@@mtheguardian49 it's the whole "it's the whole" thing with the "comment template thing " with the "video relevant content inserted " inserted explained.
@@rujon288 it's the whole "it's the whole 'it's the whole' thing" thing with the "with the 'comment template thing'" with the "with the 'video relevant content inserted' inserted explained" explained
@@martir851This always confused me too. It’s not a betting game, it just uses poker hands and familiar words like blind and ante. There’s a difference between risk (you don’t know whether you’ll draw a good enough hand/hands when selecting a given blind), and a wager (you bet to prove OR give the impression that your hand is better than someone else’s hand). I am happy, though, that Balatro makes it easier for people to understand poker hands and such. It makes introducing five-card draw, my favorite poker variant, an easier thing to do.
I've found it's mainly possible early on to either blend flush builds with straight builds, or set builds with two-pair/full-house builds... but VERY hard to blend those groups with one another unless you're given a VERY VERY specific setup - like two Spectrals that change all to a suit *and* change all to a value... and that's where you peak at Flush Houses and Flush Fives (that's where your endgame is). But if you don't have enough focused strength in one or the other, it's nearly insurmountable to survive up to that pivot point... and impossible to survive too long past Ante 6 without beginning to blend them before that. I could be wrong though.
Another beauty: the game respects your ability to become overpowered early. Many games try to artificially not let the RNG make you too powerful early on. It's a lot of fun to reach a build that destroys ante 8 at ante 3 and focus only on improving through the shop to go for a new high score attempt. You never know what you'll find and what could happen.
I really liked your point about easy readability and precise wording on the Jokers. It's easy to do a rough calculation in your head or compare jokers, if it wasn't, the game wouldn't be as good.
This game puts me in an instant flow state. 2-3 hours gone before I realize it. I can't stop thinking about it. I got the theme song playing in my head most the day.
Super well done, I think the developer said the key to the entire game is the fact that you can’t see the score of your hand before you play it, that moment where you press play and hope for the best is what makes the experience
Doesn't make it a good experience for people who want to play it skillfully. Long term it will frustrate and make people lose interest and won't have lasting power of say StS
@r3dsnow757 Sometimes you don't want to play the best hand to scale things like Square joker or Ride the bus. In those scenarios I may not want to play my usual hand. I may also want to plan out my remaining 3 hands to see if I would be fine to use intentionally bad hands or if I should play the best hand I have now and not run throw hands at all.
2:05 in theory is the act of painting in real life a roguelike. Each painting is a unique run and it will increase the skil for the next run. If you make a mistake you got to start over.
You know, I never had a care for this game because I don't like poker or anything similar, but seeing all of the positive reviews all over the web, I might go for it and give it a try.
I agree with everything this review said and if you're like me and really don't really care much about poker, are disinterested in it or just think it's boring then there's a chance that you will absolutely love Balatro, it does a lot of interesting things that elevates poker to create something else entirely. However, poker is inescapably the foundation on which this game is built and if you have a strong dislike of poker then it may not be the game for you. I believe there's a demo, you should try before you buy.
I so rarely see anyone include footage for or even mentioned Tainted Grail. Kudos for that. Great game. (And great points about Balatro and the genre as a whole)
I personally love the feeling of an "authored" difficulty, for instance a game like Doom or any other myriad FPS, or Dark Souls, because the escalation is learnable. But I do also love the feeling of a roguelike run being fueled by insane luck, finding a perfect combination and letting it rip. I think Balatro is a great middle ground because some strategies carry a lot of weight, especially at the start of a run where Jokers and other factors are less influential on your score total, and instead you need to rely on digging through your deck for a good hand (RNG is still a factor, but being able to count the cards allows you to make decisions off of probability instead of purely chance). I also think this is partially why competitive game likers also tend to like roguelikes, because the on-the-fly decision making married with some tried and true game knowledge can take you incredibly far, but also some bad outcomes that are out of your control require some dynamism to find a solution which can make you feel really smart when you pull it off. This is something that authored difficulty just can't do since you always have the (idealistic) opportunity to "play perfectly." Sometimes being forced into a bad situation makes you appreciate good situations more. Anyways, good game and good video.
This video is of such high quality I subscribed after the intro alone and the rest of the video only proved to me it was a great decision. You deserve more recognition, great video 👏
I completely agree, i got a friend to buy this game and after 10 hours he said to me "i think i like whatever genre this game is". To me its almost ironic hearing that as I grew up on roguelikes like Gungeon, Isaac, Nuclear Throne etc. But he absolutely fell in love with the genre and I now steam family share him my library so he can enjoy games like Isaac. DOnt think he ever wouldve tried if it werent for balatro. It also is just the best roguelike i think ive EVER played. Its the best thing since sliced bread.
Yours is one of those channels where I know I'm gonna look back in a year and you'll have 500,000 subscribers, and couldn't deserve it more. Thanks for the video bud.
The thing Balatro has distinctively done is... after 10 years of expansion upon what Roguelikes/Roguelites are, it does the opposite. It distills Roguelikes to the minimum viable premise - the blend of skill and luck and in-game mechanic manipulation/balance adjustments - and simplifies it to the core of what that is, through the everyday common lens of poker. It's brilliance lies in its simplicity... and its unpredictability.
