Play review of ``Balatro'', a poker + roguelike game that turns into a rich deck building game with a pleasant feeling when you get addicted to it that makes you want to play it over and over again
Balatro is a game where you aim for a high score by collecting jokers and cards with special abilities within a set framework such as ``If you get two pair, you get XX points'' or ``If you get a full house, you get XX points.'' 'is. I actually played this game where you can experience the pleasure of increasing your points many times or even tens of times depending on the cards you draw.
Steam: Balatro
'Balatro' begins with choosing a deck. This time, I chose the red deck, which has +1 to the action 'discard' that discards cards.
After choosing a deck, select 'Blind'. In Balatro, three blinds arranged in the order of 'small blind', 'big blind', and 'boss blind' are grouped together as '1 ante', and if you clear a total of 8 antes, you will win.
First, start with the small blind. A hand of 8 cards is randomly drawn from a deck of 52 cards.
Players select up to 5 cards from their hand and place them onto the field. ``Maximum of 5 sheets'', so 4 or less is OK. This time, select two Q cards and select 'Play Hand'. With this, two Qs are put into play, and 'One Pair' is established.
In Balatro, a base score is set for each poker hand. You can check how to make your poker hand and your score at any time during the game by clicking on 'Run Information'. The score for the one pair we released this time is ``10 x 2'', which means that ``a minimum score of 10 chips x multiplier 2 is guaranteed''.
In addition to the base score, you can earn 'chips' from each card. Numbers 2 to 10 have the same amount as the number, face cards J, Q, and K have 10 chips, A has 11 chips, and so on.
If you play two Qs and make a pair like this time, the 20 chips you got from the two Qs will be added to the base '10 chips x multiplier 2', and the total score will be '30 chips x multiplier 2'. It will be 60 points. Once points have been calculated, the cards played will be discarded.
Then, playing cards are drawn from the deck so that you have 9 cards in your hand.
If you don't like the cards drawn, you can select up to 5 cards from your hand and 'discard' them. The amount lost by discarding is replenished from the deck, and your hand will always have 8 cards.
This is the basic flow of the game. You win if you score more points than the 'minimum score' set for each blind within the remaining number of hands you can play.
If you win, you will receive money. Money can be used in shops. After paying, I will rush into the shop immediately.
This is the most fun element of Balatro: the shop. Here you can buy passive items that increase the abilities of your cards. There are several types of passive items, including jokers, tarot cards, and planet cards.
Below is 'Joker'. Joker is a powerful card that influences your play style, and there are cards that have effects such as ``If there is a heart in your poker hand, the heart multiplier +4'' and ``Get $4 at the end of the blind''.
When you purchase a Joker, it will be placed in the 'Joker slot' where you can put up to 5 Jokers. The Joker will not disappear from the Joker slot unless it is removed by some effect or sold by yourself.
The following is a 'voucher card'. Once purchased, effects such as 'number of hands +1' will be applied until the end of the game.
Other voucher cards include 'permanently gain +1 discard every round'.
This is the 'planet card'. It has the effect of raising the level of your poker hand and increasing the base chips and multiplier.
When raising the level of 'One Pair', the base score of One Pair, which was '10 chips x multiplier 2', was enhanced to '25 chips x multiplier 3'.
Once you're done shopping, choose your next blind.
Even if the blinds change, what you do remains the same, just the minimum score increases. However, since I got 'Joker' from the shop, it has become much easier to get a score.
This time, I had a joker that says ``If there are hearts in the poker hand, the heart multiplier is +4'', so I tried making a heart flush to make use of the joker.
You can see how the heart flash is calculated when there is a joker by watching the video below.
First, 11 chips are acquired from the 'A of Hearts' and added.
Next, the Joker works on 'Ace of Hearts', increasing the multiplier by 4.
Get 9 chips from '9'.
Multiplier +4 again due to Joker. This continues for 5 cards, and '4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4' = '20' and is added to the multiplier part.
Just by making one set of flashes, I was able to earn a total of 1,656 points (69 chips x multiplier of 24). Now you can understand why the Joker is so powerful.
