Played 2 hours and realized I just was not having any fun. I don't particularly like the weapon (his attack animations/feel). I have problems timing the parry and the dodge to the attack animations. I love big shields in Dark Souls, but that feeling is NOT the same as shielding in this game. I dont like that the first area is just a open area with some "ruins".

I got to the second area (a big safe zone city) and all my exploration drive went away. I do not want to hear any more talking, I don't want to explore anymore so I just quit.

Yeah I think the artstyle, setting, and music is a good change of pace for Souls-likes, but it I don;t like the combat so 👎

been thinking a lot about why balatro doesn't super work for me

i think its because if you have bad luck, you are unable to win a run. if you roll badly you will hit a wall that you can not scale regardless

when i think about all the roguelikes/lites i adore there's an element of "even if i have the worst possible luck, if i play well enough i can still win". hades, spelunky, even something like into the breach

whereas with balatro, there have been a serious chunk of runs where i get to ante 4/5 and just think ... i will 100% lose and there is no point in me continuining this run

the other thing is that, to me, the core gameplay of playing cards isn't that enjoyable

shit man am i a balatro hater???

ultimately i think its an astonishingly polished game with a loop that makes only a quarter of runs feel worth doing

EDIT: new update i'm back in baby

I've had to let this one stew for a bit, honestly.

I picked it up for myself as a late birthday present out of curiosity more than anything. I'd heard a lot of unflattering comparisons to Vampire Survivors (a game I very much despise) and clicker games (which I also despise! Wow, patterns!) which had put me on edge, so I was a little surprised to find out that none of those comparisons are apt.

I can understand being skeeved out by the direct usage of Poker iconography and terminology on display, but the truth that's apparent to me is that Balatro is ultimately another roguelike deckbuilder. You match symbols together, try to play to synergies, and pray for one of your random drops/powerups to be the one that enables a certain playstyle or tactics. If anything, despite my relative apathy towards deckbuilders (I play YGO, so slapping a roguelite aspect on just repels me) I admire this game for its honesty and relative lack of illusions.

Still, I find myself in an odd position.

Despite admiring it, I'm not really smitten with it.

One of those games where I can see why it's considered a mindmelting trap for people with ADHD, but I personally don't get much out of it. Would honestly rather play Suika Game. Incremental micro-unlocks and "pick one of 3" powerups and glorified slot machines in the form of card packs don't really enthuse me.

At a base level, the basest of all levels, I do think the mechanics are somewhat engaging despite the simplicity and comparison to blackjack more than poker. Compared to its contemporaries I also think it has infinitely more impactful decision making, especially with how finite money is and how little shops actually offer.
But Balatro - and indeed, nearly the entire roguelite genre - has an awful habit of playing their entire mechanical hand early on and then hoping it's enough to hook you. While it works for some games (Isaac, FTL, Dead Cells, Synthetik) I don't find it works so well for deckbuilders. There aren't enough interesting twists on the core mechanics for me to want to keep playing, and if anything its iconographical honesty might actually make it worse.

Sure, the game is addictive, but I'm older now dude. I creak when I wake up, I say "Mmm scrumptious" when I buy a pastry from Greggs, I tend a garden, I play Granblue Fantasy, I've got an inanimate object I collect.

'Addictive' is no longer enough to satisfy me. Life is addictive, pastries are addictive, math is addictive, the world I live in is addictive.

[Semi-related ramble that I was gonna post as a comment on someone else's Balatro review before remembering I don't like to barge into other people's posts and go "Nuh uh".]

I so direly wish higher profile indie games would have a design core that isn't just "addictive". Having seen roguelites come into existence over a decade ago, it feels like every other popular indie game is trying to make players chase the same kind of high that Binding of Isaac or FTL did all those years ago. In turn, they miss out on just being good games at their core.

Fucked up that Hitman: Freelancer is the best of these games I've played in years, and it was free DLC.

This game is hard to fuck with. It's charming, intimate, funny, but a little confused and empty.

