periodically pixellates the screen for a short time, an annoying effect that can cause eye strain and lag. ''Repentance'' replaced the filtering effect with a sprite-downscaling effect that was less intrusive, and generally improved the quality of pills.

* ''Afterbirth'' introduces damage scaling for its two new superbosses. To encourage more defensive builds, in addition to having high health pools and focusing a lot more on learning their different attacks, the bosses also have a mechanic where their defense increases based on how much damage you're outputting. As a result, a run that would normally stop every other boss is forced to have a [[MarathonBoss long endurance match]] against them, which can get tiring across several playthrough. In very rare cases, having too high of a damage output can break the damage resistance and make the boss nearly impossible to kill.

* Some unlockable collectables like Haunted Chests are PowerUpLetDowns, as the wiki describes them "A haunted chest deals collision damage while the Polty is inside it. When Isaac tries to open a haunted chest, or after a few seconds of waiting, the Polty will emerge and throw the chest at him, breaking it open and dealing half a heart of damage if it hits.". Which seems in general the reverse of a reward. And it doesn't help that you unlock it by beating [[BonusBoss Mega Satan]] as [[TierInducedScrappy Tainted Lost]]. Basically the equivalent of "do this really hard thing to make the game worse".

** If that wasn't enough, the "glitched" generation isn't limited to this, as unlocking the Corrupted Data achievement [[spoiler:(unlocked by defeating Delirium as Tainted Eden)]] can potentially replace a secret room item into one, with no idea if its effects will be helpful until it's picked up. Don't forget, this is permanent on your save file!

* Curse of the Maze, causes you to, at random times, warp across the map to a random room when passing through a door. This can transport one from a cleared room to another cleared room, and sometimes even warp you to the room you already came from, wasting time instead of increasing the risk of traversing the floor. The curse will also shuffle around some of the contents of the floor, which can send something in one room clear across the map. At best it's considered an annoyance that barely raises the difficulty, and at worst you could be pushed just over the 20/30 minute mark and get locked out of the BossRush/Hush battle due to the time spent fighting against a particularly large Curse of the Maze floor and hoping that the RNG will just let you go where you want to. ''Repentance'' changed the curse so that it can only send you to undiscovered rooms, reducing its annoyance.