When comparing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth vs Transistor, the Slant community recommends The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is ranked 57th while Transistor is ranked 65th. The most important reason people chose The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is:
The levels in Binding of Isaac are randomly generated. They will have different layouts, monster combinations, upgrades, secrets, and bosses each time you start a new playthrough. You can even change characters to mix up the playstyle, swapping to a really fast but fragile character or a very durable but weak character. As a result, no two playthroughs will ever feel the same, allowing you to replay the game countless times without getting tired of it.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Great replay value
The levels in Binding of Isaac are randomly generated. They will have different layouts, monster combinations, upgrades, secrets, and bosses each time you start a new playthrough. You can even change characters to mix up the playstyle, swapping to a really fast but fragile character or a very durable but weak character. As a result, no two playthroughs will ever feel the same, allowing you to replay the game countless times without getting tired of it.
Pro Addictive gameplay that keeps you entertained
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is very easy to pick up and play with each playthrough lasting about 30 minutes on average. It’s just really fun shooting enemies, collecting treasures, and dropping the occasional bomb, making it really hard to stop playing. One playthrough will turn into ten and many hours will have passed before you know it.
Pro Incredible amounts of content for a low price
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth has all the content of the previous releases and even new content. As a result there are tons of unlockable items, secrets, bosses, power-ups, hidden characters, challenges, and item combinations. There’s just so much to do and try out you’ll be entertained for dozens of hours, adding up to more hours you can spend in a lot of fullprice games.
Pro Character upgrades are really fun
One of the best parts about Binding of Isaac is collecting upgrades and watching your character evolve. This can be nuances in the physical appearance of your character, adding a cute hat, changing its skin tone to green, or even lodging a rock into its skull. It can also be modifications to the way your tear bullets look and shoot, changing their color, speed, firing arc, or even turning them into a massive laser. It’s just really cool seeing your character turn into something entirely different by the end of a playthrough.
Pro Very creepy themes
Binding of Isaac is a story about insanity, religious fanaticism, ritual sacrifices, and even worship of the devil. Once you start paying attention to the various details, it can be genuinely terrifying and dark.
Pro Beautiful soundtrack
The soundtrack is mostly a type of electronic music called "trip hop", which is heavily influenced by jazz, punk and soul. Most of the songs are very mellow and have a melancholic feel to them, giving Transistor's cyberpunk world a very distinct and memorable feel.
Pro Excellent narration
Transistor uses narration to move its story along with the help of a talking sword. While it may seem strange at first, it really gives substance to an otherwise empty feeling world. The soft voice of the sword is also pleasing to listen to. If you ever feel like the sword is too talkative, you can disable the narration.
Pro Awesome hack and slash action with an interesting twist
Transistor is primarily an action RPG, but it has turn-based combat elements. You can use the ability ()Turn to pause time, which allows you to plan out your moves. This adds strategic depth to the combat, giving you ways to quickly take out all enemies or to get out of a tight situation. It's very fun to use and feels really unique.
Pro Deep customization that rewards imagination and strategy
In Transistor you'll get abilities called Functions(). They have three primary effects: the active effect, the upgrade effect, and the passive effect. These effects can be combined to produce really fun to use skills.
For example, the Get() active effect pulls an enemy close to you. If you add the Bounce() upgrade effect, it will jump to more enemies, pulling them all to you. If you add the Crash() upgrade effect, the enemies pulled will also fall asleep.
The game can be beat with simple combos that don't require much setup or strategy, but thinking up great combinations feels rewarding.
Cons
Con Randomness can be really frustrating
You can have really bad luck in some playthroughs like finding very few keys, bombs, or coins, causing you to miss out on a lot of potential upgrades. There can also be times when the upgrades you find are bad. In both cases, a playthrough becomes unbearably hard and you probably won’t get very far. It’s very annoying when this happens multiple times in a row.
Con Can be really disgusting
While on the surface Binding of Isaac: Rebirth looks very cute and colorful, it actually has some pretty gruesome details within it. Blood, various bodily fluids, excrement, disfigured flesh, umbilical cords, and many more things that can make your stomach churn.
Con Very simple story
The story focuses too much on the revenge plot and too little on the characters themselves. Even the ending wasn't a particularly satisfying, leaving way too many unanswered questions.