The enemies feel overtuned, frequently throwing insta-kill grabs and combos where even the weakest enemies can thrash you. The spaces you trace are strangely open, seemingly in some sort of compromise between open world sensibilities and the responsibility to design levels. Sometimes it all comes together and you're scuttling the seabed, the fights are good, and there's a joke you know some young adults had a blast putting together, but by the time I reach another poison swamp it feels like it's collapsed under its own weight, and the fun is over. Like I'm in a big empty area with some crabs littered around it. Is it underdeveloped? Too big to support itself?

When it stopped being fun, I tried turning the difficulty down, but the effects were marginal. I figured even if I turned it down to the easiest settings, I wasn't going to see much more than the first few hours. When the magic is gone like that, it's hard to come back.

This game has a lot of potential, but I feel like the initial concept works against it. It’s a bit more mean-spirited, where you kind of hope something horrible happens to everyone and it actually needs to in order to progress. It’s a concept that unfortunately rips away all of the scariness and hilarity that most people would probably be looking for. Aside from a well-timed spawn, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Unlike the other game that this one will be compared to until the end of time, there’s no chance of organic comedy coming from your friends who are avoiding danger rather than looking for it. The point here is to hope that something kills everyone and that the camera man isn’t dicking around somewhere else while it’s happening.

I played the game for about 2 hours and feel like I’ve already experienced everything it has to offer. The upgrades it sells you are mostly cosmetic and the amount of views you get per video seem completely arbitrary. You’ll have some rounds of gameplay where everyone dies in the first 5 seconds, leaving you with 60% of film left and others where barely anything happens at all. The environments don’t really give you that much to play with and there’s no reason to wander off because there’s only one camera. Every day ends with an awkward movie experience where everyone sits around looking at the unedited footage and maybe sometimes you’ll hear a light chuckle under someone’s breath. It’s nice that they offered it for free, but I probably won’t go back to this one until it gets some major updates.

Contrary to how it may appear, I did not put this game off in a Pikmin 2 rage-induced fugue. Indeed, I was simply waiting for the unbelievable two months(?!) before Amazon deigned to send me a frickin copy. With that being said, it was worth the wait. Despite, in my experience, seeming to have the most mixed reception of all the Pikmin games, this might be my favorite so far, managing to capture (most of) what made the original great, while improving in so many little ways that tremendously smooth out the experience.

Chapter 1 - Crash Landing: Redux

As with the previous game, the best place to start is probably the plot. Ripping into the specifics of a Pikmin plot feels kind of like murmuring disappointedly that your son's macaroni art lacks the abstract je ne sais quoi of late-stage Picasso, but this is probably the most contrived story yet. The previously unmentioned planet of Koppai is experiencing a global famine, and various space patrols are dispatched to, presumably, bleed someone else's ecology dry to compensate. After finding a planet filled with edible goodies, they proceed to dispatch exactly one ship carrying three people, who will collect enough fruit seeds to sustain the entire planetary population. Alternatively, perhaps send more than one ship? Or at least the Koppai equivalent of a cargo freighter? If America had a sudden nationwide food shortage, I don't think Biden would send one old guy with a rickety Toyota across the border to scavenge the nearest Tim Horton's. They also fail to equip them with any weapons or means of defense, despite traveling to a completely alien world KNOWN to have life on it. I'm sure the old man in the Toyota would at least have a pistol or a very angry dog, but I digress.

Either way, the Koppaite dream team of Captain Charlie, Botanist Brittany, and Engineer Alph apparently drive with their eyes closed and experience a sudden crash landing in a fully functional ship, now tasked with finding their sole missing ship part, in addition to as much fruit as their grubby little hands can carry. It may seem that the presence of three captains would be tonally harmful in the same way the presence of two was in the previous game, but the mood in this game is clearly much different from the first two. Gone is any attempt at a stressful trek into the dangerous unknown. Instead, this resembles more of a relaxing nature stroll, taking in the sights of flowers and mutant frog-mushroom things. While it may lack the same edge, I'm pretty much ok with it as a new take. I enjoyed the gentle music and charming nature scenery finally feeling in line with the actual gameplay experience, instead of listening to a whimsical flute while Louie gets all of his arms and legs ripped off by robot spiders.

