Ok. I promise that this is the last post about Balatro (LocalThunk)*. In the last post, I talked about the grindiness of playing for higher stakes wins and
*SPOILER*
chasing my white whale, Stuntman (the last joker I needed to complete my deck). Now, I’m trying to do two of the last five achievements I have–well, one of them first. It’s called Tiny Hands, and you have to whittle your deck down to 20 cards. The best bet is to start with the Abadonned Deck because it doesn’t have the face cards. That’s twelve cards left from the rip. Then, you have to get enough Hanged Man cards from the tarot deck (destroy two cards) and Immolate (spectral deck) that destroys five cards for $20.
There are a few problems, obviously. One is getting all the special cards you need to trim your deck that drastically, and winning enough hands to be able to sustain losing so many cards. Some people suggest other decks (oh, and by the way, it’s always recommended to use white stakee, the lowest stake, whenever you’re trying to get an achievement) beacuse they have more chances to get tarot and/or spectral cards, which I may try next. I have not come even close to trimming my deck that far. You can also make glass cards which then have a chance of breaking.
This is so fucking tedious. I have just done a few hours and gotten nothing for my trouble. The closest I got was down to maybe 35 or so? The closest I’ve gotten overall is 30. I hate this one. This one is so fucking boring. The next one is Big Hands, and you have to get your deck to 80 cards. I’m expecting this one to be as painful. Oh, for Tiny Hands, there is a joker called Trading Card. If the first discard of a hand is one card, that card is destroyed (and you get three bucks). I have yet to see this in any of my attempts, by the way.
Unfortunately, the hundo chievo (for the whiny PlayStation stans who get mad if you say you got the plat, but not on PlayStation) in this game falls into the same trap as many plats do–make it as unpleasant and grindy as possible. A lot of devs seem to forget that you still want your player to like your game by the time they’re done getting the plat. Or maybe they don’t care. It’s quite possible that some don’t care how you feel once you plat the game because they’ve wrung every ounce of emotion out of you that they possibly can.
FromSoft is notorious for this. I have platted five of the games, and until Elden Ring, they were terrible with their plats. And I think it’s because they don’t care about them or actively don’t want to do them, but feel they have to (and by them, I mean Miyazaki. He is FromSoft, basically). Elden Ring is different. It’s their first try to be a commercial and mainstream success (while sticking to their ideals/beliefs/tenets). I believe that’s why they made the plat so much easier. I got everything I needed except the three separate ending in my first run. If my save-scumming had worked, I would have been able to plat it in one playthrough. That’s so different the rest of the games! Of course, my first playthrough was over two-hundred hours, which was double my time for the first Dark Souls–with DLC.
The best plat by far that I’ve gotten is the one for Hades (Supergiant Games). I did not really gel with the game as I first started playing it. In addition, I did not like any of their previous games. But there was something about each one that made me think the problem was with me–not the games. I stuck with Hades, and at some point, it just clicked with me. I don’t know what it was, but by the time I beat the final boss for the first time, I was firmly in.
Here’s the thing. There is so much dialogue in this game, I was eager to go back to the House of Hades each time I died. I loved the characters and wanted to know whtat was happening with them. I loved building relationships with them, even though it leaned on the trope of giving them a present to buy their love.
How deep is the dialogue options? It’s so deep, I was still getting new dialogue after I platted the game. And I saw a scene that very few people saw–with a very particular relationship dynamic that I was most hoping for. I’m putting it vaguely beacruse it was so rare to get this scene–and I want to keep it that way.
You get the true ending by beating the final boss ten times. And then there is stil more game to play and things to do. Real things, not just filler. Oh, and I loved decorating the House of Hades, too. By the time I got to the true ending, I only had half-a-dozen achievements I needed to do for the plat. A few were fairly easy, and then there were two I thought would be hellish. Much to my surprise, they weren’t! I got them without too much sweat, and there was my plat.
It made me realized that I have very definite ideas about what a plat should and should not be. Mostly, that you should be able to get the plat just by playing the game and not by grinding for hours to procure thirty Proofs of a Concord Kept (ears). I’m looking at you, Dark Souls III! The amount of grinding for covenant items in the three Souls games is horseshit.
I feel like Balatro fell into the same trap, but maybe not for the same reason. I have a hard time believing that LocalThunk, from what I’ve heard about him and from him, would do something just to be a dick about it.
In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter why, I guess. Plats are going to contiune to be hard just for the sake of being hard. It’s in the DNA (heh. That’s a joker in Balatro) , and it’s not going to change.
*No, I don’t. I feel compelled to say that, but let’s face it. I probably won’t stick to it; I certainly haven’t in the past.