Balatro (PlayStation 5) review "Motley Crew"

To explain Balatro's concept in the most simplistic way possible, it's one-player survival mode Poker. Granted, it's more extensive than that, but to truly grasp the game's depth, you need to understand the basics of five-card draw Poker, which this game uses and modifies along with adding fresh mechanics.

As the playthrough begins, you are given a random set of eight cards from a 52 card deck composed of numbers, face cards, and aces across four suits. Here, you're tasked with presenting a hand from a set, requiring a specific combination of cards, to which there are several to form. The most common is a Pair, which is two of the same number or face, such as a 4 Spade and a 4 Diamond; then there's more complicated hands, one of which is a Straight Flush that requires five consecutive cards of the same suit, like a Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8 of Hearts. Balatro uses this basic setup of Poker and takes liberties in order for the new stuff to work.

The main goal here is to make enough tokens to pass a round, doing so with a limited amount of tries. To gain tokens, you have to keep presenting cards, with hand combinations helping to bulk up your token count, which also adds multipliers in the process. Though, considering you only have four tries to reach the round's token count, gaining a big number can be tricky. This is where Balatro eases up on certain Poker rules in order to give you an edge if used properly. For instance, by default, you don't have to use five cards every time you show a hand, meaning you can show less. Also, you have the ability to discard up to five of your cards in a set in the hopes of trading for something better. Unsurprisingly, there's a limit to how many times you can abuse do this per round.

Each stage, called an Ante, has three rounds each, with the third acting as a "boss" battle where you are inflicted with a random handicap; one such handicap actually forces you to draw five cards with every hand, while another exempts you from gaining tokens for certain suits. As headway is made with your survival streak towards the elusive Ante 8, the token count gradually rises, to the point where getting by with simple hand combinations will lead to a game over. This is where Balatro's other mechanics come in. If you ever saw any promo material or the game's cover art, then you've seen that Joker cards are featured prominently, and for good reason.



You're gifted a complementary Joker card during the tutorial, but beyond that, you're typically given opportunities to purchase more Joker cards in the post-round shop menu. With money accumulated during a round, you sometimes have the option of buying between two Joker cards, each with differing abilities. Some abilities easily activate through normal play, like gaining a +8 multiplier for using a Pair, but others require a bit more tact or risk to trigger. For instance, one Joker wants you to draw three or less cards for a +30 multiplier, and another grants X1 multiplier for every Joker slot not filled. Speaking of, you can own five different Joker cards at once, meaning if you manage a good Joker deck, in the right order, you can have several multipliers pop off each time a hand is played.

While Joker cards are the most consistent when helping you from hand to hand, there are other elements that support your struggle. Just like Jokers, you can typically purchase other card types in the shop, with booster packs being one such option. When you purchase and open a pack, you are usually only allowed to pick one card of several. But the catch here is that one or more of these playing cards are ingrained with a unique skill to boost your token count; if your fortune is good, you can obtain a card that causes a multiplier simply for existing in your deck the entire round, or have an unmarked stone card that gives you +50 chips regardless of your hand.

Other such helpful boosters include the Arcana pack, which houses Tarot cards that grant you stuff like a random Joker or switching three cards into a specific suit, the latter being very useful if you're going for big hands. Spectral packs are basically "wild" versions of Tarots, with one Spectral card asking you to destroy all your Joker cards for a unique one. Lastly are the Planet cards, kept inside Celestial packs, which are used to upgrade your hands multiple times throughout a playthrough. These Planet cards are just as vital as Jokers in the long run, due to the fact that stacking upgrades for hands like a Flush or a Two Pair are powerful when overcoming huge token counts in latter Antes.



This may all sound a bit overwhelming at first, especially for something that's an alternate take on Poker, but everything flows together seamlessly when you're playing. Balatro's greatest quality is one as old as video games: its easy pick-up-and-play structure makes it extremely accessible, even for people who've never played Poker in their life. The simplicity invites you in, and you don't want to leave until you conquer the challenges that block you from reaching Ante 8. Sometimes this requires pumping upgrades into a specific hand. Sometimes this requires sacrificing a Joker card in order for the remaining deck to function much better in the moment. Sometimes this requires putting all your hopes and dreams into a final hand that needs to get at least 2000 tokens in order to win the round.

Before long, you're staring at the game over status screen, wondering how things went so wrong when you had everything going in your favor.

But then you're back at it: first Ante and you feel that this is the run! As you head into Ante 2, you've collected a luchador Joker that earns extra money for discarding face cards, and a Joker that can disable a boss handicap if needed. Later on in Ante 4, you're barely getting by with a full Joker deck consisting mostly of multipliers, but struggling due to a lack of good hands and upgrades. Then you reach Ante 4's boss and the handicap only allows one hand type played for the entire round; you hastily activate the Joker that overrides the handicap. Miraculously, you make it to Ante 7 with a restructured Joker deck, Tarot cards, good hand upgrades, and it looks like you might reach the coveted 8th Ante. But then you reach Ante 7's boss... and its handicap is The Wall, which imposes a huge token count for you to overthrow.

If only you had a unique Joker card that dis... oh.



Balatro is very charming and engaging once everything starts clicking, causing hours of distraction. What's crazy is that, even with dozens of hours under your belt, you're possibly still only playing a small portion of the game; play long enough and you'll eventually unlock new decks with different starting statuses, such as having an extra try per round, or gaining one additional Joker slot but at the expense of having a try taken away. Then there's also a challenge mode, varying difficulty settings with unique crutches, and the option of an endless playthrough if you finish Ante 8.

But don't fret if you're slowly unraveling those unlocks over a long period, or maybe not at all if you move on to something else. The wonderful thing is that the base game is solid, as it doesn't need any extra content to be sustainable. But that's why the overall product of Balatro is great: because as a video game, it works in short bursts, it works in long bursts, it works if you want extra stuff, and it works if you want to hop back in after a long absence.

The game simply works.

Community review by dementedhut (December 11, 2024) Now if only I had the foresight to submit this OutRun review a day earlier...