On the crew, their personalities are whatever the immediate step above "cardboard automaton" is. Maybe cardboard with a little bow and big anime eyes drawn on. Charlie is headstrong, Brittany is a proto-Louie (and also seems to be the most scientifically ignorant, despite being a botanist), and Alph is the one who actually does work. They're functional, but not memorable. The attempts to cross things over with the previous two games were charming, though Louie continuing to devolve further and further into a faintly-shackled beast is the most bizarre thru-line in the series. One criticism I have is the decision to make the captains talk. I have never in my life wanted to hear Olimar speak, especially not when his voice sounds like he swallowed an oboe.

Chapter 2 - The Big Birdcage

I have come to the conclusion that exploration is perhaps the most core aspect of Pikmin's identity. Losing that element is like making a Mario game without jumping, or a Sonic game without running, or a Zelda game where Link respects property rights. One of my primary criticisms of Pikmin 2 was the lack of exploration, simply being funneled down cramped, wet caves like nerds at a gaming convention. That's in contrast to Pikmin 1, where the map is mostly open and free to be tackled at your discretion, with only a few barriers in place to herd you away from late-game areas. Like an overly fussy parent at a boy-girl sleepover, Pikmin 3 seems to mostly lie in between the two. The first chunk of the game had me very worried, as you walk down straight, linear tracks while the game talks on and on and on and on, not even trusting you to pull up your own socks without offering a helpful push so you don't accidently strangle yourself with them. By the time Alph is finished reciting his second Dostoevsky novel, the game finally gives you the reins, and, to its credit, it does open up after that. Not to the same degree as the original, mind you; 3 undeniably falls short of letting you wander as you please. At the same time, however, your cage becomes pretty spacious, and various fruits / obstacles can be freely tackled at the same time. If the first game is structured as a big circle and the second is a line, this one feels more like an asterik* shape - several linear paths spitting out independently and simultaneously in a way that at least feels fairly open.

Chapter 3 - The Heroic Trio

Perhaps the most notable gameplay alteration for this title is the ability to control three characters independently. While Pikmin 2 first brought up the idea in its shotgun bukkake of new concepts, 3 refines it in a few key ways. Most notably, introducing captain orders. While I initially lamented that the orders were not as extensive as I had suggested in my Pikmin 2 review, boiling down to just shouting "Oi dickhead, over here!", that ultimately proves to be enough. When combined with the many control refinements I'll be discussing soon, it's pretty easy to fall into a rhythm of three different captains multi-tasking three different objectives in a gameplay loop that becomes deeply engrossing. Every piece would work on their own task while I just switched around, offering pizza parties and in store credit whenever they would finish before setting them to their next grind. Indeed, this game having substantially more "treasures" than the original doesn't feel anywhere near as tedious as in 2, since you're not required to sit and supervise the whole process like you're trying to train chimps to mix dynamite. Certain objectives can throw a wrench into things by requiring multiple captains, but it's fairly quick and simple to shift your troops over and back again to work through that. Another massively useful function: being able to peel off a spare captain to go fetch the Pikmin stopped at the Onion after delivering their loot.

Chapter 4 - The Little Things that Make the World Go Round

As alluded to in the previous chapters, I'd like to dedicate a section to discuss the quality of life improvements, which are the true star of this game. In addition to the aforementioned captain orders, the game also streamlines divvying up both your Pikmin and captains, making reconfiguring and deploying Alpha Team, Beta Team, and... C Team fast and easy. Finally, on the third installment, we also have a dedicated camera stick, no longer controlling like Olimar's being stalked by a flying periscope. With this change, controlling your horde with the right stick has been replaced with a dedicated "charge" button, something which is significantly more satisfying to use than I would ever expect, as well as, once again, helping to separate different colors for specific functions. In order to streamline Pikmin combat / commands, the game also introduces a lock-on function, meaning no more throwing Pikmin like a shot putter with double vision. Still, there was some frustration when the game struggled to discern whether I wanted to target the sheargrub corpse worth a postage stamp and a kiss on the cheek or the giant bulborb actively halving the global Pikmin population. In spite of that, complaining about finnicky controls in Pikmin 3 vs the first two is like complaining about the air conditioning on an airplane versus one of the engines being on fire.