Great comment. What I like most about Balatro is the fact that it seems to be a simple game compared to other roguelikes but when you start playing you discover a lot of hidden mechanics and complex synergies that makes the game easy to understand but hard to master. I have +100 hours played and I recently discover that I should put the Queens Before the Kings from left to right in order to seize the +13 Mult Queen Joker and the Baron Joker. Discovering those mechanics by yourself and use them to be a better player is a priceless sensation.
really good review! i especially loved the bit at the end involving the particle accelerator; such a unique descriptor, and as someone who's now hit over 200 hours in Balatro, it's such an accurate comparison, too
I really did not think it would live up to the insane hype but now as somebody who works from home it's basically running 8+ hours a day on my computer lmao
Note that the scaling in endless mode is tetrational, proportional to x^x^x. At the moment, there isn’t a way to scale one’s hand at O(x^x^x), but this problem is obscured by the Ante 39 naneinf glitch.
The only readability issue Ive had with balatro was realizing how much better X mult was than + mult and sometimes forgetting if something applies to my hand (played cards) or my hand (the whole selection of cards I can use.) The thing is even in the worst case once you figure it out it becomes really easy to understand (as opposed to things like vague percentages still sometimes being hard to think about)
@@Sputnik34 makes sense now , i was so confused on why DEADCELLS one of the or if not the most succesfull indie of the past decade ( with hollow night and hades ) got shafted but yea , the difficulty of deadcells does fuck with people
part of me wonders if a game like balatro could be used as some sort of replacement for actual gambling. it hits some of the same notes as actually playing poker at a casino, except all you lose at the end of the day is some time instead of your house
Nobody want to talk about the fact that if you don't drop a correct +mult joker by ante 3 you're basically dead ? That's what frustrate me the most in balatro, this hit or miss each damn run, that I didn't felt in Slay the spire or Dicey Dungeon. You either destroy the 8th boss because stars align or you loose vs 3rd small blind because you're stuck with Odd Todd...
That’s an argument against roguelikes, if you don’t get upgrades then yes-your run will end. By ante 3 there are plenty of opportunities to upgrade hands and purchase jokers.
@@socrates7722 I beg to deffer, there is a shortness in balatro runs that makes this problem really showing compared to others. And also, there is an imbalance in Balatro, not that present in other games making some cards really indispensable compared to others. From a guy who played card games and roguelikes a lot. For example, If we talk Slay. How many card choices you have before first boss ? RNG is smoothed by number of choices. In Balatro, there is few choices compared to other games. Also, If you don't get a +mult joker specifically, Show me a run where you go farther than ante 3 (without Plasma deck - of course). In other roguelikes, you have more time and more build possibilities. I'm frustred because I relaunch so many runs, so early.. But then again, may be I play real bad.. Happy to have your thoughts.
@@ThePiiX Skill issue /hj. For lower stakes most runs are winnable, you just have to be very flexible and aggressive with your money. Don't get me wrong, there are runs that get snuffed by RNG. For higher stakes though, a lot of runs do get snuffed out early by RNG. The creator has an AMA where he addresses a lot of the issues. Luckily this game is new, and will see improvements. StS was not perfect on release, it's damn near perfect now after many many many updates.
I played for 5 hours, progressed to harder levels and realised the game is just an RNG reset fest, unless you choose the busted deck that starts with extra money. The game is a 2/5, I’m going to continue playing StS as it’s a million times more enjoyable
I’ve had such a struggle the last like 2 months honestly being able to beat the game or the first 8 antes or whatever. Love the game and hoping something will click soon.
Two tips I’d offer up that have helped me on my runs: Prioritize getting 1 impactful multiplier Joker early on. You want to try to win as many early hands as you can in one or two hands in order to maximize the extra money you can get. And attempt to get to $25 in cash on hand as quickly as you can, then don’t spend under unless you have to. What this achieves is an automatic $5 in interest every hand you play, which equates to being able to buy an extra card park/Joker every time you hit the shop. This will quickly add up to a lot of bonuses that will help you get further. I also prioritize the Planet cards as they increase the base multipliers of your hands which give more for your Jokers to work off of. Hopefully these tips can help you with that elusive win!
@@Nytraz Thank you! Just now reading this. Played a ton the last couple days and got to the last boss blind like 3 times and didn’t get it. Gonna follow your tips I appreciate it.
My favorite roguelike is still Noita. But I like the simplicity Balatro has. If I'm ever sick, or not feeling well, I'll do a few balatro runs. I can do a run during lunch at work on my Steam deck too.
The only problem I have with this game is that there are very few strats you can do to beat the highest level challenges like gold stake. That can be fixed though
@@Sputnik34Their will never be à game who can out scale them ( or maybe not the futur will tell) side note: heir is à Slay of Spirt 2 who will come next years so
If the game was balanced around gold stake it would make the lower stakes semi pointless, it’s the games hardest challenge I think it’s ok that it’s unforgiving, and you need to get lucky to make it work. I do think straights need a buff though, it’s the hardest hand to manipulate your deck into working.
