Balatro Review – Nearly Endless Poker Possibilities

The poker goes into the blender and comes out in good form.

Ballatero Week – A ballatero was a clown and fool in ancient Rome. I googled it – I’d say it’s the Goldberg variation of poker. This is Poker: Possibilities Space Edition. It’s a roguelike deck builder that starts with basic poker hands and then allows you to upgrade those hands with bonuses, add new cards to the deck and change existing ones, and introduce a series of cards that play in strange ways. The Joker card that changes the rules of the game. However, behind it all is still poker. (Actually, indie developers say it’s the Big Two, and I’ll take their word for it.) So, like the Goldbergs, it’s vast, ingenious, and eager to turn every closet and every pocket inside. But also like the Goldbergs, its invention was a precise thing, requiring the exploration of specific possibilities. So it feels really, really big—bottomless—but also very compact: localized, special.

It’s completely taken over the gaming world over the past few weeks, and I can see why. The roguelike poker game is such a brilliant idea that you barely need to play it yourself to know how clever it is. There are a few of them, and Balatero is easily the best I’ve ever played. It’s really ingenious – and it’s also ingeniously simple. let’s start.

This is playing cards. Honestly it is. In the first round of a new round, you play pretty straight forward poker before you start going in weird directions. The cards are dealt to you. You do poker. Flush? OK Naoko? Absolutely no problem. I’m the true, hard-working friend of the two pairs when it comes to real poker in the real world. That’s what two pairs are to me: a good try, not going to blow people away, and you did your best.

Balatero | Release Trailer – Poker Roguelike | Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One

But then you win a round or two by matching or beating the blinds – every card has a chip value and your hand will increase the multiplier; low blinds start at around 300 chips and are not difficult to achieve. Then you get a shop between turns. This is where Balatero lives. This store is its big deal. Here’s why.

In the shop, you can use your winnings so far to buy things that allow you to take on bigger blinds. At the simplest level, these might be planet cards that increase the multiplier and chip value of your hand.So, upgraded my favorite two pairs a few times and suddenly it became two pairs yes One big thing – if you haven’t upgraded yet, this is a better option than three. Just stick with planet cards, and by the end of the run, almost every hand you play will have a little extra oomph. Not bad at all.

Of course, there is more. Tarot allows you to add new elements to the cards in your deck, so an Ace might bring its own killer multiplier, or might give you an extra chip if you keep it in your hand without using it. Things to remember!

And then there’s the Joker. Joker creates new rules. They stay with you for the entire run unless you sell them back to the store, and you can usually have five games at once. Standard Joker might add a nice multiplier, or give you a multiplier when your hand contains a certain card. A slightly weirder Joker might give you a larger hand of cards to choose from, or might give you a huge multiplier if you burn all your discarded cards. In fact, this one is a great example of the format: the clowns here not only reward you, they often encourage you to take silly risks. They convey part of the spirit of poker, letting you hang on to an ace that clutters your small hand because to give it up would be to give up a dream of glory.

It’s just a bit of a weird clown. For my first dozen hours, I thought Joker was Balatello’s absolute pinnacle.i thought they were it. I see a lot of wild builds online, but also glorious RNGs, see which of them show up in the store and make something out of them. But then I wised up. Friends, I love planet cards, I kinda love tarot cards, and I absolutely love the Joker card. But what I’m going to talk about now are the basic card booster packs you can buy in the store. Because these are where the real long-term marathon fun of running a balatero begins.

These booster packs will usually have a nice card selection, but don’t overlook the fact that even basic cards will leave you fighting duplicates. You might suddenly have a deck with 53, 56, 60 cards in it! You might have seven sevens, a dozen queens. Last night, it’s almost shameful to type this, I swear the Joker, tarot cards, and card packs combined gave me an overwhelming deck of 9s and Jacks. You can use it to make hands. Chances are you’ll get something good!

Somehow we’re still in the store. In fact, this is where I spent a lot of time in this game, choosing between options and imagining the different running pressures I would get. Take a look at the Goldberg Variations – fast or slow? Is Glenn Gould still the new guy? Which Glenn Gould? (I’m appreciative here, and if you’re not a Goldberg fan, this review is more disappointing than usual. All I’m saying is: sorry, give them a listen too! Quoting maze designer Greg Bright ( Bach) “Let law sound like freedom.”) Happily, when you walk out of the store, the game is there to match your growing power. The blinds are up, but boss blinds bring their own wrinkles. Early on, a suit may be debuffed. Later, you may just receive new cards face down, and you have to make the most of them.

In fact, that’s the best thing about this game for me. I’ve been playing for an hour now and my cards are all nines and jacks, just like I like it, but there’s a huge blind and all my cards are going the wrong way. We were in the garage, the MOT was due, one of our wheels was facing backwards and the other three wheels were made of licorice. I love these moments because they dispel my lingering worry that everything in Balatero is just decorated and installed for the sake of multiplication tables. You light this up, you switch it up, turn on these weird rules and power up your deck, but you’re still waiting for the multiplier to go up, waiting for your score to catch fire like it always has.

I like balatero very much. At first, I admit, I was slow to get it because I’m not good at poker and it took me a while to realize that this was a machine that took revenge on poker. I watch high-level players play on Twitch and I find there’s a real beauty to Balatro – the experts will insert the joker, invest in the right planets and tarot cards and manipulate the deck, they’re not just dealing with a specific thing, they’re We’re aiming for something, and it’s something concrete, a super-construct or a double twist, it’s like information pouring out of a white hole and pooling in the radioactive space around us. I think some people will stick with this game and never move on. But I also doubt I’ll be moving on in a few weeks, and I’m trying to figure out why I think that, despite all the fun I’ve had, despite the game’s effortless compulsion and obvious categories.

First, I don’t have the necessary gifts. Just as I wasn’t going to make poker my life because I could barely count to 10, even if all the counting were done for me, I wouldn’t feel completely comfortable in the world of mathematics and cause and effect. Secondly, Balatro is just too clever and neat for me. It all works so well and it holds together so well, sometimes I feel like it’s a little airy. It’s surprising to me that this is the work of one man, but to me it lacks that spark of strangeness and design risk that brings me back to deckbuilders like Cobalt Core. Cleanliness and focus are what make Balatero a wonder – I think even if you break everything down, it’s still pretty neat – but I think that’s also why certain types of players end up looking for something else.

It’s a sad end to a review of something so compelling, so brilliantly constructed, and that brought me so much joy last week. But in a way, I even find this to be part of Balatello’s generosity. It’s the recognition that something might be fundamentally beautiful, but not exactly right for you either. That’s fine. Anyway. I hope Balatro is a good fit for you and wish you a great time.