It's kinda complicated I also didn't get it at first playthorugh. But more I play more I get hooked.

I don't think it clicked big time until about 10 hours in for me. I feel like I'm finally mastering it at 40 hours, but I'm sure I haven't discovered every play style yet.

My advice would probably be to try every wild idea for a deck. It's easy to find one deck build that basically works and try to recreate it each run, but that's pretty boring. Make yourself pick up a joker you wouldn't normally use and try to make it work. Also go for planet cards early in the run, the boost they give often moves the hand up like 4 places on the score list, making it more viable and fun to do something other than just chasing the regular high scoring hands.

There's a degree of meta progression to the enjoyable part of the game which is creating crazy joker combos, unlocking interesting decks, and watching the numbers go up. It only happens a little while into the game after what is essentially an extended tutorial. At first I thought it was too hard and kinda sucked until I unlocked more stuff and it clicked, now I have 60 hours in the game.

@Amanduh I bounced off of Balatro the first few times I tried it too. I was a little confused about what I was doing and what my end goal was. I'm honest;y not sure what clicked, but I've been hooked ever since.