Although its difficulty systems and build variety leave a little to be desired, Balatro's instant accessibility, satisfying strategy, and thrilling balance of risk and reward make for an instant deckbuilding classic.


A typical run goes as follows: after selecting one of 15 starter decks, usually comprised of the standard 52 playing cards and a powerful, unique modifier, you'll take on your first poker blind, 'combat' rounds demanding an ever-increasing quantity of chips for your seat at the table and your run's livelihood. Naturally, you'll earn those chips by formulating straights, flushes or any other traditional hands with the eight cards dealt at the start of each round and refreshed after each play; a paltry high-card will score a handful of chips, but drill a royal flush out of nowhere and you'll be rolling in them.

You've got several hands to tackle each blind with alongside a few handy discard-and-redraws, giving back both some control as well as facilitating the brilliant and constant gamble underpinning every hand; find yourself with three kings, and you can either hedge your bets, sending what you have for fewer chips and keeping your options open or go for broke, committing your discards in the hope you'll finish that lucrative four of a kind, potentially clearing the blind in a single shot and earning some extra cash for your trouble.

Cash you can spend in the ever-cycling shops between blinds on an array of beneficial items; assorted booster packs increase the value of a specific hand, add new cards to the deck, or improve the ones you already have with all sorts of positive modifiers. After stocking up on what you need and overcoming the boss appearing every three blinds (complete with any one of a variety of vicious debuffs), you'll 'up the ante', raising the demands of subsequent blinds. Gamble up to and conquer the boss blind of ante 8 to achieve a well-earned victory before carrying on into a sudden death-style endless mode if you so choose.


Assemble hands, satisfy the blinds, purchase what you need to keep doing so; as simple as poker itself, really, but don't mistake that low buy-in for an absence of depth: your funds will provide interest should you hold off on spending for a few rounds, and although you'll lose access to a potentially impactful shop and any money you could have earned from the encounter, any non-boss blind can be skipped for a hefty reward. Every decision carries some amount of risk, yet not always a reward of equal measure, and it's up to you to spot the difference, capitalising on the smallest edges, the slimmest margins and honing your judgement with each inevitable defeat. It's easy to get caught up in the immediate ease of access, but an hour will turn into six in the blink of an eye, and you'll suddenly find yourself knee-deep in a deceptively broad and mostly satisfying difficulty curve that always seems to have another ace up its sleeve.

However, Balatro is so much more than just helplessly trying to make the best of a bad situation, and with the perfect combination of joker cards, you can stack the deck ridiculously in your favour. Whether it be through simple flat chip increases and additive multipliers, multipliers that multiply your multipliers, and economic benefits that ultimately facilitate buying even more multipliers, blowing the relatively lacklustre base rewards of most played hands into the stratosphere is their speciality, and you'll quickly find they're your most important purchases to look out for in the shop.

You've only got five slots for these guys by default, though, and that's where most of the strategy behind your build lies: many jokers interact and synergise with each other for ludicrously potent outcomes; however, you're severely limited in how many you can wield at once, and, between what you have and what you can buy, figuring out what's most beneficial for the next few blinds is all too often a tricky practicality argument with no clear solution. Yet, although you're largely at the mercy of whatever the shop decides to offer you, learning what works best together as you tag in and out progressively more optimal jokers for your strongest hands is a deeply rewarding and exciting process as your build slowly comes together.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167358461

One joker, for example, turns every scoring face card gold, an enhanced type of card that grants some money if it's still in your hand at the end of a blind; another intensifies that effect by forcing every card to be considered a face. Finally, throw in the Vampire, a joker that gains a stacking multiplier per enhanced card played at the cost of removing the enhancement, and you've got one of the most hilariously overpowered trios you can find, stacking your multiplier with literally every card played. However, these strategies come with their own set of risks, too: only one of that trio is actually empowering your hands, and if you're struggling to find that all-important Vampire, you're stuck with two economic jokers doing little more than making the upcoming blinds that much more difficult. Alternatively, if you happen to sell those two and swap them out for a safer setup a few shops before you hit Vampire—well, that's just heartbreaking.