@@MulletMonk not just gold, i can only do so much when all jokers i get are for straight flush, four of a kind, or just something completely unlikely. or i decide to take a voucher that puts tarot or planets in the shop then i only get 2 jokers by ante 3 because it wont give me anything but tarot. or the boss destroys my build and i havent see luchador or the voucher that saves me. i wouldnt complain if i had more control over my failed runs but when ive built the best given what i had its just infuriating.
@@MulletMonk also dice rolls arent difficulty its artificial difficulty. yes you can smack your head against a wall until you get lucky but that isnt fun its a waste of time.
I fully agree, I feel like the game is just balanced around lower stakes and often times on gold stake you're gonna lose just because the game said so. I'm not saying that this doesn't happen in other games but often with this one you really feel like the out was just "get luckier".
I'm a bit late to comment this, but your opinion on Gunfire Reborn expressed at the beginning of the video is probably caused by you playing at low difficulties. Let me elaborate: differently from other games the real fun of Gunfire Reborn comes from playing at high difficulties (the max is Reincarnation 9 as of now), because the higher the difficulty the more your choices in weapons, scrolls and orbs actually matter and it becomes a really fun game of gambling and strategy to figure out the most op build possible while also having a good mechanical execution. This also means some runs are nearly impossible if you're really unlucky, but Gunfire being a skill-based game allows you to fight your way through to a good build (a lot easier if you play coop so you can trade stuff), differently from games like Risk of Rain where if you're unlucky the run is completely over and there's not that much strategy involved when making build decisions, it's more about not f*cking up completely and praying to RNGesus. Gunfire is also the most fun fps roguelike because of the scale of broken you can get to, it's not even comparable to anything else, I once made a build that let me dash every 1.5 seconds(dashing by itself offers mobility and invincibility frames, so it's good to be able to spam it) while having another perk that granted me complete invulnerability from damage for 2 seconds after dashing, making me virtually immortal while also having a a crit rate of about 175%(yes, in this game you can crit multiple times in a single shot) with crit multipliers of about x10.5 and a lot of other stuff. The game also balances things out by not playing fair in the late stages, so unless you got a build that make you immortal as I had(it only happened that one time) you still have to play well and strategize, unlike in Risk of Rain where you either delete everything instantly or die(I think that flaw is mostly cause by not having any defensive features, as a universal dash or shield, that work on every character, since sometimes you can find yourself in scenarios where your character simply can't survive without something granting it invincibility)
I love that this game it gonna be a lot of players 1st rogue-like/rogue-lite and will open the door to SO many other rogue-lites Like for me i started eith TBoI, then branched out to Streets of Rogue and Revita and now i have WAY more rogue-lites than i could ever dream!! Balatro is great!! Give it a shot yall!!!
The slot machine and simplicity part reminded me of one of my guilty pleasure games, Peggle (series). You just aim and watch the ball bounce and collect points. Completely different games (Peggle being much simpler game without much depth in the mechanics, although some multiplier pegs provide a little bit of "strategy") but maybe some similarities in the deeper satisfactory level mentally?
This is only related to your sketch in the begining and nothing else, but when me and my brother were kids we were playing a game of BS sitting on the floor by the couch. We were in deep and he laid down some cards and said "5 Aces". Obviously I called bullshit and he indeed flipped over 5 Aces. He found one under the couch while we were playing.
it's a good roguelike but, I gotta say, it's not Exactly a roguelike. It's a hybrid. It's a perfect hybrid, even. or, even, it's a minimalistic roguelike, being that the game of poker has a ceiling to it, and once you reach that ceiling, it's no longer all that fun. But everything you've said has rung true. It may very well be the best in years. But do you not simply say these things because they get the clicks? There are always superior things out there that just didn't get the same attention. And anyway, yeah I'm just being that "well ackhtually" guy but this is a game that rewards being precise, and playing it has made me realize how much I want to be precise about other things, such as calling a roguelike a roguelike or a spade a spade. In the next seven pages, I will fully divest upon just kidding of course I just wanted to say, there aren't enough dark corridors for it to be a roguelike per-se. but it also skirts simply genre definitions. It's a deck-builder More than a roguelike. There, I found an out
You not having game speed in 4x is causing me physical pain not to mention the stacking of flat mult jokers instead of times mult or scaling mult or chip jokers
I love this game especially when my first (and only) win was being some kind of Emperor My deck was made to hold onto Kings so i kept getting more kings and turning them into Steel cards One Joker gave x1.5 mult per king in hand One joker retriggered all hand cards One Joker gave a dollar 1 in 2 chance per face card in hand One Joker gave a x0.25 mult per steel card in deck which i got to x2 mult One joker gave a x3 mult if i had 16 or more upgraded cards in deck (i had exactly that when i got this joker) No i didn't miswritten the mult from + to x they were all multiplicitve mults I basically wipe bought the entire shop every time, i had a few kings that made planet cards by being in hand on round clearance and just had like 12 kings or more in deck My best hand was was a measly 1.2 Mil Chips and i won the final Ante Very Big Boss accidentally when i ran out of discards and didnt want to use any of the 6 or 7 kings in my hand so i played a card and won by a High Card 316K P.S: i didn't focus on upgrading a specific poker hand meaning it could have been waaay madder
I bought this game after seeing all the hype, but it’s a huge let down for me. I’m almost 100 runs in and I rarely get any joker in the shop that adds mult before ante 3, and I’ve never gotten past ante 4. I almost always have to brute force the first two antes with no jokers.