Pikmin have also gotten smarter than they've ever been; sending out their Life Alert after getting stuck on a two-inch ledge or careening into the briny deep because they haven't quite figured out the concept of a bridge yet has finally become the exception more so than the rule. That being said, the pathfinding was occasionally somewhat strange. A Pikmin squad delivering a shipment of fresh starfruit approaches a fork in the road. Route A: shorter, completely cleared of all hazards, a merry little tune carried on the wind as cherubs welcomed them to heaven on earth. Route B: Bulborb Lesnar welcoming them to a bone-crunching Hell in the Cell where no challenger has ever survived. Suffice it to say, they often struggled to make the right choice.

Chapter 5 - Out with the Old, In with the New (Pikmin)

Much to my surprise, this game does not retain the two new kids on the block from the last game; frankly, neither are missed, and the streamlining is probably for the best. Instead, we meet the cooler Daniels. First up are the rock Pikmin. Their function to smash crystal / glass is yet another key-door dynamic, but Pikmin in this game are easy enough to shuffle around it's not frustrating. Also, those walls really do just feel great to destroy. Their combat functions, however, are more interesting. Not being crushable or stab-able lets them brush off a good portion of enemies like grunts in a shonen series. The fact that they bounce off of enemies when thrown at them, rather than cling on and pray to God Olimar, offers an interesting bit of awkwardness to offset their general beefiness, but it's not sufficient to make them anything less than a necessity. They're not quite as overpowered as purple Pikmin were, but there are absolutely a good chunk of predators who will take one whack at these guys, get hit with a fluoride stare, and be beaten like Oliver Twist. This may be a nitpick, but I also take issue with the concept of a rock pikmin. These things are supposed to be part plant, part animal; you can't start bringing mineralogy into the mix like some freakish science experiment. First we allow this, then Pikmin X brings in the Nylon Pikmin and the Dyson Vacmin.

The second of the two newcomers are the winged Pikmin, a much more biologically feasible monstrosity. This may come as a shock, but their primary function is to fly. This is intended, in part, for aerial combat, but they're entirely unnecessary for that end, especially when they hit like a termite fighting a 747. The main utility is the key-door function of lifting gates, as well as carrying objects over obstacles for quicker delivery. Having left the liminal voids of Pikmin 2 behind, bottomless death gaps are not too common on PNF-404, so this is primarily used to circumvent water, muscling in pretty aggressively on the blue Pikmin's front lawn. Indeed, I believe this series is experiencing something similar to feature creep that I'll call "complexity creep" (there may be a real term for this, sue me), where the new Pikmin are introduced with so many bells and whistles they make the original, more basic kids look positively mundane by comparison. Objects have had to migrate into the sea just to keep blue Pikmin relevant, and I found myself only bringing out reds when occasionally faced with a specifically fire-oriented challenge (even then, rock can usually do the job). Perhaps these two should be retrofitted with some additional toys instead of constantly slapping new abilities on yellows like an evolutionary Winchester Mansion. To be clear, though, the utilities of rock and winged Pikmin, while potentially having some balance issues, are substantially more interesting and fun to use than the previous effort; I don't know the specifics of the ice Pikmin, but I can only hope they continue in this vein.

Chapter 6 - Going Goo Goo Ga Ga Mode

So, here it is. I've lightly touched upon it several times by now. The primary criticism of this game, seemingly shared across the board, and I can't argue it - this game is just too damn easy. As much as I can talk about the new nuances of the combat, most enemies are tied to one very specific weakness that makes them totally ineffectual. For electro-dogs, bring yellow Pikmin. For the fire slugs, reds. If they're underwater, blue will do. If they challenge the mechanics of conventional space, bring the non-Euclidean Pikmin. For any other enemy, a barrage of rocks alone will usually end it before you can whistle. The bosses tend to be no exception, either having an obvious weakness or at least being easy to nullify (ex. rocks against Mr. Stompy). Worth mentioning here is the final boss, who is, in many ways, the culmination of this. After a somewhat tedious area involving Alph and Charlie going through a fairly basic linear pathway while you periodically flip back to Brittany doing donuts in the parking lot, the actual boss is a pretty braindead sequence of locks and keys, only made frustrating by the lack of lock-on to the blobs you're supposed to attack. It's not terrible, but it's definitely the least fun I've had with a final boss.