I called the difficulty curve satisfying earlier, and although it is for a good while, the peak of the curve is frankly an RNG-riddled nightmare. With every winning run, the successful deck will unlock a bigger and badder optional 'Stake': a stacking difficulty modifier up to a maximum of 8 (think Slay the Spire's Ascension system), yet, although you can reasonably expect a certain degree of unsalvagably bad luck from anything that invokes poker of all things, these higher difficulties scale up ludicrously fast, demand watertight builds you'll rarely hit and kill even the strongest of runs with a single bad draw, damaging the experience's overall longevity for those craving a little more challenge after learning the basics.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167653960

There's a lack of mid-run adaptation, too, particularly in the hands you can realistically play around: not only do you have to invest in improving the base rewards of any given hand, you also have to tailor a deck around it; if you think you can reliably hit a four of a kind with a standard 52-card deck, you've got another thing coming. The result is the need to almost always skew your build around flushes, pairs, and the few other easy-to-land hands in the early game and spend the rest of the run taking upgrades and jokers that suit those hands; by the time you're able to modify your deck enough to start drawing full houses regularly, either the run's almost over or your other hands are so upgraded that it's not worth pivoting at all. Furthermore, this limits your choice of jokers, as many only trigger when you play a specific card or hand.

I wouldn't mind so much if I had more agency going into each run, but what you build around isn't really for you to decide: you have to play what you're given, and if you're looking for any semblance of consistent success, nine times out of ten you'll be playing solely around the lower scoring but more reliable lower half of the list of hands, even more so on the higher difficulties.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167649124


So my recommendation is definitely a little more reserved for those looking for their next Slay the Spire to dump thousands of hours into; however, for the rest of us, Balatro is an unbelievably polished, addictive and satisfying roguelike deckbuilder I can't recommend enough, standing tall even among its nigh-insurmountable and esteemed contemporaries.