Do you ever skip turns in favour for jokers/packs so on? That's one way to get past it faster. Then go for boosters packs, steel cards and celestial (planet) packs :)
Why lol? That Wikipedia definition of roguelike is quite good. I would rather say "a game that is like Rogue" or "single-character grid tactics" but still, good enough.
she ba on my la til i tro
he la de te mooooooo (i just typed random shit cuz i’m confused abt the og comment)
It's the whole "she 'x' on my 'y' till I 'z'" thing, with Balatro used, split up into ba, la, and tro.
@@mtheguardian49 it's the whole "it's the whole" thing with the "comment template thing " with the "video relevant content inserted " inserted explained.
@@rujon288 it's the whole "it's the whole 'it's the whole' thing" thing with the "with the 'comment template thing'" with the "with the 'video relevant content inserted' inserted explained" explained
The thing
"Straights, gays, and flushes" Ah yes my favorite poker hands
I guess that's a pair of kings
Most likely a pair of jacks
Playing Balatro makes me understand how people can ruin their lives through gambling
I recently got the game and had that exact thought when I couldn’t stop playing 😂
ngl that's exactly why I play it lol, switched from online gambling to Balatro for my fix
The game has literally NOTHING to do with gambling tho?
People who repeat this, have never played a card game in their lives, Lol, specially IRL
@@martir851This always confused me too. It’s not a betting game, it just uses poker hands and familiar words like blind and ante. There’s a difference between risk (you don’t know whether you’ll draw a good enough hand/hands when selecting a given blind), and a wager (you bet to prove OR give the impression that your hand is better than someone else’s hand).
I am happy, though, that Balatro makes it easier for people to understand poker hands and such. It makes introducing five-card draw, my favorite poker variant, an easier thing to do.
Well, this game is totally luck based. I never won a run because of bad luck.
I think another beauty of balatro is the ability, and necessity, of the pivot.
It’s a flush build until it isn’t, and that’s pretty cool.
Its ALWAYS a flush build
I've found it's mainly possible early on to either blend flush builds with straight builds, or set builds with two-pair/full-house builds... but VERY hard to blend those groups with one another unless you're given a VERY VERY specific setup - like two Spectrals that change all to a suit *and* change all to a value... and that's where you peak at Flush Houses and Flush Fives (that's where your endgame is). But if you don't have enough focused strength in one or the other, it's nearly insurmountable to survive up to that pivot point... and impossible to survive too long past Ante 6 without beginning to blend them before that.
I could be wrong though.
Another beauty: the game respects your ability to become overpowered early. Many games try to artificially not let the RNG make you too powerful early on. It's a lot of fun to reach a build that destroys ante 8 at ante 3 and focus only on improving through the shop to go for a new high score attempt. You never know what you'll find and what could happen.
@@vinicius401 i also believe this, these are one of the really fun runs i have ever had when i was able to go infinite until i died XD
“It’s a flush until it isn’t”, most realest thing I’ve heard in a while.
I really liked your point about easy readability and precise wording on the Jokers. It's easy to do a rough calculation in your head or compare jokers, if it wasn't, the game wouldn't be as good.
Thank you! :')
ALL HAIL BANA--[*EXTINCT!*]
oh well, never mind.
CAVENDISH INCARNATE!
*better banana comes in* ALL HAIL NEW BANANA
@@homelessjackie [extinct]
*better banana comes in* ALL HAIL NEW BANANA
This game puts me in an instant flow state. 2-3 hours gone before I realize it. I can't stop thinking about it. I got the theme song playing in my head most the day.
Watching any clip of balatro not at 4x speed physically hurts
Yep. Sad how much time wasting these people by not being able to play more balatro. 😢
same. starting out i had no idea i could increase the speed and it started to annoy me
Super well done, I think the developer said the key to the entire game is the fact that you can’t see the score of your hand before you play it, that moment where you press play and hope for the best is what makes the experience
Thanks so much!
Doesn't make it a good experience for people who want to play it skillfully. Long term it will frustrate and make people lose interest and won't have lasting power of say StS
@@bashfulpanda2596 LOL
@@bashfulpanda2596You can estimate your score quite easily once you play the same hands a couple times.
@r3dsnow757 Sometimes you don't want to play the best hand to scale things like Square joker or Ride the bus. In those scenarios I may not want to play my usual hand. I may also want to plan out my remaining 3 hands to see if I would be fine to use intentionally bad hands or if I should play the best hand I have now and not run throw hands at all.
2:05 in theory is the act of painting in real life a roguelike. Each painting is a unique run and it will increase the skil for the next run. If you make a mistake you got to start over.
life itself would be a roguelike as well if you believe in reincarnation.
@@cyberstonksinstructions unclear, I'm about to commit suicide to restart the game
@@SuperMarioTomma95 Nah, you gotta get as far as you can in this run so you have more knowledge for the next one.
