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.

So all the DLC is out now, adding up to a total of 52 songs (counting full versions of certain songs separately), which is a considerable improvement from the initial number. I S+ ranked, full combo'd all songs on Easy and Normal, and did the same for S rank and full combo on Hard. So I think I'm finished with the game for good now.

The song selection here is very strong, but I don't think I can improve my rating beyond 3 stars still, because some of this game's charting and general difficulty scaling is weird. Some songs on Hard difficulty are super simple while others feel more like they'd fit Expert difficulty more. Easy mode should be, you know, easy, but it ended up being more challenging than Normal to S+ rank because there are less notes overall (if you screw up, it reduces your score considerably more). Expert mode felt way way too hard for me as someone who doesn't play rhythm games, but that's not that big of a deal. Overall I'm happy that Gunvolt Records Cychronicle exists, but I think I'm even happier that I can now move on from the game.

Also according to the steam charts I'm like the only person who plays this game LOL

It was very difficult for me to determine whether I preferred this or Halo 2... then I relistened to Follow in Flight and sorry ay lo free, your shit don't got Misha Mansoor jams so I'm afraid you lose out

Halo 2 also has the benefit of being the middle point in the trilogy, so really its story serves as the climax of the whole thing. But I will give Halo 3 credit, it's exceptionally consistent in quality the whole way through. I was nervous about a little mission named "Cortana" based on what I was hearing, but compared to The Library or Gravemind it was mostly fine. The warthog sequence at the end of the game also has to be the best one I've experienced in the series, it really gets the blood pumping.

Arbiter is so cool omg... Johnson is so cool omg... Chief is pretty alright too I guess

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.