What started as a relaxing and fun experience ended as a frustrating and annoying loop of repeated re-rolls for better hands and shop items as I tried to complete the harder Stakes (challenges) with my favorite deck.

All I wanted was to unlock all the deck types and see how differently they played out, but for that I had to go through a series of ever-increasing challenges that, for some reason, don't automatically unlock for different decks. So I had to grind it out on the deck that wasn't as good for the challenge but with which I was most familiar.

Balatro is still really good, charming, and especially gripping (as you would expect from the genre), but the luck dependency to complete the harder challenges pushed me off of it.

I didn't think they could one-up themselves after Planet Robobot, especially on their first (real) attempt at a 3D game, but I couldn't be more wrong. The exploration, the minigames, the boss fights—everything translates so well to the third dimension that you are left wondering how they didn't attempt this before. The soundtrack is also top-tier and the level design is just as you would expect from the series: it's a breeze to just move forward and finish the stages, but if you go for the secrets, challenges, and post-game content then you are in for a more refined and engaging experience that makes the transformations mechanics truly shine. 
Highly recommended; it's a modern classic already.

It's the definition of "greater than the sum of its parts" for me. The combat can be awesome at times, but the lack of enemy variety can also be annoying. The exploration is slow-paced, but it's also great at creating memorable and intense procedural moments. The side-quests are amazing and merge into the main game in a way that I've never seen in any other game, but they can also lack the sense of completion sometimes. The main story has its great moments, but it's diluted between so many hours of gameplay that at the end it felt a little rushed. And still, somehow, I loved my time with this game and felt really emotional at the end of the journey. It's just that it's always transitioning between clunky and great, but in a really unique and artistic way that somehow works in its favor. 


Give it a shot, but don't expect something that it's easy to get into: at times it can be obscure on it's mechanics and will require planning and effort to complete, but its all part of it's charm.