Recent reviews by Castamon

Just like other EA games, this game is neglected despite it being their most popular game. Especially if you're playing a mode other than Ultimate Team, forget about getting new content, you can even forget about the bugs you run into getting fixed.

The Clubs mode is a complete disaster. Half of players can't get important login rewards from promotions. The "Live Join" feature is bugged so an opponent can make you wait forever on the "sub(s) joining" screen, so the only option is leaving the game, which causes you to lose. Even a non-developer could think, "Maybe we should add a timeout in Live Join so it won't pause the game forever."

Many of my friends can't play this game because it randomly crashes or the game runs at 20 fps despite having a modern PC. Also, if you have a connection issue even for 10 ms, the game just kicks you out of the match.

There are also a lot of balancing issues. For example, Bruiser+ shouldn't be in the game, or it should be nerfed because those shoulder tackles are overpowered (not to mention they are fouls in real life). Player goalkeepers are extremely strong. You'll have a hard time scoring a goal against a competent goalkeeper.

The worst part of all is EA is simply ignoring the problems or silencing players who create posts in EA forums. The amount of reliance on AI slop code and the incompetence level at EA is mind-blowing.

Has a good gameplay, funny language & meme references but contains lot of bugs and there is imbalance between items.

You had one job.

You had near-perfect formula during open beta but you decided to throw it all into trash by implementing features players didn't need. Your shield implementation is very faulty and you could at least take example from other platform fighters. Dodge meter and automatic tech is bad feature that helped no one and instead made game worse.

Also why add non-popular characters? I mean who wanted to play as Nubia, seriously? There are many Warner Bros IP's that players were dying to see in-game.

Anyways, thanks for the good memories and community.

Balatro is a game I normally play on my phone. It is a enjoyable and relaxing game. The combination of roguelike and casino offers an interesting experience.


- Good and simple gameplay. Straight to the point. Addictive.

- Nice music and sound design. Music variety can be increased.

- Nice interface and art design. Simple and elegant. Art design draws you in.


- Due to its genre (casino) heavy RNG based and offers little control. Not much strategic gameplay or variety. It is difficult to change strategy/deck in the middle of a run, you usually end the game the way you started. RNG can kill most of your runs.

- The game is simple but you have to learn most of the important mechanics that the game can teach you by playing it yourself. (ex: Joker ordering)


If your expectation from the game is high level strategic gameplay, I cannot recommend this game, but if you want to sit back and enjoy the dopamine rush, there is no problem in getting the game.

Apparently, Valve heard us and took action for bot hosters. Thanks Valve.

It would be a shame if a game that was better than 90% of today's FPS games (controller aimbot games) was left to die.

> Start foundling run AKA one-hit HP run
> While walking peacefully, get shot by brigand crossbowman from the behind the wall right next to you.
> "Did he just shot me behind wall?"
> Run to same location to kill the brigand.
> Dodge the shot this time.
> Do running attack.
> This is it! You are going to kill him!
> Brigand reloads INSTANTLY his crossbow by the help of mighty gods of mortal shell universe.
> He kills you mid-air.
> This is getting frustrating. You run to same location again.
> "Wait, no one is here?"
> Someone shot you and killed you again.
> "What?" *visible confusion
> The brigand appears after he shot you. It was the same brigand you were trying to kill.
> *ALT+F4

TLDR: Interesting but buggy and gets easy and boring as you play. 6/10, only get it on sale.

While playing the game, it becomes clear that the developers had some really interesting and genuine ideas, but they failed in practice.

Let's start the review.

The game seems interesting when you start, but when you continue playing and start to get the hang of the game, the game starts to become boring and easy. It's very little in terms of content, almost like a demo game. The map/level is small, uninteresting and problematic in design. If a game does not have a fast travel feature, it should make exploring rewarding, but this is not the case in this game. You almost always fight the same enemies and it's not rewarding at all. You can run past them. Fighting mechanics are easy, especially if you understand the harden and parry mechanics. Healing is very different from other souls games because there is no estus or something like that. You need to grind mushrooms and rats for healing. Most of items are useless. You may get stuck between objects while walking around. Bosses are easier than they should be. The only interesting enemy I fought was the final boss.

This was a summary of the design problems. Besides design problems there are also a lot of technical problems.


