I hate this game so much

On a warm summer's evening
On a train bound for nowhere
I met up with a gambler
We were both too tired to sleep
So we took turns a-staring
Out the window at the darkness
'Til boredom overtook us
And he began to speak

He said, "Son, I've made a life
Out of readin' people's faces
Knowing what the cards were
By the way they held their eyes
So if you don't mind my saying
I can see you're out of aces
For a taste of your whiskey
I'll give you some advice"

So I handed him my bottle
And he drank down my last swallow
Then he bummed a cigarette
And asked me for a light
And the night got deathly quiet
And his face lost all expression
Said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right"

You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealing's done

Every gambler knows
That the secret to surviving
Is knowing what to throw away
Knowing what to keep
'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser
And the best that you can hope for
Is to die in your sleep

And when he finished speaking
He turned back toward the window
Crushed out his cigarette
And faded off to sleep
And somewhere in the darkness
The gambler, he broke even
And in his final words
I found an ace that I could keep

You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealing's done

You got to know when to hold 'em (when to hold 'em)
Know when to fold 'em (when to fold 'em)
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealing's done

You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealing's done

Sometimes Balatro feels like the best game ever made, it's so well polished and when it works it's SO damn satisfying. It deserves all it's accolades and more for these moments and it's the reason my review is still positive. But sadly these moments aren't common enough and more often than not it feels tiresome and frustrating and I have to put it down for a day or two.

Even after 140+ hours I still haven't quite figured out how to reliably win a run in the face of the **overwhelming** influence of randomness on each run, where other roguelikes like Hades are based much more on your skill and ability to adapt as a player, the nature of how Balatro operates means that almost everything is driven, at least partially, by pure randomness.

This means drawing the right cards to build the winning hand, triggering random effects without bad luck protection, everything you find in the shop, the boss modifiers which appear, etc. You can make all the right decisions in a run and just get shut down entirely by unpredictable bad luck. Refreshing the shop is meaningfully expensive and has no protection against duplicate items reappearing immediately after rerolling, effectively invalidating the spent currency.

In other roguelikes, defeat is pivotal to the experience, the opportunity to learn from your mistakes and improve. But after you become acquainted with how things work, the Balatro experience is often more akin to "Wow, that sucks, hope that doesn't happen next run!" This is my only problem with the game but into bleeds into every aspect of it, especially the aspirational endgame challenges (high stake/jokerless challenge/etc). I love Balatro, it's one of the most unique roguelikes out there. But sometimes it just kinda spits in your face, and that really sucks.

If the long awaited 1.1 update resolves these issues, then (imo) the game will be perfect, and I will commit to doing Completionist++. But until then, I can't bring myself to spend that kind of time on a game which doesn't truly respect my time in the first place.