@@cyberstonks but my knowledge doesn'y carry over
@@SuperMarioTomma95holding r
paused this video to play 2.5 hours of balatro now we back
Same here i only made it 6 mins in before i bought and played for the last 2 hours
My intro to rougelikes was FTL: Faster Than Light.
such a good game
You know, I never had a care for this game because I don't like poker or anything similar, but seeing all of the positive reviews all over the web, I might go for it and give it a try.
it's real good :')
seriously. this video doesn't even scratch the surface. play it.
I agree with everything this review said and if you're like me and really don't really care much about poker, are disinterested in it or just think it's boring then there's a chance that you will absolutely love Balatro, it does a lot of interesting things that elevates poker to create something else entirely. However, poker is inescapably the foundation on which this game is built and if you have a strong dislike of poker then it may not be the game for you. I believe there's a demo, you should try before you buy.
I never have played poker, but I love Balatro
It really doesn’t have much to do with Poker past the surface
I so rarely see anyone include footage for or even mentioned Tainted Grail. Kudos for that. Great game. (And great points about Balatro and the genre as a whole)
I definitely agree about how obtuse it is, though.
This is really nicely written content. Excellent vocab and a really enjoyable turn of phrase. Good work man.
Very much appreciated :')
It was a good run
12:21 The queen was right when she said: "Kris, get the banana"
Lmao
I personally love the feeling of an "authored" difficulty, for instance a game like Doom or any other myriad FPS, or Dark Souls, because the escalation is learnable. But I do also love the feeling of a roguelike run being fueled by insane luck, finding a perfect combination and letting it rip. I think Balatro is a great middle ground because some strategies carry a lot of weight, especially at the start of a run where Jokers and other factors are less influential on your score total, and instead you need to rely on digging through your deck for a good hand (RNG is still a factor, but being able to count the cards allows you to make decisions off of probability instead of purely chance).
I also think this is partially why competitive game likers also tend to like roguelikes, because the on-the-fly decision making married with some tried and true game knowledge can take you incredibly far, but also some bad outcomes that are out of your control require some dynamism to find a solution which can make you feel really smart when you pull it off. This is something that authored difficulty just can't do since you always have the (idealistic) opportunity to "play perfectly." Sometimes being forced into a bad situation makes you appreciate good situations more.
Anyways, good game and good video.
This video is of such high quality I subscribed after the intro alone and the rest of the video only proved to me it was a great decision. You deserve more recognition, great video 👏
I completely agree, i got a friend to buy this game and after 10 hours he said to me "i think i like whatever genre this game is". To me its almost ironic hearing that as I grew up on roguelikes like Gungeon, Isaac, Nuclear Throne etc. But he absolutely fell in love with the genre and I now steam family share him my library so he can enjoy games like Isaac. DOnt think he ever wouldve tried if it werent for balatro. It also is just the best roguelike i think ive EVER played. Its the best thing since sliced bread.
Once it will be out for smartphones in a bit... we have it ALL THE TIME... but don't have any time left for anything else 😅
Yours is one of those channels where I know I'm gonna look back in a year and you'll have 500,000 subscribers, and couldn't deserve it more. Thanks for the video bud.
Thank you so much 😭
help i'm 19/20 challenges deep and cant
and yes, all hail the banana. no spoilers but keep buying and eating bananas. it will pay off.
DON'T STOP YOU'RE SO CLOSE
@@Sputnik34 I WILL. I WILL DO THE FINAL CHALLANGE. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
@@Crocogatorlive verdant leaf reaction
i think the last patch got rid of verdant leaf/crimson heart in [REDACTED]
@@swivelsaysno Thank goddamn super christ. I'm having a hell of a time on it.
Playing my deck on my Deck. Great times.
Ah yes, time to take a break from Balatro to watch my 15th video on why everyone loves Balatro.
15:43 I'm a simple man... I see Sullivan's smiling face, I up vote.
The thing Balatro has distinctively done is... after 10 years of expansion upon what Roguelikes/Roguelites are, it does the opposite. It distills Roguelikes to the minimum viable premise - the blend of skill and luck and in-game mechanic manipulation/balance adjustments - and simplifies it to the core of what that is, through the everyday common lens of poker. It's brilliance lies in its simplicity... and its unpredictability.
Great comment. What I like most about Balatro is the fact that it seems to be a simple game compared to other roguelikes but when you start playing you discover a lot of hidden mechanics and complex synergies that makes the game easy to understand but hard to master.
I have +100 hours played and I recently discover that I should put the Queens Before the Kings from left to right in order to seize the +13 Mult Queen Joker and the Baron Joker. Discovering those mechanics by yourself and use them to be a better player is a priceless sensation.
Holy shit you should have way more subscribers. QUALITY video, and your sense of humor is peak
@@jaredcurtis4506 thank you!!
really good review! i especially loved the bit at the end involving the particle accelerator; such a unique descriptor, and as someone who's now hit over 200 hours in Balatro, it's such an accurate comparison, too
Thanks so much :')
Sick thumbnail, def an under appreciated art. Video is also great!
Balatro is the best rougelike I’ve played since Slay the Spire
I really did not think it would live up to the insane hype but now as somebody who works from home it's basically running 8+ hours a day on my computer lmao
How'd you get your clubs cards to appear as blue instead of black? That looks so helpful. Awesome video by the way!
