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Comment by cheald | Hacker News Reader

Binding of Isaac is a marvelous game. It feels like it shouldn't be, but I probably sunk 80+ hours into it, and I've not even touched the DLC.

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It has that magic combination of art, humor, gameplay, and actual theme. It's 150+ hours for me, climbing toward all the Steam achievements (just got the Mamas Boy the other night).

Since you've already hit it pretty hard, I would add the DLC, it adds lots of Fun to the game. It does make performance take a major hit though, because of the way the developers used Flash.

My other piece of advice is: don't get spoiled. Don't read about the enemies, levels, powerups, etc. online. Just play the game and let it teach you.

I keep the wiki handy for a list of what all the powerups do (since I can never remember), but I can definitely see the fun in just tinkering with them if you're an "explorer" type.

To anyone getting it: there is some way to play it "properly", I think you should play the base game before you _install_ DLC, or something like that.

I cannot find any source to this, so please someone who played, correct me.

Some players recommend beating the game several times (yes, it makes sense in context) without the DLC, because the extra content makes it harder overall. Unfortunately this Humble Bundle includes both game and DLC in a single Steam license key, and includes the DLC in the download, so there's no way to avoid installing the DLC in this case.

Thanks to both you and the parent for the heads-up; I've got the original without DLC in a previous bundle, now I know to install/play it first.

Pretty sure that you're right, and that the game becomes a lot harder when you install the DLC, so you should play it sans-DLC first if you're new.

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