Trudging enemy corpses back to the Soylent Green factory will leave you with more Pikmin than you'll know what to do with, and the game is unbelievably generous with when they die. I'd watch rocks get picked up, thrown down, stepped on, slapped, mentally and emotionally degraded, and suplexed into the pavement and they'd walk it off like getting a paper cut. It was like an event when a joustmite would manage to fire his nose straight down the Death Star ventilation shaft and one of them would actually die.

Much earlier, I discussed the excessive tutorializing at the start of the game. While it is true that they don't railroad you quite as much later on, that is not to say that they ease off the hints. Indeed, the target audience seems to have gone from children to semi-sentient bok choy. One boss fight in particular comes to mind. You enter his arena, activate a light bulb, and he appears, only to run off frightened. Alph remarks that he appears to be vulnerable to light. Great. Cool. Then, the game presents a data file telling you that something may happen if you activate more lights. Hint hint. Nudge nudge. Ok, I get it. Then, another data file - "The monster appears to be vulnerable to light!". Yep. Thanks, Olimar, you're the Sherlock Holmes of your generation. THEN, after activating more lights, Alph says AGAIN "WE NEED MORE LIGHTS! TURN ON THE LIGHTS!". I'm not exaggerating when I say this is how this game treats its players sometimes. That's not even mentioning the built-in cheat button that gives you a glowing arrow pointing exactly where to go as the ultimate walk of shame for those of you in the REALLY cheap seats.

Also worth mentioning in this section is the gameplay function of all those fruits. Every fruit collected translates to a certain amount of juice, which is consumed at the end of each day. Should you run out, you presumably instantly dry out and die, like Brittany is secretly 10,000 years old and only being kept alive by shriveling her insides with pure lemon juice. Conceptually, I feel this is a great idea. It's slightly laxer than the original game by allowing the timer to be fought against, but it achieves the same function of constant, simmering pressure to keep progressing. Unfortunately, the game is just way too generous with the stuff. I'm supposed to feel scared of becoming idle, but instead I'm rolling through the forest like Mansa Juicea, squeezing out grapes like I'm trying to make them extinct. Even when the game tries to put the screws to the player by temporarily taking all your juice away, I had my fruity empire reestablished within a couple days. I ended the game with enough juice to clear Pikmin 1, 2, and 3 combined.

As much as I can complain about the difficulty and agree that it's a problem... it doesn't ruin the game for me. I can appreciate a totally chilled out experience. The aforementioned music, visuals, and general mood all work with that laid back gameplay to create an experience that was something of a warm blanket for me. It's kind of nice to be able to sit back and vibe out with a Pikmin game for once. Nintendo unquestionably went too far in idiot-proofing it, but I can have fun in spite of that.

Chapter 7 - Pikmin Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 & 2

Perhaps in response to the difficulty criticisms, we come to what is, to my knowledge, the main addition in this, the Deluxe Edition. That addition is, of course, the two Olimar side campaigns. In both, focus shifts back to our original intrepid hero and his missing link sidekick. What makes these unique is the focus on achieving a specific goal in a limited area under a stringent time limit, thus maximally testing your multitasking skills.

I would go so far as to say that the first campaign, Olimar's Assignment, is the most fun part of the entire game. While it's only a few missions, each one fully doubles down on my favorite aspect of this game, that being the managing of your captains and maximizing your efficiency at collecting fruits. While not impossibly difficult, these are highly intense missions, expecting you to move as fast as you can. In essence, it's synthesizing the mission statement of Pikmin 1 with the fluid controls and functionality of Pikmin 3, though even Pikmin 1 was never quite this quick. To play through these missions makes me dream of an entire game like this, perhaps with a level-based structure. As is, they offer a nice slice of contrast to the chilled out main campaign.

I'm a bit colder on the second campaign, Olimar's Comeback. Rather than collecting fruits, these levels consist of various things, though most boil down to "fight a bunch of guys". In a series where, even now, the combat is consistently the worst part, these missions are fairly dull and evoke Pikmin 2 in some frustrating ways. Still, there are some that are more in the spirit of Olimar's Assignment, and I would be much more inclined to replay those than return to the Great Bulborb Spanking Line.

