Okay, now I’ll admit that I believe that a lot of complaints players of this game have about it are a bit overblown—I didn’t really care much for the brimstone or 20/20 nerf, I like playing as Jacob and Esau occasionally, and while it’s improperly executed I don’t think the Delirium fight is as bad as some people make it out to be. But people are entitled to their opinions, so who am I to disagree.

But Tainted Jacob—Tainted freaking Jacob—makes me want to pull my hair out! That entire character is a walking anxiety attack that just makes me worry about doing the simplest tasks of buying items from the shop. A single misstep and you’re suddenly slung into playing as Rebirth Lost (and take it from someone who got Godhead in Rebirth: that’s NOT fun!). You can get zero respite from Dark Esau, because if you manage to kill him then your anxiety about not getting hit by him turns into anxiety about not getting hit by ANYTHING! The only times you get to breathe are the 20-40 seconds at the start of a floor before Esau spawns in, and even then (if you’re anything like me) you’re spending that time in anticipation of his spawning. And when you get hit and have to play as the Lost, you’re still so screwed over because you get a soul heart or a breakfast item in the boss room and you literally can’t even benefit from it later in the run when you’re no longer the Lost, it just makes it a dead item all because you couldn’t avoid Esau! I know they’re already dead items when playing as the Lost, but at least then you go into the game knowing that they’re dead items already, but with Tainted Jacob it only became a dead item because you were unable to pay attention to the enemies around you, aiming your tears, the enemies’ projectiles, AND Esau all at the same time! And I know for a FACT that the game can make you benefit from the soul hearts/breakfast items while still playing as a form of the Lost, because that’s how it works when you go into the white flame in Downpour/Dross II (grayed out hearts that still add in soul hearts and HP up items to your health)!

I get that the tainted characters all revolve around their specific unique gimmicks that separates them from the non-tainted characters’ issue of “just Isaac, but…”, but so many of them were executed so well: Isaac opens up strategy and planning (and not getting utterly screwed over by Curse of the Blind); Cain, while broken, still requires careful planning and resource management with regards to pickups; Judas makes going headlong into danger a viable strategy; ??? (blue baby) is mostly unchanged from non-tainted, but still has a fun amount of controlled randomness and utilizing the unique poop effects; and Lost, while being so difficult, encompasses the Lost’s mantra of “You can’t get hit, so time to git gud.” Hell, even Tainted Lazarus, while only giving you effectively half the items at a time, is still interesting and requires some strategy and planning. Tainted Jacob is just pure anxiety of staying on the move, and anyone who has fought certain bosses (Isaac, Mega Satan, Hush, or even Mother) can tell you that always being on the move is a death wish!

In the 600 hours I have spent playing the various iterations of this game, I have only ever thought “I HATE playing this character” twice: Tainted Jacob and Tainted Lazarus (not even the Lost, because that’s frankly a fun challenge for me), and both frankly need to be heavily revamped, but Jacob more so than Lazarus. I haven’t played/figured out the play style of a few of the tainted characters (specifically Magdalene, Azazel, and Keeper), so I’m unaware if they also play like crap (but I’d rather find that one out by myself as I start to play as them, so please refrain from explaining their gimmicks in the comments), but I honestly highly doubt it could get much worse than making me long to play Tainted Lost (because at least he has SOME protection and doesn’t worry about dead items).

TL; DR Screw Tainted Jacob SO MUCH!