Balatro

⭐ 9/10

Two video game reviews in a row, who is this guy?? I'm clearly in a deck-builder phase, and this was a very natural next step after Slay The Spire. This is a deck building roguelike, but based on poker and poker hands, plus 150 jokers to modify how you play and increase your points round after round. Like all deck-builders it is endlessly fun, with each round feeling unique, and also very addicting when you find another game-breaking deck.

I won't go on and on about what makes this fun, because a big part of it is just seeing large numbers go up. There are tons and tons of modifications and challenges through the different decks and stakes (like Slay The Spire's "ascensions" of Hades' "heat"), and its so satisfying to feel yourself improving as a player even though the difficulty is still high.

And this is where I will cut into the game a bit, since I don't think its perfect. Even after all this time I still only win maybe 20% of the time. This is probably because I am always pushing to the next difficulty, but still, there are so many runs that feel dead after 2 rounds because the jokers you got suck or you can't generate money. Maybe I am still just not good, but there are a ton of jokers that are just useless as you get later into a run. I think this game has perfect run lengths, with a successful run taking about 15-20 minutes, which then you can keep going on to get a high score. So that makes it easy (and addictive) to just start another run when you lose 3 minutes in, which happens a ton.

This leads in to my other criticism, in that there are a handful of builds that are auto-wins, and it always feels like you are kind of building and morphing your deck until you get to one of those. It doesn't feel as incredibly open as Slay The Spire, where you can win with so many different setups. When I play Spire and I get card rewards I always think about what I'm going for, whether these cards I have never considered will actually help, and it seems like every card is useful at some point! In Balatro there are cards I simply will not touch, or you get unintentionally through other means and they throw a wrench in your plans. The win condition just seems more slim, and while I've had some incredible runs with cards I didn't expect they are way more rare than in something like STS.

I am by no means done this game, and I will keep grinding harder stakes. I have a group chat with 3 other guys who have been playing for years, and they are still playing, and its fun sending screenshots of wacky or epic builds. Their tutelage and encouragement has made this game a lot more fun for me. While I get the appeal and am totally hooked, it fails to live up to the bar of Slay The Spire. Reminds me of when I played RDR2 - no other game could come close after, especially the games that are the most like it.