Awesome / The Binding of Isaac

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Friends Till The End!

As one Nintendo Hard roguelike on the level of Dark Souls, Super Meat Boy and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, FOURTEEN final bosses that will make you cry tears of joy while you beat them, and 10 years of new content, The Binding Of Isaac is full of Awesome Moments, both in the story and by YOU, the experienced player.

---

Original Game

• The first time you beat Mom without The Bible is definitely a triumph.
• Then there's getting any combination of items that turn Issac from a crying child into an angry winged demon shooting laser beams everywhere.
• Getting Brimstone and Polyphemus. All of the non-final bosses go down in either 1 or 2 hits. It makes you feel like a god.
  • Want to surpass that? Both Technologies and Ludovico Technique please.
  • Want to surpass even that? Ipecac plus Epic Fetus plus a damage multiplier of at least 1.5 (Cricket's Head, Magic Mushroom, Eve's Mascara, and a few others). To make it even crazier, add Inner Eye or Mutant Spider to have multiple missiles fire down.
  • Let's just say that any time you manage to put together a nasty combination of items to tear apart your enemies on a single run is one of these.
  • Brimstone by itself is an incredible item. You know those annoying blood-lasers that many mid-to-late-run enemies and some of the most infamous bosses fire at you? A general That One Attack for the whole game with limitless range that passes over obstacles to hit you? The signature move from bosses such as the Bloat and the Adversary? This gives you the power to fire them on your own. Not only that, but the number of synergies with this relatively rare, unique (not counting Mega Blast of Afterbirth or that Azazel starts with a short-ranged version of it) item is impressive. 20/20 (from Afterbirth onwards), Inner Eye, and Mutant Spider let you fire two, three, and four Brimstone waves at once respectively, and if you're lucky enough to get more than one of these items or clone them with Diplopia/Crooked Penny, they add up (for a maximum of 16). Tiny Planet, normally a Scrappy Weapon, changes Brimstone so that you get a "shield" of it of sorts before it fires straight ahead anyway, with no downsides. Spoon Bender turns the beam a nice violet color and has it curve around to hit what few enemies might avoid it. And Tammy's Head? Once every room, you get to fire ten beams all at once in different directions, pretty much cutting through any non-final boss and shredding any enemy that cannot make itself invulnerable. Compare the latter to Head of Krampus, which takes six rooms to recharge and only fires four beams in the cardinal directions.
• Defeating Isaac as the Blue Baby and unlocking the D6. An awesome item in its own right, this item lets the user re-roll any item pedestal in the room. Don't like it? Re-roll it! But what makes unlocking it all the more awesome is that it immediately becomes Isaac's starting item by default. This turns Isaac from a basic, mediocre, but well-rounded character into the closest thing you can get to a wild card without playing as Eden.

Rebirth

• Rebirth's boss rush, AKA every boss up to the Depths (as well as Blastocyst and Death) from the original Binding of Isaac and WoTL, teaming up to take you down. Bonus points to Isaac and the player if they manage to survive the horde.
• And Rebirth's True Final Boss, MEGA SATAN, a massive version of Satan that attacks with Bullet Hell, slamming his Giant Hands of Doom, and summoning the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Seven Super Deadly Sins, and two fallen versions of the Angel minibosses. And that's not getting into his second form...
• Beating any run as The Lost - both versions if you are playing Repentance. Especially if you beat a hard final boss such as DELIRIUM or THE BEAST.
• The Godhead. When picked up, it gives Isaac homing tears with a huge damaging aura around them that straight-up melts most enemies. Even just unlocking it counts as an awesome moment in and of itself, as this requires beating every main boss in the game with the Lost, and if you installed any of the DLCs, you have to beat their bosses with said character as well.
• One interpretation of Ending 15 turns it into this for Isaac. After being trapped with his abusive mother for who knows how long, he makes the choice to finally run away from home. It might be hard out there, but almost anything is a better option than living with the crazed woman who thinks God wants her to sacrifice her only son.

Afterbirth and Afterbirth+

• This victory lap Hush battle, in which Hush is made an absolute fool of. Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? indeed.
  Rita: IT'S MELTING THE BOSS THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE INVULNERABLE TO MELTING! *MANIACAL LAUGHTER*
  • If you wanted to see Hush be deleted, BEHOLD.
    Brett Tear: Okay, good luck to you— (Hush's Blue Baby form is killed instantly, leading to the true form emerging almost immediately.) Did he even have a frame of life? Did he even have a frame—? (Hush then dies in one hit, accompanied by a gunshot.) OH MY GOD, HE DIED INSTANTLY. I HAVE NEVER, EVER, SEEN THAT HAPPEN. I'VE SEEN HIM MELT... I'VE SEEN HIM CHUNK... I HAVE NOT SEEN THE HEALTH BAR JUST DECIDE TO NOT TURN UP TO WORK TODAY. HOLY SHIT!
• Slaying the lamb in 22 seconds from The Basement is technicially possible (although this is a seeded run)
• Ultra Greed's intro can be this the first time you see it. Typically Keepers that are still hung by their noose will never be a problem... but Ultra Greed is so determined to bleed you dry that he reaches up, takes the noose that is itself as thick as a train rail in both hands, and then tears it in half with no effort.

