• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.

Reviews Balatro Review thread - Switch, PC (steam), PS, XBOX - A roguelike deckbuilder

beej

beej

Tektite
Opencritic 94 Metacritic 92

PC Gamer 91 / 100

A roguelike deckbuilder debut already worth of joining Slay the Spire and Monster Train at the King's table. Essential.


NintendoWorldReport 9 / 10

Now, please, let me play my Balatro in peace. I got an idea for a sick flush strat that I want to try out. So I'll y'all later.


XboxEra 10/10

Balatro is my new gaming obsession, I frigging love it. Deckbuilding roguelikes have had some phenomenal games over the years. Balatro reaches the lofty peak of Slay the Spire and has me hooked even harder than that incredible game ever did. You should buy it, now. Buylatro!
 
Last edited:
Watched some videos of this the other day, looks really fun. I think I'll probably pick it up tomorrow. $15 is reasonable.
 
0
I played the demo for Balatro during last week’s Steam Next Fest. It didn’t click with me, but maybe I should give it another chance. These reviews are pretty good!
 
Any word on Switch port? Good?

Also @beej the links go to the publication pages on open critic not the site/reviews FYI
 
Yamanoi said:
Thanks. Hope someone confirms if it can be played with touch screen. Not there in that review.
Click to expand...
Not sure how accurate this is but at the bottom of the page it says touch screen supported

ec.nintendo.com

Balatro/Nintendo Switch/eShop Download

Balatro is a poker-inspired roguelike deck builder all about creating powerful synergies and winning big.
ec.nintendo.com

Also someone on reddit in the comment section section says

"I interviewed the developer today, touch screen support should be in place and working perfectly on switch <3"

 
beej said:
Not sure how accurate this is but at the bottom of the page it says touch screen supported

ec.nintendo.com

Balatro/Nintendo Switch/eShop Download

Balatro is a poker-inspired roguelike deck builder all about creating powerful synergies and winning big.
ec.nintendo.com

Also someone on reddit in the comment section section says

"I interviewed the developer today, touch screen support should be in place and working perfectly on switch <3"

Click to expand...

YES! Thanks. I can buy it on Switch as soon as it goes up on the eShop.
 
0
I'm currently addicted to Slay the Spire on my phone, if it's anything like that, then oooh boy, I'm going to be a lost man lol.
 
played a few hours of the demo on steam over the past couple weeks and it seems like a guaranteed hit to me. insanely slick presentation that makes for some very “satisfying” brainhacky watching-numbers-go-up “fun,” with huge amounts of “content.” I’m not sure that necessarily makes it a great game but it’s definitely successful at what it sets out to do.

I keep thinking it’d be a perfect airplane game—no violence or unpleasant imagery to weird out the people behind you, no action or timing-based stuff so you can stop and start at your own pace, and it makes time evaporate like nothing
 
I accidentally played this for 7 hours last night. Still haven't had a win, but quickly learning to stop mixing up X/Y and sabotaging my runs haha.

What a fun and addictive game.
 
kaya bunji said:
I accidentally played this for 7 hours last night. Still haven't had a win, but quickly learning to stop mixing up X/Y and sabotaging my runs haha.

What a fun and addictive game.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's mesmerizing. I got the the final Boss Blind on my second run and wasn't quite able to finish it off. I'll be back...

I thought I'd played for 45 mins to an hour, it was over 2 hours lol. And I've been thinking about it at work itching to get back and try some new strategies.
 
got to ante 10 and it makes you work for it(800k points needed). Just got bad luck and couldn't win but it was doable. I was regularly putting up 100k points too. What a fun game.
 
Do you need a strong understanding of poker to be able to play this? I've almost got four digit hours in Slay the Spire so this looks appealing but I know next to nothing about poker.
 
Is the demo still available? This went from "I have not heard of this" to "I am curious about this" in a day!

That sounded more impressive in my head
 
0
Leica said:
Do you need a strong understanding of poker to be able to play this? I've almost got four digit hours in Slay the Spire so this looks appealing but I know next to nothing about poker.
Click to expand...

No, just a general idea.
 
0
Leica said:
Do you need a strong understanding of poker to be able to play this? I've almost got four digit hours in Slay the Spire so this looks appealing but I know next to nothing about poker.
Click to expand...
No. It requires as much poker knowledge as Yahtzee.
 
0
Hocot8 said:
got to ante 10 and it makes you work for it(800k points needed). Just got bad luck and couldn't win but it was doable. I was regularly putting up 100k points too. What a fun game.
Click to expand...
What build did you use? I see most newcomers going for flush/straight, but the high card/pair ones sound fun.
 
Feels like this should be converted from a review thread to an ST! Or maybe we need a Balatro ST. @beej what do you think?
 
Okay, so after about 15 hours of dead runs, I finally knocked out 4 winning runs, each with a different deck. Once you unlock blueprint, it makes things soooo much better on runs.
 
0
I managed to win my third run. It was mostly a high card / pair heavy strategy.

-Had a Joker that did x.25 Mult for every card added to deck, so I was aggressive in adding cards. I think I had it up to 3.5x
-Had a Joker that added Mult for the number of times that I had played that hand, which really encouraged me to just keep playing as many pairs as I could.

Those were probably the key parts of the run. With those 2 alone, playing a single pair would have the Mult over 100.

The thing I really like about this game is just how many different strategies there are. I'm looking forward to really digging in and trying our some of the different decks.
 