There's a high contrast option in video settings, I believe!
@@Sputnik34 Wow thank you this is going to save my ass!
1:42 You mean Splatoon 3 DLC?
Nothing can beat the feeling of defeating a boss with 1 HP left.
You only have 1hp in balatro though?
Or beating the boss with a single hand.
nothing can beat the feeling of beating a blind with just a couple extra chips in your last hand
@@tylerduncan5908unless you have the mr. Bones joker lol
@@tylerduncan5908you can barely pass by with a few chips
absolute banger of a video
Thank you!! 😭
This video's intro was pure gold. Got me laught till now 🤣
The Tetris CD-i soundtrack fits this game and video so well, solid video.
Note that the scaling in endless mode is tetrational, proportional to x^x^x. At the moment, there isn’t a way to scale one’s hand at O(x^x^x), but this problem is obscured by the Ante 39 naneinf glitch.
The only readability issue Ive had with balatro was realizing how much better X mult was than + mult and sometimes forgetting if something applies to my hand (played cards) or my hand (the whole selection of cards I can use.)
The thing is even in the worst case once you figure it out it becomes really easy to understand (as opposed to things like vague percentages still sometimes being hard to think about)
The deadcells ignorence driving me insane ( i love balatro and all but WHY TF IS SLAY THE SPIDER GETTING MORE TALK THAN DEADCELLS)
@@aneesharnav3008 I don't like dead cells all that much 😅
@@Sputnik34 makes sense now , i was so confused on why DEADCELLS one of the or if not the most succesfull indie of the past decade ( with hollow night and hades ) got shafted but yea , the difficulty of deadcells does fuck with people
part of me wonders if a game like balatro could be used as some sort of replacement for actual gambling. it hits some of the same notes as actually playing poker at a casino, except all you lose at the end of the day is some time instead of your house
That's the thing, addictions are not to be replaced, you should quit.
What was the first game woth the shooting mechanics?
20 minutes till dawn
20 minutes till dawn
i really want to play balatro, but i could not tell you the first thing about how to play poker
@@RoundBert_official the game tells you everything you need to know 🥺
@@Sputnik34 perhaps i shall give it a try then
Good vid! I love Balatro, love it so much I’ve made a conscious decision to stop playing it…else it take over my whole identity
LOL yeah that sounds about right 😵💫
It's like quitting heroin, it's only temporary and will stick to your mind forever. The current experimental branch version is even more addictive
Nobody want to talk about the fact that if you don't drop a correct +mult joker by ante 3 you're basically dead ?
That's what frustrate me the most in balatro, this hit or miss each damn run, that I didn't felt in Slay the spire or Dicey Dungeon. You either destroy the 8th boss because stars align or you loose vs 3rd small blind because you're stuck with Odd Todd...
That’s an argument against roguelikes, if you don’t get upgrades then yes-your run will end. By ante 3 there are plenty of opportunities to upgrade hands and purchase jokers.
@@socrates7722 I beg to deffer, there is a shortness in balatro runs that makes this problem really showing compared to others. And also, there is an imbalance in Balatro, not that present in other games making some cards really indispensable compared to others. From a guy who played card games and roguelikes a lot.
For example, If we talk Slay. How many card choices you have before first boss ? RNG is smoothed by number of choices. In Balatro, there is few choices compared to other games.
Also, If you don't get a +mult joker specifically, Show me a run where you go farther than ante 3 (without Plasma deck - of course). In other roguelikes, you have more time and more build possibilities.
I'm frustred because I relaunch so many runs, so early..
But then again, may be I play real bad..
Happy to have your thoughts.
@@ThePiiX Skill issue /hj. For lower stakes most runs are winnable, you just have to be very flexible and aggressive with your money. Don't get me wrong, there are runs that get snuffed by RNG.
For higher stakes though, a lot of runs do get snuffed out early by RNG. The creator has an AMA where he addresses a lot of the issues.
Luckily this game is new, and will see improvements. StS was not perfect on release, it's damn near perfect now after many many many updates.
I played for 5 hours, progressed to harder levels and realised the game is just an RNG reset fest, unless you choose the busted deck that starts with extra money.
The game is a 2/5, I’m going to continue playing StS as it’s a million times more enjoyable
Skill issue, Best streamers win gold stakes 10 times in a row.
I enjoyed this video, you sir got a new sub 😀
@@spankrocketgaming294 happy to have you!
You have to be a roguelike to be the best roguelike.
I wouldn't necessarily call it the best, but most probably it's the most addictive.
i think Hades Is better but for far balatro Is most addictive
And easily understandable.
It won't have staying power once the novelty wears off.
Grabbing it immediately next time it goes on sale. Can't wait!
Great video. You should have much more subs!
thank you!
I've been playing the baltaro multiplayer mod as of recently and it's the most fun gaming experience I've had in ages
Another wonderful card game is inscryption. You unlock a special roguelike mode using a cheat code or beating the main story
I loved that game!
I’ve had such a struggle the last like 2 months honestly being able to beat the game or the first 8 antes or whatever. Love the game and hoping something will click soon.