Repentance

• On March 26, 2021, a new blog post by Edmund is released, giving hard numbers of content in the game:
  • The details: 22000 rooms, 716 items, 637 achievements, 188 trinkets, 322 enemies, 103 bosses, 94 tracks, 44 challenges, 17+ playable characters.
  • When discounting previously-existing content from Rebirth and its existing DLCs, the new content is as follows: 169 new items, 234 new achievements, 61 new trinkets, 126 new enemies, 31 new bosses, 52 new tracks, 9 new challenges, 2+ new characters.
  • When discounting Antibirth content, the new content is as so: 80 new items, 234 new achievements, 43 new trinkets, about 46 new enemies, about 15 new bosses, about 45 new tracks, not including the tracks unique to Antibirth for the alternative path floors, alternate path boss music, the music for the final boss of Corpse, and the planetarium track (which means there might be new floors) , about 9 new challenges.
• After clearing the alternate Antibirth path ^note  By Killing Mother by going through the Strange Door, you get access to DOGMA and THE BEAST, the FINAL true final boss ^note You have to beat Hush 3 times just to access the alternate route, as opposed to beating the three new bosses found on normal floors in Antibirth, along with having to clear out the alternate route’s Mother boss fight, so it's even harder to access than Delirium.
  • Furthermore, the symbolism of the two fights; After finding Dad's Note, you realize it's an item that lets you go back through the levels… and go one step further up, back into Isaac's house to fight Dogma; the personification of the evangelical broadcasting that drove his mother insane when she was at her most emotionally vulnerable, meaning that Isaac isn't just fighting for his life anymore. He's full of righteous fury at what this drivel has done to him and his family. After beating it, it reforms into a Holy Cross that bestows him with the power to fight The Beast, the master of the real, far larger Harbingers. In other words, using the kernels of good he's found within the Christian belief as he's seen it to fight off the end of his world as he knew it.
    • Alternatively, Isaac is fighting a corrupted version of faith in Dogma with a more pure version of faith and is able to find redemption as a result upon slaying The Beast. Whether that comes in the form of finding peace in death, ascending to Heaven, getting a second chance at life, or even simply starting a new story with his father, he's finally broken free of the cycle of self-hatred he was trapped in.
• The very fact that, thanks to Repentance, this game managed to get some semblance of a happy ending is awesome in of itself. Though Isaac remains dead in this world, the game is heavily implied to be more than just a Dying Dream, being a story he's telling to what sounds like his father in whatever awaited him on the other side, though it could easily be someone else represented by him. The father (or whoever he is) also gets one for being completely calm about Isaac's twisted and dark story and instead offering to tell him a story with a happy ending. Also doubles as a huge heart-melting moment.
• Near its release, Edmund was teasing fans with the number "34", even leaving hidden links that relate to the number. At release, it was revealed that the significance of the number was quite substantial, to say the least. That's because the DLC didn't just add the 2 characters from Antibirth, but also added an alternate form for each character, including the aforementioned 2. Each one comes with an entirely unique mechanic that essentially makes them different characters compared to the counterparts. Not only that, but they also have their own completion marks AND unlocks. As such, the actual character count becomes 34.
• Mega Mush, unlocked by earning all Hard mode completion marks for all non-tainted characters, turns Isaac into a invincible giant for 30 seconds. See it here.
• Death Certificate, the ultimate Infinity +1 Sword of Isaac, is unlocked by earning all Hard mode completion marks for all characters, including tainted ones, takes you to an area when you can pick any item. Yes, ANY ITEM, including many of the game-breakers.
• And after waiting for 10 years, enduring all the Nintendo Hard trials and tribulations, beating all the bosses with all 34 characters, collecting all 716 items, doing all 44 challenges, and repeating it on 2 other save files, is there a more beautiful sight than seeing a triptych depicting an infinity symbol formed by Isaac and various monsters◊? Spoiler alert: there really, really isn't.
• The expansion itself is a huge one for the Antibirth team, who created a mod so awesome that Edmund McMillen himself not only endorsed it, but hired the team to make it canon!
  • The awesome doubles when you consider the difference in tone between the final endings of Afterbirth+ and Repentance. The former is a horribly depressing Downer Ending Mind Screwdriver that, while answering a lot of questions, is a brutal dose of Tearjerking Nightmare Fuel. The latter? A (seemingly) Bittersweet Ending where Isaac finally ascends to heaven after fighting in the depths for so very long... only to finally get a chance to start a new, better story, with his family intact. Not only did the Antibirth team succeed in making their mod canon, they also helped to undo the bleakest of endings and canonically let the poor boy finally get a break.
    • Dampened a bit by Ed saying that Isaac is indeed dead. However, this does lead to a new Awesome moment, with Ed admitting that while Isaac is dead, what happens in the afterlife is up to interpretation. So while the idea that Isaac is dead and isn’t coming back is valid, the idea that Isaac is also given a second chance at life and lives a happier childhood is just as valid. How happy is the ending of Isaac? As happy as you want it.
• Finishing the final challenge of Isaac in 8 seconds. For context, the DELETE THIS challenge has you start with TMTRAINER. The random item had the effect of granting a trophy''.
  • Forget this: the game is now beatable in THREE SECONDS.
  • The new world record.

---