0
I like Poker and play it at casinos sometimes but a deckbuilder roguelike centered around it didn't sound very interesting when I first heard of this

looks like maybe I was wrong about that
 
0
Bit and did a run and a half last night, made ante 4 on the tutorial seed.
Red Monster said:
Feels like this should be converted from a review thread to an ST! Or maybe we need a Balatro ST. @beej what do you think?
Click to expand...
Make a new one. Review thread needs to stay as an easily searchable resource
 
0
Had my first cleared run today, focusing on two pairs. Kept it going of course, ran into this Boss Blind in Ante 9 that needed me to score 110,000 in one hand, I pulled out all the stops I could, but didn’t get much luck in my draws, and, well…



This game can be cruel, lol. But it’s fantastic.
 
Heyyy!!!! pulled off a win on my second run!!!! Blue deck.

IMG_8446.jpg

Wound up with a Club and tarot booster
 
beej said:
I think demo is only on steam. And even that theyve removed it
Click to expand...
Correct. It was only for Steam Next Fest but they extended until launch day. I think there is a PS+ trial but I don't have that PS+.
 
0
Oh my God this scratches my Slay the Spire itch something fierce. What an ingenious mix of Poker and roguelike features. And so many combinations as well. This is going to be a timesink for sure
 
Galgavias said:
Oh my God this scratches my Slay the Spire itch something fierce. What an ingenious mix of Poker and roguelike features. And so many combinations as well. This is going to be a timesink for sure
Click to expand...
this is the thing that is getting me hooked. There are so many combinations and sometimes you can create engines that just cook. I made one engine with the abandoned deck that was just one multiplier joker away from being insane.

I would advise people to check the jokers in the collections section. They tell you how to unlock some of them and it helps get some different ones into play. Like there are ones where you have to win a run without playing a flush or a straight. Really makes you play differently and experiment with different combos.
 
0
Today I learned that a +3 Joker is very different than a X3 Joker… I mean, obviously, but my brain was just reading a plus sign every time, lol.
 
I thought I was in good shape getting the joker that makes all cards considered face cards in conjunction with the smiley face one that gives +4 mult for each face card that scores. Then I got a boss blind that caused all face cards to be dealt face down 🙃
 
Finally cracked that million point barrier and beat ante 10. Got to finally use that madness joker card and it really slaps.

Niraj said:
I thought I was in good shape getting the joker that makes all cards considered face cards in conjunction with the smiley face one that gives +4 mult for each face card that scores. Then I got a boss blind that caused all face cards to be dealt face down 🙃
Click to expand...
yeah...unfortunately that isn't the worse one for that situation. If you want any chance you pretty much have to sell the joker that makes them face cards.
 
touchfuzzy said:
Today I learned that a +3 Joker is very different than a X3 Joker… I mean, obviously, but my brain was just reading a plus sign every time, lol.
Click to expand...

multiplicative is always the king in games that feature this kinda stuff. it scales so much.
 
0
Y'all I am addicted to this game

I just finished my first run (ended up getting Game Over on Ante 10 because I wasn't paying attention). My Jokers were:
  • +4 multiplier when scoring any face card (it became upgraded at one point to also give +30 points every round)
  • +12 (I think) multiplier on any hand of three or less cards
  • +20 multiplier for a pair
  • +15 multiplier if you were out of discards
  • (1 + 0.1*s)x multiplier, where s was the number of space cards played
Then it was just... play pairs, buy any space card I could find, upgrade the pair hand if possible. If need be, discard until you can't anymore to get a bonus, but honestly it usually wasn't necessary - at a certain point my pair hand was at level 18 or so and I had a 5x on the multiplier. A pair of 4s would get me like 70,000 points without even taking advantage of the discard Joker lol
 
0
Also, we should definitely just convert this to the ST, since the review thread rules dictate this thread be close pretty soon otherwise
 
IMG_8470.jpg
Got my second run clear. Just doing base difficulty deck clears right now. Got a pretty good combo going and got 3 extra antes on endless cleared. Feels fun getting rocket joker on the first ante

hologram said:
Also, we should definitely just convert this to the ST, since the review thread rules dictate this thread be close pretty soon otherwise
Click to expand...
We should make a real ST honestly, better to keep the review thread separate
 
0
I usually buy my games deeply discounted (DekuDeals), but for some reason I didn't want to wait for this game to go on sale.

Totally worth $15! Won 3 runs so far, once I start a run, I cannot really put the controller down.
 
0
slide's said:
played a few hours of the demo on steam over the past couple weeks and it seems like a guaranteed hit to me. insanely slick presentation that makes for some very “satisfying” brainhacky watching-numbers-go-up “fun,” with huge amounts of “content.” I’m not sure that necessarily makes it a great game but it’s definitely successful at what it sets out to do.

I keep thinking it’d be a perfect airplane game—no violence or unpleasant imagery to weird out the people behind you, no action or timing-based stuff so you can stop and start at your own pace, and it makes time evaporate like nothing
Click to expand...
Can confirm this is a great airplane game
 
Hocot8 said:
Finally cracked that million point barrier and beat ante 10. Got to finally use that madness joker card and it really slaps.


yeah...unfortunately that isn't the worse one for that situation. If you want any chance you pretty much have to sell the joker that makes them face cards.
Click to expand...

Yeah I wasn't paying close enough attention, or I would have lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom