Now that Balatro's latest patch fixed the one issue I had with the game - that the final two stake difficulty modifiers were completely antithetical to the game's design - this is effectively now an all-time great video game (and my GOTY so far). Huge kudos to LocalThunk; what he's created here is absolutely amazing. It sounds like he wants to add more to Balatro without bloating the game, which is the right move in my opinion. Based on the exceptionally well-tuned patch changes and how he clearly has his finger on the pulse of the community, I have no doubt in my mind that the game's future is in good hands.

I've now won with every deck at least once and got a Gold Stake win on Blue Deck...wow, Balatro really is the first deckbuilder to come even remotely close to the magic of Slay the Spire. I think with Steam Workshop support and a few additional smart content updates (LocalThunk has said he doesn't want to bloat the game, which is a really good sign) this game could seriously become one of my favorites of all time.

But man, Purple Stake and above are an absolute RNG-infested slog. I think the biggest issue is Orange Stake, which makes packs one dollar more expensive every ante. This essentially means you never want to pick up card packs, which is like... a huge portion of the game just missing on the second highest difficulty? It feels like backwards design in a game full of brilliant and forward-thinking design decisions. Very weird. Gold Stake having -1 hand size isn't even a big deal compared to the insane modifier that Orange applies. Essentially I had to keep resetting Orange and Gold Stake runs until I got decent jokers to carry me through on high card. Not very fun, and coming back to White Stake afterwards felt like I was playing two completely different video games.

I'll come back to the game when it gets that content update that LocalThunk teased, but I really do hope the game becomes a tiny bit less luck focused on higher difficulties. It's the only thing preventing Balatro from being game of the year contender for me.