Chapter 8 - Pikvangelion 2.0 + 1.0: Thrice Upon a Time

I can complain, I can gnash my teeth and scream bloody murder about the easy difficulty, the annoying tutorials, the stupid plot, and so many other things, but, ultimately, this game is really enjoyable. It manages to recapture a healthy amount of the magic of the first game, while establishing its own distinct direction. The tranquil atmosphere, relaxed pace, and gripping core gameplay loop let me really get lost in this one; to be honest, the second game was such a nightmare it's just a joy to be having fun with Pikmin again. Despite its flaws, it's probably my favorite one so far.

(Completed debt, game dropped afterwards)

Frustrating. Despite this being my least favorite Pikmin by far, I actually do see the gameplay vision, and the aesthetic is very charming! But this is simply not a game playing to its strengths, and filled with too many frustrations to list.

The most obvious change is that this game has no time limit. Pikmin 1's time limit was a non-issue if you were decently good, but its removal signals a shift away from time efficiency being the major driver. Okay, so what is the driver then? Well, the combat... kinda.

On paper, and to some degree in practice, this is actually a fine idea. Swarming controls strike a balance between immediacy and indirectness that makes positioning engaging, especially amidst the chaos that erupts while trying to aim thrown Pikmin, call stray ones back, and dodge attacks. Some improvements to the controls from Pikmin 1, especially around selecting thrown Pikmin, support this without hampering tactility too much, and the Pikmin 2 enemy roster is far more creative, challenging, and dynamic than 1's.

The problem is that the level design is consistently terrible at actually inducing these types of scenarios. Overworld stages are downgraded remixes of Pikmin 1 levels, especially embarrassing compared to Pikmin 3's Mission Mode. But the real meat of the game, the caves, is somehow even worse. This is some of the most dry, sterile procgen I've ever seen, almost deliberately placing obstacles to encourage slow, grindy, safe clears. Everything is mostly cordoned off into their own "handmade" rooms, so that you tackle enemies and hazards sequentially instead of simultaneously. Many "lock-and-key" effects like fire traps, poison traps, electric beetles, etc. are actually more flexible than they seem, but the player is given no impetus to ever use a non-matching Pikmin type save for rare, forced scenarios like Submerged Castle.

Speaking of Submerged Castle, shoutouts to the Water Wraith for being a fantastic (albeit very undercooked) addition, by reintroducing efficiency concerns in a natural and dynamic way that fits the style of the game and leaves lots of room for counterplay. Of course, this is Pikmin 2, so it's limited to this cave and never used again.

I have many more complaints, so I will phrase things a different way. The great version of this game as I envision it would do the following:

- Either revamp the overworld to justify its existence, or further minimize/remove it
- Generate caves that place varying threats in close proximity to each other, and everything in generally more dense and interconnected layouts
- Rebalance the game to avoid reloading floors and instead emphasize continuous resource management
- Allow most enemies to wander much further from their initial location
- Introduce a mechanic that incentivizes some efficiency, which will complicate treasure gathering and grindy playstyles
- Instead of creating sudden difficulty spikes through random events like bomb rock drops, use procgen, such as grouped difficult enemies, constricting terrain, high hazard density, etc.
- Vastly speed up the pacing of the game. Given the current quality level, half of the caves can be cut

If you put all this together, it almost sounds like a traditional roguelike or dungeon crawler! But this style of dense, systemically driven design is not something that Nintendo seems willing or able to make; BOTW/TOTK is the closest, and those games exist in spite of balance and structural issues.

What's shocking though, is how much the Colossal Caverns romhack resembles this, simply by squishing everything in the game into one giant, dense cave. Combat is more chaotic! Routing is more freeform! Resource management is more natural! It still falls short structurally due to its romhack status, but it's a testament to how much of the raw material is already present.

Ultimately, a disappointment. This could have served as a great example of seizing on the latent potential in a set of mechanics, almost like how classic Doom's combat was explored and developed, but Pikmin 2 is just too unfocused and inconsistent to make it there. Check out Colossal Caverns with a self-imposed time limit, it's fun!