5/5 ★ – evasglory's review of Balatro.

Finally, gambling addiction is fun! I've never liked regular poker but Balatro still made me obsessed with its version to the point that I've put hours and hours into this game. It caught me hook, line, and sinker with its beautifully psychedelic-retro visuals, entrancing sound effects, and brilliant core ideas and it kept me and cooked me up for dinner with its satisfying combos, surprisingly fun difficulty curves, and its sheer variety in things to discover, collect, and put together in a run for new strategies. As far as I can tell, there's no main objective aside from just completing the game, so I decided that unlocking every deck would be good enough to say I beat it. All of the jokers are fun and unique and while not all of them are very highly winnable, it's a great choice to have many of them be jokers that you pick up at the start to help give you a small boost so you can sell them later for the better ones. Roguelikes always amaze me by how deeply you can tell the creators cared for the thing they're making and Balatro is no exception. An unbelievable amount of love is poured into the art of every playing card, every joker, every tarot card and the rest. It makes discovering new things in the game a fantastically rewarding experience. I love it a lot and I will definitely be coming back to do all that I can. The only complaint I have with Balatro is that completing the game is way too monumental of a feat in my opinion. Beating the hardest difficulty with every joker in the game just isn't really worth my time. This, of course, is completely optional, so it doesn't bring it down very much at all, but it's very slightly disappointing that I will likely not be able to complete this game. Overall, Balatro is an incredible experience and I highly recommend this game to everyone who's a fan of roguelikes or playing cards. Even if you're not, you may still like it.