At this point, I’m just amused by my neverending review of Balatro (LocalThunk). We all know that I will write another post about Balatro at some point because that is how I do. In fact, I am going to write one now and give my completely arbitrary rating for this game. I explained my rating systnems in the last post, but I’ll briefly sum it up here once again.
I have two different systems. One is for FromSoft games and the other is for all other games. The lowest rating I’ve given a FromSoft game is a 9.0 for Sekiro, and the highest rating is a 9.75 for Elden Ring and Dark Souls III. I am not gonig to go into it again about why those two games are basically tied at the top for me.
On the other list, at the top is Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall). I would give it a 9.5 off the top of my head. Then Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games), which would be roughly the same. Maybe a 9.4 as NitW is the absolute pinnacle of non-FromSoft games to me. Spiritfarer is very close behind. Both of them made me crry buckets and think really hard about things. I platted the latter, but not the former because the former included a really difficult video game within the video game that was just no fun to play.
I’m grading Balatro in the non-FromSoft ranking system, of course, as it’s not a FromSoft game. It’s funny because before I started the grind, I probably would have given it a 9.3 or so. It’s really good and quite addictive. It has that ‘just one more run’ feel to it, and one run turns into hours. It’s such a good game.
I just…wish it could be a bit better. That’s not a knock on this game specifically beacuse you could say that about any game. Any game could be a bit better, really. Even Elden Ring, probably my favorite game in the world, I gave a 9.75. That’s just me–I will not give a game a 10. Nothing is perfect, and I know that most people use 10 to mean a game is as good as it can possibly be in relation to other games, but that’s not how I see it. To me a 10 is inattainable, and I’m fine with that.
Back to Balatro. I just got Big Hands (the achievement for which you have to get 80 cards in your deck), and it felt very hollow. Why? Because it was all down to chance. I got the Magic Trick voucher early on which allowed me to buy playing cards in the shop. Then, I got the Rocketjoker that gives you a dollar at the end of every round, and it increases by two dollars after beating every boss. Plus, I had Midas Mask which makes every face card gold, and if you hold them in your hand at the end of the round, each one gives you three bucks.
Side note: I have included above a clip from a video about economy. I’m a dumbass in that I did not even think about economy for the first couple hundred hours. What the guy above mentions is something that I fleetingly wondered about, but didn’t really think about until I looked at the numbers more closely. At the end of a round, you get something called interest. I had no idea what it was based on, but I knew there was a voucher that increased it. At some point, I finally looked up what it was. You get a dollar extra for every five dollars you have at the end of the round, and that caps at five dollars. If you get the Seed Money voucher, that increases the cap to ten dollars. The second voucher related to this one is Money Tree, and that increases the cap to twenty dollars.
In other words, I was rolling with money during this run AND I got Magic Trick which, as I said, meant that I could buy playing cards in the shop. I also got the voucher that gave me 25% off my purchases, which helped as well. I needed 28 cards, and I think I bought half of those in the shop.
I was down to needing one card before the final boss. I got the boss trhat flips your jokers around and shuffles them. I was fine with that one because I had been fortunate enough to duplicate the Stencil Joker that was already hexed (meaning it had a x1.5 multiplier on it. The Stencil Joker gives a x1 mult for every empty joker slot you have. I loved it early on, but I saw the limitations of it as I went further into the meta. Anyway, the great thing about it is that the Stencil Joker counts itself as an empty slot so even though I had five jokers, I still had a x2 mult.
I was running low on money because I had kept rerolling (which starts at five bucks, then adds a buck every time you do it) for playing cards. Oh, why I like Amber Acorn as a boss–if you have mostly xmults, it’s doesn’t matter the order. I had one joker that needed to be first (a +mult, and you want to plus it before multiplying it), but the rest didn’t matter.
Once I beat the boss, I went into endless mode. I was low on money, but I had enough to reroll the shop once. To my relief, there was the one card I needed, and they only cost a buck. I bought it, got the achievement, then quickly quit out. I didn’t even feel triumphant because there was no skill to it. I was playing on white stake (the base stake), which meant that I cruised through the runs fairly easily.
I know the achievements are optional, but I still think if you’re going to have achievements, they should be achievable by playing the game normally and not having to do tedious shit like this. There are three achievements I have left, and if I do the one that’s related to finishing all the challenges, I will consider that my plat. Because there is no way in hell I’m beating gold stakes on every deck (Completionist+), let alone winning a gold stake run with every joker (Completionist++). That’s just nuts.
I still think this is an excellent game. Even if I never touch it again (which I will–touch it again, I mean), it’s given me so many hours of enjoyment. I would recommend it to anyone who likes card games–and even those who don’t. Normally, I’m not into card games except Solitaire, but this game is just so fucking good. Also, I know how to play poker, which you do need to know before playing this game.
I want to say that after the grind, I’d give the game a 9.1, but it’s on me that I did the grind. I do have some issues with balance in the game that goes beyond the RNG nature of a roguelike/lite. I think I’ll give it a 9.2 and call it a day. That feels right to me, and I would not feel comfortable going any lower.