3.5/5 ★ – xXWoodinatorXx's review of Balatro.

I got my first win pretty early. First night. I had this really great combo where I had a joker that 1 in 4 upgrades the hand played. Plus this really good joker that adds the number times you’ve used a hand as the multiplier. So I used two pair every single hand I could. Got it super upgraded. And it kept getting better and better due to levels and the number of hands played. It wrecked. This seems like it will be a fun pure strategy game. I hope it has some decent legs. It seems like it could, as long as there feels like there are enough unique strategies. If I end up chasing similar versions of my original winning strategy every time then I’ll up getting bored. Got my second win, with the red deck this time. I got a joker early on that gave a +4 mult per diamond and then I spent the rest of the game manipulating my deck it have as many diamonds as possible. I upgraded flush as much as possible and it was really really good. There were a few other factors that really upped the synergy. This is a clever roguelike. I really have no idea how long it’s going to hold my attention but I like the structure to the game. Damn, I had a pretty good run going with blue deck level 2. Then I failed on the last boss ante. It was the violet one that’s the very large blind. 300,000. I couldn’t get there. Only like 180. Wasn’t even close. My flaw in my run I learned was that I had pretty much only invested in jokers, and planets. I skipped card packs and tarots because one of my jokers got +3mult for skips. It made a great consistent hand that was really good right up until it couldn’t reach that upper limit. I have played this game a bunch so far. It’s quite fun. ImI have 4 wins with unique decks and now I’ve been trying to win with the Black deck that gives you an extra joker but loses a hand. It’s not a good deck. Sure, late game it’s nice to have an extra joker slot but losing one hand is rough for early on and even later on a hand played is in a lot of ways better than whatever that leftover 6th joker ends up being. Except for my last run, where I had this incredibly efficient joker set up where 4 cards face card abilities and one of them retriggered face cards so I had massive scores…then in Ante 7 the boss was face cards don’t score… I was fucked. Super unlucky. This game is great. I keep finding it fun. I’m trying to unlock all of the decks. Or at least see how far I can go. I have unlocked all the white stake decks and the red stake deck. This game is very fun. This game is really fun and I’ve played it a ton. I’m not sure how accurate steams counter is when I go between offline and online mode (I don’t think it counts offline mode) but it guessing in around 45 hours so far. It’s one of my most played games on steam deck. I have now unlocked every deck and I’m trying to beat the last stake with the checkered deck. Very fun game, lots of fun strategies to test out. Beat gold stake with the checkered deck. This may be a good stopping point for me but we will see. I really enjoyed Balatro and played it a ton. Final Score: B+