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.