Recent reviews by Gock Fluid

I've been very patient with this game. After all, Balatro was made by one person. However, my amnesty for this game's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ has completely worn away. No other game has made me want to tear my hair out more than this glorified slot machine of a game.


As a game by itself, Balatro is good. The game-play is engaging, the soundtrack is iconic, and the replay value is off the charts. If that's the case, then why am I giving this game a negative review? Well, my complaints with Balatro are threefold:

1. A lack of variety

2. A lack of player agency

3. The infuriating 100% grind


Keep in mind, this is coming from the perspective of a game completionist. I've Gold-staked multiple decks (making my way to at least Blue Stake on all of them), as well as collected all of the vouchers, tags, and jokers. I've even completed all of the challenge runs. Now, why am I prefacing with this explanation? I'm doing this to dissuade the unhelpful "lmao just git gud" arguments. I have gotten good, and allow me to explain to you my grievances with this game. Also, keep in mind that I am specifically talking about Gold Stake.



When I say that Balatro has a "variety problem", you may be scratching your head.

"Well, the game can't have a variety problem because it has 150 different Jokers with differing modifiers, stickers, and editions, as well as Tarot and Spectral cards to modulate your run even further."

You would think that if you only played the lower stakes, and to most extents, you are correct. However, once you make it the Purple Stake (The 6th Stake of Balatro, and agruably the steepest jump in difficulty), the wide majority of Jokers become absolutely useless. With such harsh score scaling, you can only really afford to pick up and hold onto low-powered/unscaling Jokers up until around Ante 3. After around that time, your Jokers (with consistent planet pick-ups) simply cannot compete with the rising score benchmarks. This is one of my main issues with Balatro: The game has too much chaff, and too little wheat. If you don't find or don't want to use the most powerful Joker builds/synergies in the game, you're not going to win Gold Stake. Time and time again, I'm forced into the situation of either keeping a sub-optimal Joker that I like to use, risking the run by doing so, or I'm forced to pick up the meta-defining Jokers and combos, leading me to play the same runs over and over again with very little variety. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Photo-Chad, Baron, Trib, etc.)



But even if you get the god run; every single Joker and planet card you could ever want, you can still lose. The non-deterministic nature of RNG is on full display here. If you're building for a specific hand type, the game might just shrug and say, "Oh, you need a face card? You need a specific suit? Ehhh, I don't care if you've deck-fixed to near perfection, I'll still give you the exact card you don't need!" And this goes for the seeded nature of runs as well. Even if you play perfect, but not omniscient, you'll still get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over by the game's RNG system. You don't win because you're good at the game, you win because the game allows you to.



Normally, I try to 100% games before I leave a review on them. I like to give the game a fair shot, and I enjoy exploring every avenue the experience has to offer. However, I cannot stand when a game as non-deterministic as Balatro locks 100% completion through sheer luck. In order to 100% the game, you must win Gold Stake with EVERY JOKER , yes even the terrible ones. You must carry that dead weight across the finish line, essentially being down a Joker slot in the mode that requires the most strenuous point benchmarks. This is not fun. This is not a test of skill, it is a test of patience. How long will you bang your head against the metaphorical wall until it relents? How long will you be willing to stick with the game that keeps ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you over at every turn?

I don't know about you, but I do not enjoy that kind of tedium. I have a job, a family, a life that I have to live. The last thing I want to do after a stressful day at work is sit down and plead for the game to finally give me even an inch.

I get to feed my inner pyromaniac, 10/10

After completing and 100%ing the game, I finally feel like it's time to write an earnest review. Also, keep in mind, I have not played the first game (though I will definitely be picking it up in the near future!)


As soon as I jumped in, I grasped the basics: move unit, attack, end turn. If you've played a Fire Emblem game, you'll have no problems. Seems pretty dull, right? However, the introduction of Abilities is what really pushed this game above the standard fanfare. Instead of passive abilities, the game produces active abilities, along with resource management under the guise of mana. These active abilities are insanely useful; from extra damage to your attack, to healing, to even manipulating the battlefield. However, mana is finite. You'll only recover it at the beginning of your turn (or from a certain class' ability), and when you don't have mana, you will feel it. I feel like the Ability-Mana balancing was very well done. It provided for an engaging experience that never truly boiled down to just "Put OP unit in range, kill on enemy phase, repeat."


My main gripes with this game are threefold:

1. The UI can be unruly at times, especially when selecting units in the pre-battle screen.

2. Once your enter a mission, you are NOT given an opportunity to back out to the previous screen. I hope you saved at the selection screen, because if you, you are FORCED to complete the mission. It's such a simple quality of life change that most Fire Emblem-esque games have.

3. The harder difficulties are simply inflated stats and pre-fabricated add-ons. Once you get to the end game, most units will have AT LEAST double your tankiest unit's HP.


In my opinion, the story was pretty good.. It can be a bit tropey at times, but overall, it was enjoyable. What really caught me off guard however was the voice acting. I was SO pleasantly surprised by both the quality and frequency of the voice acting. In most RPGS, I've grown accustomed to maybe a line or two amidst a conversation, placed to highlight a specific emotion that a character is attempting to express. This is not the case. Each line in the main story has been lovingly voiced by a cast of genuinely talented actors. This, and the game-play, is where I feel Dark Deity 2 really shines. I only wish that each of the supports between characters were voice-acted, but due to the sheer density of the supports in the game, I can see why they didn't.


Personally, yes. For 25$, you get a fully voice-acted campaign, a cast of units with insane customizability, a decently compelling story, and even a randomizer mode to play around with after your first go. And, for your achievement hunters, the entire game can be done 100% on a single file. As long as you play on Deity difficulty, you can knock it out in about 20 hours if you really know what you're doing.

If you're a Fire Emblem fan like I am, you'll most definitely enjoy this game!

I've come back after 17 hours of play to rewrite this review. I still love the game, and there are no doubt problems that make it a less-than ideal experience. However, I do think that this game is a worthy purchase (but only if its on sale.) The main story is a rather linear, yet enjoyable experience. The story itself doesn't change from playthrough to playthrough, but the way you go about it does. A lot of the game's core enemies you'll be fighting are randomized, meaning that difficulty curves can often be steep. Additionally, without knowing what you're doing, you will be wiped in a matter of seconds.

Pros:
-Fun gameplay
-Robust Customization options
-Extreme Replay Value
-Surprisingly Deep and Strategic

Cons:
-Sometimes, RNG will just screw you over
-Enemy leveling can be downright unfair at times
-Without prior knowledge or research, you will have a hard time

All in all, I sunk in more hours into this game than I thought I would, whether I'm playing it, researching stuff about it, or watching others play it. It's one of those games that has a surprising amount of depth to it. However, in order to appreciate the amount of depth it has, you'll have to sink in some hours to get a grasp on how the game is played.

Would I recommend this for beginners to the RPG genre? Not really, no.

Would I recommend this to people (like myself) that enjoy games that are extremely challenging? (Such as Darkest Dungeon/Binding of Isaac/Sekiro)

Absolutely!

It's an okay game. Of course it has its flaws, but every game does.

I will admit that it hasn't aged well but, I did enjoy playing through the game that I loved as a child for the second time.

7/10
cool game

its okay i guess

I'll remove this review when VAC works again

it's cool