[h1]Deckbuilding Royalty[/h1] Although its difficulty systems and build variety leave a little to be desired, Balatro's instant accessibility, satisfying strategy, and thrilling balance of risk and reward make for an instant deckbuilding classic. [h3]The Gameplay Loop[/h3] A typical run goes as follows: after selecting one of 15 starter decks, usually comprised of the standard 52 playing cards and a powerful, unique modifier, you'll take on your first poker blind, 'combat' rounds demanding an ever-increasing quantity of chips for your seat at the table and your run's livelihood. Naturally, you'll earn those chips by formulating straights, flushes or any other traditional hands with the eight cards dealt at the start of each round and refreshed after each play; a paltry high-card will score a handful of chips, but drill a royal flush out of nowhere and you'll be rolling in them. You've got several hands to tackle each blind with alongside a few handy discard-and-redraws, giving back both some control as well as facilitating the brilliant and constant gamble underpinning every hand; find yourself with three kings, and you can either hedge your bets, sending what you have for fewer chips and keeping your options open or go for broke, committing your discards in the hope you'll finish that lucrative four of a kind, potentially clearing the blind in a single shot and earning some extra cash for your trouble. Cash you can spend in the ever-cycling shops between blinds on an array of beneficial items; assorted booster packs increase the value of a specific hand, add new cards to the deck, or improve the ones you already have with all sorts of positive modifiers. After stocking up on what you need and overcoming the boss appearing every three blinds (complete with any one of a variety of vicious debuffs), you'll 'up the ante', raising the demands of subsequent blinds. Gamble up to and conquer the boss blind of ante 8 to achieve a well-earned victory before carrying on into a sudden death-style endless mode if you so choose. [h3]Strategy, Deckbuilding and the Jokers[/h3] Assemble hands, satisfy the blinds, purchase what you need to keep doing so; as simple as poker itself, really, but don't mistake that low buy-in for an absence of depth: your funds will provide interest should you hold off on spending for a few rounds, and although you'll lose access to a potentially impactful shop and any money you could have earned from the encounter, any non-boss blind can be skipped for a hefty reward. Every decision carries some amount of risk, yet not always a reward of equal measure, and it's up to you to spot the difference, capitalising on the smallest edges, the slimmest margins and honing your judgement with each inevitable defeat. It's easy to get caught up in the immediate ease of access, but an hour will turn into six in the blink of an eye, and you'll suddenly find yourself knee-deep in a deceptively broad and mostly satisfying difficulty curve that always seems to have another ace up its sleeve. However, Balatro is so much more than just helplessly trying to make the best of a bad situation, and with the perfect combination of joker cards, you can stack the deck ridiculously in your favour. Whether it be through simple flat chip increases and additive multipliers, multipliers that [i]multiply[/i] your multipliers, and economic benefits that ultimately facilitate buying [i]even more multipliers[/i], blowing the relatively lacklustre base rewards of most played hands into the stratosphere is their speciality, and you'll quickly find they're your most important purchases to look out for in the shop. You've only got five slots for these guys by default, though, and that's where most of the strategy behind your build lies: many jokers interact and synergise with each other for ludicrously potent outcomes; however, you're severely limited in how many you can wield at once, and, between what you have and what you can buy, figuring out what's most beneficial for the next few blinds is all too often a tricky practicality argument with no clear solution. Yet, although you're largely at the mercy of whatever the shop decides to offer you, learning what works best together as you tag in and out progressively more optimal jokers for your strongest hands is a deeply rewarding and exciting process as your build slowly comes together. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167358461 One joker, for example, turns every scoring face card gold, an enhanced type of card that grants some money if it's still in your hand at the end of a blind; another intensifies that effect by forcing [i]every[/i] card to be considered a face. Finally, throw in the Vampire, a joker that gains a stacking multiplier per enhanced card played at the cost of removing the enhancement, and you've got one of the most hilariously overpowered trios you can find, stacking your multiplier with literally every card played. However, these strategies come with their own set of risks, too: only one of that trio is actually empowering your hands, and if you're struggling to find that all-important Vampire, you're stuck with two economic jokers doing little more than making the upcoming blinds that much more difficult. Alternatively, if you happen to sell those two and swap them out for a safer setup a few shops before you hit Vampire—well, that's just heartbreaking. [h3]Higher Difficulties, Build Variety and Overall Longevity[/h3] I called the difficulty curve satisfying earlier, and although it is for a good while, the peak of the curve is frankly an RNG-riddled nightmare. With every winning run, the successful deck will unlock a bigger and badder optional 'Stake': a stacking difficulty modifier up to a maximum of 8 (think Slay the Spire's Ascension system), yet, although you can reasonably expect a certain degree of unsalvagably bad luck from anything that invokes poker of all things, these higher difficulties scale up ludicrously fast, demand watertight builds you'll rarely hit and kill even the strongest of runs with a single bad draw, damaging the experience's overall longevity for those craving a little more challenge after learning the basics. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167653960 There's a lack of mid-run adaptation, too, particularly in the hands you can realistically play around: not only do you have to invest in improving the base rewards of any given hand, you also have to tailor a deck around it; if you think you can reliably hit a four of a kind with a standard 52-card deck, you've got another thing coming. The result is the need to almost always skew your build around flushes, pairs, and the few other easy-to-land hands in the early game and spend the rest of the run taking upgrades and jokers that suit those hands; by the time you're able to modify your deck enough to start drawing full houses regularly, either the run's almost over or your other hands are so upgraded that it's not worth pivoting at all. Furthermore, this limits your choice of jokers, as many only trigger when you play a specific card or hand. I wouldn't mind so much if I had more agency going into each run, but what you build around isn't really for you to decide: you have to play what you're given, and if you're looking for any semblance of consistent success, nine times out of ten you'll be playing solely around the lower scoring but more reliable lower half of the list of hands, even more so on the higher difficulties. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167649124 [h3]Final Thoughts[/h3] So my recommendation is definitely a little more reserved for those looking for their next Slay the Spire to dump thousands of hours into; however, for the rest of us, Balatro is an unbelievably polished, addictive and satisfying roguelike deckbuilder I can't recommend enough, standing tall even among its nigh-insurmountable and esteemed contemporaries.