Once the blinds were finished, I entered the shop again. After this, the game continues in the order of 'Blind' → 'Shop' → 'Blind'. This time, an ``Arcana Pack'' containing ``Tarot cards'' was on sale, so I decided to buy it.
Tarot cards are consumption cards that have the effect of strengthening playing cards, such as ``select up to 3 cards and turn them into spades'' and ``increase the number of the selected card by 1.''
This time, I opened a pack where you could choose one out of three tarot cards, but I felt that none of them were very strong, so I used a tarot card that says ``Create up to two random tarot cards.''
The created cards will be placed in the 'consumable card' slot, which can hold up to 2 cards. When you open a pack like this time, you can only use it now, but the cards in the consumable card slot can be used at any time, which is convenient. In addition to created cards, planet cards and tarot cards purchased at the shop will also be included in the consumable card frame.
Next is the boss blind. Only the boss blind has special abilities and imposes disadvantageous conditions on the player. This time's boss had the ability to 'apply a debuff to all heart cards.'
Cards with 'debuffs' will not be added as points. For example, if you play cards 6 to 10 including hearts as shown below, it will be a straight, but while you can get 10 chips from the 10 of spades, you will no longer be able to get chips from the 9 and 7 of hearts. Masu. Furthermore, the Joker that I purchased earlier also had an effect that was only effective on hearts, so this blind with a debuff on hearts ended up being a failure.
If you win the boss blind, you will clear the ante. Proceed to the next ante. The game is cleared if you win at the 8th ante boss blind.
By the way, it is also possible to skip the blind and shop entirely and proceed to the next blind. You can get a temporary buff effect called a 'tag' when you skip a store, but there isn't much benefit to skipping a store, so I don't recommend it unless you have a really good reason. For example, when you have a joker that says, 'The more you use the card, the fewer chips the joker will give out.' It's going to be free. If you didn't have much money on hand and you had a Joker whose multiplier increases the more you open packs, you could strengthen it all at once.
Joker is a super powerful card that can be called a game changer, but at the time of writing there are over 100 types, and they are randomly displayed in the shop, so instead of 'waiting until a Joker comes out', you should 'build a deck with the Joker that comes out'. It is best to take this strategy.
Although there are many different types of jokers, there are quite a lot of strategies. For example, there are jokers such as ``add a chip if you have a face card'' and ``increase the multiplier if you have a face card'', and if you can get these, you can earn a considerable score just by playing a face card.
What's even more diabolical is that there are cards that say ``all cards are considered face cards'', so no matter which card you play, it becomes a face card and the chips and multipliers of all cards increase dramatically...'' Inflation may also occur.
However, basically you can only get 5 Jokers, so it is important to raise the power of the hand you play with 'Tarot cards' that strengthen cards and 'Planet cards' that strengthen poker hands. For example, if you use the tarot card ``change one suit to another suit'' or the tarot card ``destroy up to two cards'' well, you can create a deck with an explosion of diamonds as shown below. If you combine this with a joker such as 'Get chips when you make a flush', you can see that your score will increase dramatically.
We've picked out one game that made good use of Joker. This is a game when you get a joker 'madness' that says 'When blind is selected, get a multiplier of 0.5 and destroy a random joker.' Game speed has been changed to 4x speed.
At this time, I acquired Madness early on, so I progressed through the game without buying any jokers other than Madness. Then, Madness has no other cards to destroy, so it just keeps adding 0.5 to its own multiplier without destroying anything, and eventually evolves to a multiplier of 12x. As it was, the flash output was only 106 x 22 = 2332, but it went on a rampage, blowing up the score to 106 x 264 = 27,984.
However, it is rare for a strategy to work so well, and it is extremely difficult to fight through a total of 8 antes without losing. It's likely that most of the games will be tough. Balatro has a nice balance of having the potential to make huge profits if you get hooked, but the road to getting there is very difficult.The game feels so good when you get addicted to it that you just want to play it over and over again.
Balatro is sold on Steam for 1700 yen including tax.
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