I enjoyed Balatro for quite a few hours before I had this problem, which is more than enough for me to call it a good game.

Beyond these first few hours though, you need ridiculously high multipliers to succeed. There's way too many jokers and 90% of them are trash by this point. The ones you need have vanishingly small probabilities, and then you need to add those probabilities together to get the combo of jokers required.

I would start a run, and within the first few minutes I would know that the RNG hadn't given me what I needed, reset, start again, repeat.

I looked up some guides, and they'd recommend using specific legendary jokers, which over my entire time playing (maybe 15 hours?) I didn't encounter even once. The only way to get them would be to play hundreds or even thousands of times.

At that point, it doesn't feel like a game anymore. It feels like a gambling addiction.

For me, that's time to call it quits. But I do wonder if the same people who struggle with gambling addiction in the real world are the ones who continue playing here.

At least with Balatro there is ten hours worth of game before your reach this point.