Recent reviews by Sinner

Had an issue where the game wouldn't run higher than ~30 fps, it went away, it's now back. If there's a fix for it, I can't find it on the discussions or on reddit.

This was originally a negative review because of the Playstation account-linking fiasco. The review is going to stay negative, because for me this was a "better with friends" game that wasn't that much better with friends, but it should be noted those plans were abandoned after the massive negative feedback from the community.

The community manager said we should leave a negative review for not wanting to make and link a PSN account, so here we are. I didn't enjoy the game much either.

I don't think Balatro is the single best deck-building roguelike on the market, but occupying the number two slot isn't an insult to it to any degree. There's a lot to like about the game - I enjoyed the hunt of unlocking everything in the collection, getting used to my favorite builds and how to find them.

There's a conversation to be had about RNG in games like this, and by some measure, Balatro suffers from a little too much of it. It's not enough to be a problem to me, and there's fun for me in "reading the signs" of a run to navigate what the game's going to allow me to do on this run.

In a hundred hours, I've finished all of the game's twenty challenges, and have brought all but one deck up to Black Stake. There's still plenty for me to do, and for Balatro's price, that's a bargain.

Don't let strangers on the internet tell you how to live your life.

For a real note, the game wasn't worth my time.

Baseball sim game for baseball nerds. My only criticism is that it can be very difficult to know what your settings should be set at, because you can accidentally make the game much easier or much more difficult for yourself with a few clicks. The online materials I've read aren't a major help in choosing the right difficulty, but they can't be, really. You just have to keep playing and learn what works for you.

I am going to add to the many other recommendations that this game has and deserves. For $3 it's a bargain, an interesting challenge the whole way through. The achievements are currently the appeal of replayability for me, but there's also the appeal of seeing different synergies in action. Either way, worth the time and money for me.

Sub twenty-minute runs with all but one weapon and it feels like the right time to review the game now. Seriously fantastic experience, an impressively welcoming community. There is no escape, but death is never the end. The dialogue, the clear visual indicators, one of the best games I've ever seen at telling you what you need to know in exactly the space where you'd expect that information to be. There's enough hidden detail that when you scratch at the surface you're not immediately overwhelmed with the depth. I thought I was going to suck at this because it's very fast and twitchy, but it's quite manageable and certain mechanics make it a lot easier on the hands.

After finally recently finishing this game, it's safe to say that this was money well spent. The adventure, the new spell effects, the addition of Source points, the changes from the story of the first game? It's all wonderful. There are a few minor complaints from me - the game tends to get a bit janky once you get to Act 4. It was really nice to see a few old characters again, including our trusty old pal the Source King. There aren't too many twists to the story or anything crazy like that, but if you're willing to listen/read and pay attention to the whole thing, I think it's pretty entertaining along the way. And it's a ton of fun with the dedicated Summoner skills, since Summons were good but not great in the first game.

While there's some fun to be had here when the game is functional, the amount of bug-free (or bug manageable) time you'll get with the game is going to vary. The Steam discussions can't seem to reach a consensus on whether or not the game's auto-loot function even works. There are a myriad of issues which are able to be repeated at will. For example, loot comparison often shows as if you have nothing equipped. Sometimes, opening and closing your inventory will fix this. Other times, it will not. When you die, sometimes every item will be marked as if it is a higher Item Power than what you have equipped, because the game thinks you have nothing equipped.

The nail in the coffin after all of the above, which I could live with, was twofold. First, the cloud/local save feature doesn't always clearly state which save has more progress. Or just straight up doesn't save when you want it to. For me, this meant I lost four level 20 characters and plenty of (albeit bad) items along with them. Second, and the true last straw, since yesterday all multiplayer attempts result in the guest dealing with unplayable lag, jittering across screens worse than the goblin assassins do.

I don't know how often they update this game, as features seem to change from day to day. But the issue comes when I can't tell what's a feature and what's a bug, whether it helps or hurts. I'm hoping that I can change my review and recommendation in the future, but from the community discussions I've seen, this isn't likely. There's no way this game is worth full price, and I'm frustrated with the sale price I paid for it.