The graphics settings of the game are not working properly. If you set the shadow setting below a high value, it will break fog rendering and make the game unplayable. You can make adjustments at the Unreal Engine level and turn off the fog, but this causes visual glitches to increase. No matter what you set for texture quality and view distance, it doesn't work. Post processing was not implemented properly. Because of these wrong implemented graphics settings, if you have a mid or low-end computer, you will experience unnecessary fps loss.


Regardless of the view distance setting, ultra or low, there is a problem with too many pop-ins. Enemies make their attacks before they even appear. This is extremely annoying, especially if you're attempting a foundling run.


Ranged enemies (especially crossbow brigands) are broken. There are situations where they can shoot from behind objects, and they can glitch and reload their crossbow instantly, so a brigand crossbowman can fire like a machine gun. If there is more than one brigand crossbowman, they can stunlock you and take out your great portion of HP.


I don't know if this problem is specific to me, but if I press the light attack button with the parry button, it triggers the first ability of the weapon. Of course, I understood that the reason is the gamepad equivalent of the first ability r1(light attack) + l1(parry) triggers first weapon ability in console, but the problem is that my weapon abilities are binded to 1 and 2. Another problem is why do the keyboard + mouse controls conflict with the gamepad controls? This problem caused me to miss a lot of my riposte.


If you reclaim your shell upon separation, there is a chance that you will stuck in walking and you will not be able to roll or parry. This can be frustrating and this is just an example. There are other glitches like this that can kill your run, especially in DLC.

The technical errors I have described may make the game seem unplayable, but the game is very playable. But these problems can get on your nerves.

Pros? Of course I have pros.

• Shells makes you able to choose according to your playstyle.
  
• Harden is unique ability that doesn't stop your offensive tempo but sometimes can get very dependent.
  
• Nice art design. I like the design of models. Especially Eredrim.
  
• Nice sound design.
  
• I like parry but it could have been implemented better. Many players ranted about difficulty of parry but I think parry should be hard because it is very rewarding.
  
• Above average lore but hard to get artifacts about it.
  
• Easy to play with keyboard+mouse.
  
• Gloomy atmosphere and mood. Even more gloomy than DS.
  
• You can pet the cat.

The reason I completed this game 100% is because the challenges demanded by the achievements are more interesting than the game itself. I also hate to be a guy that plays 5-10 hours and dislikes the game for petty reasons.

They have many problems even for a small studio. I hope they learn from this game and make up for their shortcomings. Like I said at the start, they had different and interesting ideas, but they could not implement them properly.

They finally made good FPS game with a high skill ceiling and they decided to kill it for certain reasons.

Unless you "enhance" your FPS game with controller aim assist that isn't any different from aimbot, movement system that hinders skilled players and SBMM, your FPS game is doomed to die. This is the dreadful state of FPS genre.

It was fun while it lasted. Couldn't play it because hardware issues but I am happy that I have watched it's tournaments in Twitch.

What can you buy in this economy with two dollars? Literally nothing.

You can't even buy a cheeseburger at McDonalds for two dollars.

But with two dollars, you can buy invincible 20 year old game engine that runs stable on modern computers and you can make a whole video game with it.

Oh boy! They made 2042 f2p just to make non buyer playerbase can give negative review on steam! Finally a good freakin' job DICE!

Apart from entire circus of 2042 that we already know, it seems they cannot organize simple free access event. After playing for a while, I got blackscreen which broke the game and can't launch it no more. Now, the EA app has gone nuts and can't start it. You had one job DICE. One job.

Best battlefield. (ofc after bf2.) Too bad bf series getting worse and worser over time.

What is more worse? These dimwitted reviewers. You guys should use more of your brain while reviewing. Most of you are giving negative review by looking at small issues. You forgot the part that you have review for (which is game itself).

Now, to those complaining "Yo dude wtf?! It still launches through browser!" Yeah dude, did you expect something different? Did you expect changes on game that is over 10 year old? You should thank god that current DICE (that can't even implement proper mouse input in a FPS GAME) hasn't touched bf3. Browser doesn't restrict your game experience. So stop crying about it.

Other issue that people complain is "Game kicks me everytime!" "Game doesn't start". While I agree with you, I think you should learn how to do proper research. %90 of these problem are based on punkbuster service which is a problem that takes 1 minute to resolve by updating punkbuster. But yeah, DICE could at least update the punkbuster service that is packed with game.