Keep at it! You'll get there!
Balatro university is the man for all things balatro. Helped me a lot. Good luck 🤞
Two tips I’d offer up that have helped me on my runs:
Prioritize getting 1 impactful multiplier Joker early on. You want to try to win as many early hands as you can in one or two hands in order to maximize the extra money you can get.
And attempt to get to $25 in cash on hand as quickly as you can, then don’t spend under unless you have to. What this achieves is an automatic $5 in interest every hand you play, which equates to being able to buy an extra card park/Joker every time you hit the shop. This will quickly add up to a lot of bonuses that will help you get further.
I also prioritize the Planet cards as they increase the base multipliers of your hands which give more for your Jokers to work off of. Hopefully these tips can help you with that elusive win!
@@Nytraz Thank you! Just now reading this. Played a ton the last couple days and got to the last boss blind like 3 times and didn’t get it. Gonna follow your tips I appreciate it.
Wait, you can rearrange the position of Jokers to change the synergies?
I've been playing this game wrong for [checks Steam] 23 hours!
@@psychodrummer1567 yup! 😂
My favorite roguelike is still Noita. But I like the simplicity Balatro has. If I'm ever sick, or not feeling well, I'll do a few balatro runs. I can do a run during lunch at work on my Steam deck too.
The only problem I have with this game is that there are very few strats you can do to beat the highest level challenges like gold stake. That can be fixed though
Play the experimental branch
Slay of Spirit and Balatro is just prefect
You freaking know it
@@Sputnik34Their will never be à game who can out scale them ( or maybe not the futur will tell)
side note: heir is à Slay of Spirt 2 who will come next years so
My friend,
what about enter the gungeon!?
-your friend
Jupp, this game is a masterpiece. It’s honestly unbelievable how good it is.
GOTY contender!
What is the game shown at 2:31?
20 minutes till dawn
1:41 What game is that?
20 minutes till dawn
Im unwilling to call it good until I dont have to reset half my runs in higher stakes due to poor rng. higher stakes need a lot of rebalancing.
If the game was balanced around gold stake it would make the lower stakes semi pointless, it’s the games hardest challenge I think it’s ok that it’s unforgiving, and you need to get lucky to make it work. I do think straights need a buff though, it’s the hardest hand to manipulate your deck into working.
@@MulletMonk not just gold, i can only do so much when all jokers i get are for straight flush, four of a kind, or just something completely unlikely. or i decide to take a voucher that puts tarot or planets in the shop then i only get 2 jokers by ante 3 because it wont give me anything but tarot. or the boss destroys my build and i havent see luchador or the voucher that saves me. i wouldnt complain if i had more control over my failed runs but when ive built the best given what i had its just infuriating.
@@MulletMonk also dice rolls arent difficulty its artificial difficulty. yes you can smack your head against a wall until you get lucky but that isnt fun its a waste of time.
I fully agree, I feel like the game is just balanced around lower stakes and often times on gold stake you're gonna lose just because the game said so. I'm not saying that this doesn't happen in other games but often with this one you really feel like the out was just "get luckier".
Thank s, nice back ground music
I became a subsriber at 12:09 in your video. (Yow you know slay the spire)
Glad to have you! Thanks :')
@@Sputnik34 yas welcome!!!
what is the game at 1:37 ?
20 minutes till dawn
Bought the game due to this review and am very glad that I did. Thank you!
That's amazing to hear! I'm glad!!
What is the shooter game shown right after "Game for Gamers"?
20 minutes till dawn
What's the game that's at 1:06?
20 minutes till dawn
Microugelike: difficulty processing increase rougelite
I'm a bit late to comment this, but your opinion on Gunfire Reborn expressed at the beginning of the video is probably caused by you playing at low difficulties. Let me elaborate: differently from other games the real fun of Gunfire Reborn comes from playing at high difficulties (the max is Reincarnation 9 as of now), because the higher the difficulty the more your choices in weapons, scrolls and orbs actually matter and it becomes a really fun game of gambling and strategy to figure out the most op build possible while also having a good mechanical execution. This also means some runs are nearly impossible if you're really unlucky, but Gunfire being a skill-based game allows you to fight your way through to a good build (a lot easier if you play coop so you can trade stuff), differently from games like Risk of Rain where if you're unlucky the run is completely over and there's not that much strategy involved when making build decisions, it's more about not f*cking up completely and praying to RNGesus.
Gunfire is also the most fun fps roguelike because of the scale of broken you can get to, it's not even comparable to anything else, I once made a build that let me dash every 1.5 seconds(dashing by itself offers mobility and invincibility frames, so it's good to be able to spam it) while having another perk that granted me complete invulnerability from damage for 2 seconds after dashing, making me virtually immortal while also having a a crit rate of about 175%(yes, in this game you can crit multiple times in a single shot) with crit multipliers of about x10.5 and a lot of other stuff. The game also balances things out by not playing fair in the late stages, so unless you got a build that make you immortal as I had(it only happened that one time) you still have to play well and strategize, unlike in Risk of Rain where you either delete everything instantly or die(I think that flaw is mostly cause by not having any defensive features, as a universal dash or shield, that work on every character, since sometimes you can find yourself in scenarios where your character simply can't survive without something granting it invincibility)
Nah
I love that this game it gonna be a lot of players 1st rogue-like/rogue-lite and will open the door to SO many other rogue-lites
Like for me i started eith TBoI, then branched out to Streets of Rogue and Revita and now i have WAY more rogue-lites than i could ever dream!!
