WhenBalatrowas released and started generating the buzz of ten thousand furious hungover hornets, I was intrigued. After all, in recent years, the roguelite has risen to become one of my favorite genres, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyedstellar examples like Dead Cells and Hades.
I didn’t dive in immediately, though.I’m an absolute poker newbie, and foolishly and naively thought that actually mattered.
The deckbuilders I so enjoy, such as Slay the Spire, are games that revolve around cards, but they aren’t card games per se. Here was a title based around an actual card game, and one that I didn’t remotely understand.
you may’t read Lady Gaga’s poker face, or so I’ve heard, and that was the absolute extent of my understanding on the subject of poker. A couple of months after its release, though,I was gifted Balatro, and thought it would be rude of me not to give it a good try so I could pass along my impressions along with my gratitude.
Predictably, I got absolutely nowhere in my first several runs. I had no idea what I was doing, what to buy in the shop, which Jokers to pick up. I was a flailing mess, as I always am in a new roguelite.
But then.Then, friends, I put my first successful build together. I stumbled on some Joker synergy that actually worked well, and had developed the understanding to put the darn multiplier Joker at the right end of the row.
It was glorious. The beautiful binging sounds of my Jokers activating in sequence, the bright lights, the multipliers.
Are you winning, son? You’re darn right I am, and I haven’t felt a wave of pure, perfect, blissful knowledge and understanding since I finally mastered the times tables in school thirty years ago.
There are just as many numbers in Balatro, but in a fun and utterly engaging way. Which makes a pleasant change, because math has absolutely never been my thing.
The game is a relentless onslaught of numbers, in fact, but the beauty of it all is the way they’re presented. Each aspect of scoring has an impact, a bright colorful one, gradually increasing in speed as the sequence proceeds (nicely cutting down the delay as things like the Seltzer Joker are used).
The whole thing is brilliantly, fiendishly designed to deliver that dopamine at every turn, and you delve gradually deeper into the surprising depth beneath the surface with every run.It’s super-highly recommended to any deckbuilder fan.
A Year With Jimbo Is A Year Well Spent
A year later, I’m a regular player, and I’ve become somewhat more confident. I’m climbing the different stake levels withmultiple decks (all nicely varied), making more efficient choices in the store to get the very best I can out of what the game offers me, and recognizing what would work for a run and what wouldn’t.
All of this took a lot of experience.With Jokers, Tarot cards, Planet cards, several different kinds of seals with alternate effects, and Spectral cards to choose from, there’s an overwhelming amount to learn in Balatro.
Should you buy that extra King for your deck? Which of those Planet cards do you want? Is it worth paying out to reroll the shop, hoping that the Joker that’s just right for your specific situation will arise?
There’s always a certain degree of RNG in any roguelike, and balancing the safest route to take at any given time in a run with the one that’ll give you enough scoring potential in later rounds is very difficult.
Balatro is a game that can easily tempt you into making a brightly-colored, enticing, very wrong decision at any moment.One wrong purchase in the store can set your economy back enough that you won’t be able to recover later down the line.
Compounding this is the fact that the margin for error shrinks, shrivels up, falls off and rolls away under the sofa as you move up through the Stakes (the game’s equivalent of Slay the Spire’s Ascension system).
I’m the furthest thing from a truly good player. I get sucked into shooting for a Flush build far too easily, and I think the checkered pattern of Checkered Deck is printed on the outside of my brain at this point. I’m one of those who will play a final hand, lose, and then realize I actually had the tools I needed that could’ve saved that run. I won’t be getting very far inthe game’s excellent endless modeany time soon.
More than any roguelike before, though, Balatro has absolutely impressed upon me the importance of doing the best you can with what you’re given, rather than trying to force the type of build you want to use.
Because of that, I’m eager to get started again right away when I lose, rather than feeling the frustration of enjoying how a build was going and then having to leave it all behind. This is especially the case because a run through the eight antes can be so very quick.
You know how it can be with the biggest and most exhaustingly-hyped games. They arrive, we utterly consume them, and maybe even score 100% completion if we’re that committed. If it’s not the kind of title that receives regular content updates, though, we might well leave it behind after that.
Balatro shows no sign of relinquishing its grip on me over time.A year ago, I was entirely unconvinced, having never played poker in my life. I’ve now accepted the foolishness of my ways and embraced Balatro as one of my favorite games of all time.
I’m nowhere near the level of some brilliant players, but I still love watching their gameplay and the ludicrous numbers they can achieve. It just means there’s still a lot more to strive for, and that brings me right back into Jimbo’s world. Again. I wonder how manyBalatro fans have been inspired to pursue poker elsewhere.