Balatro is great!! Give it a shot yall!!!
The slot machine and simplicity part reminded me of one of my guilty pleasure games, Peggle (series). You just aim and watch the ball bounce and collect points. Completely different games (Peggle being much simpler game without much depth in the mechanics, although some multiplier pegs provide a little bit of "strategy") but maybe some similarities in the deeper satisfactory level mentally?
That's a good comparison!
Rube Goldberg machine is a good analogy
As a Magic the Gathering player, this game does delight me.
Always take the banana.
As a big fan of slay the spire I might have to give this a go, great video btw 🤝
This is only related to your sketch in the begining and nothing else, but when me and my brother were kids we were playing a game of BS sitting on the floor by the couch. We were in deep and he laid down some cards and said "5 Aces". Obviously I called bullshit and he indeed flipped over 5 Aces. He found one under the couch while we were playing.
Good vid and editing. What's the outro song? Sounds neat.
Its one of the songs from Tetris on the CDI I believe 😂
ruclips.net/video/f_SwDWKf-78/видео.htmlsi=N-rLI4IKNrK1w6Uw - it is on youtube
Good title, unfortunely, Darkest Dungeon 2 exist
To each their own I guess
@@Sputnik34 pretty much, even that i really like Balatro i can't see how someone could put it over DD2
Don't even get me started on the adaptive music 😭🙏
My entry to rougelikes was Isaac I love that game so much
🗣️📢 BALATROOOOOO
Balatro be ballin
it's a good roguelike but, I gotta say, it's not Exactly a roguelike. It's a hybrid. It's a perfect hybrid, even. or, even, it's a minimalistic roguelike, being that the game of poker has a ceiling to it, and once you reach that ceiling, it's no longer all that fun.
But everything you've said has rung true. It may very well be the best in years. But do you not simply say these things because they get the clicks? There are always superior things out there that just didn't get the same attention. And anyway, yeah I'm just being that "well ackhtually" guy but
this is a game that rewards being precise, and playing it has made me realize how much I want to be precise about other things, such as calling a roguelike a roguelike or a spade a spade.
In the next seven pages, I will fully divest upon
just kidding of course
I just wanted to say, there aren't enough dark corridors for it to be a roguelike per-se. but it also skirts simply genre definitions. It's a deck-builder More than a roguelike. There, I found an out
You not having game speed in 4x is causing me physical pain not to mention the stacking of flat mult jokers instead of times mult or scaling mult or chip jokers
Balatro might not be the best game ever. But it is one of the most perfect
balatro consumed my life for a week and then i never once felt the urge to play again
I'm watching this because I'm taking a tiny break from Balatro.
What game is the third person shooter at 1:37?
Returnal!
you should try Slice & Dice
Um so, returnal doesn’t exist?
12:20 dude thats gros Michael
I love this game especially when my first (and only) win was being some kind of Emperor
My deck was made to hold onto Kings so i kept getting more kings and turning them into Steel cards
One Joker gave x1.5 mult per king in hand
One joker retriggered all hand cards
One Joker gave a dollar 1 in 2 chance per face card in hand
One Joker gave a x0.25 mult per steel card in deck which i got to x2 mult
One joker gave a x3 mult if i had 16 or more upgraded cards in deck (i had exactly that when i got this joker)
No i didn't miswritten the mult from + to x they were all multiplicitve mults
I basically wipe bought the entire shop every time,
i had a few kings that made planet cards by being in hand on round clearance and just had like 12 kings or more in deck
My best hand was was a measly 1.2 Mil Chips and i won the final Ante Very Big Boss accidentally when i ran out of discards and didnt want to use any of the 6 or 7 kings in my hand so i played a card and won by a High Card 316K
P.S: i didn't focus on upgrading a specific poker hand meaning it could have been waaay madder
I bought this game after seeing all the hype, but it’s a huge let down for me. I’m almost 100 runs in and I rarely get any joker in the shop that adds mult before ante 3, and I’ve never gotten past ante 4. I almost always have to brute force the first two antes with no jokers.
Do you ever skip turns in favour for jokers/packs so on?
That's one way to get past it faster.
Then go for boosters packs, steel cards and celestial (planet) packs :)
Alina of the arena
Dave the diver is definitely better but what’s awesome is balatro is now in Dave the diver. Like basically the whole game.
i think inscryption with kayce's is the best rougue like ever made
Nah, Flush and High Card are the only reliable methods. Other ones are HIIIGHLY situational and jokers usually drift towards flushes
You really need to try out FTL
I've gotten a lot of people saying that. I should give it a go 🤔
Well said
Why lol? That Wikipedia definition of roguelike is quite good. I would rather say "a game that is like Rogue" or "single-character grid tactics" but still, good enough.
Whats the game at 0:56
Immortal redneck i think
20 minutes till dawn