Plants vs. Zombies™ 2 Reviews

by Zacksatt

This is a potentially great sequel to an already excellent game in the first PvZ. However, an exceptionally greedy micro-transaction model (especially with the latest update) and new power creep upgrade system ruins any potential for a well balanced game. Nearly half the plants are locked behind a premium $5 paywall (per plant!) including several classics such as the snow pea. There is no way that a game that should cost no more than $20 total should have hundreds of dollars worth of micro-transaction offers in every corner of the game. And the new upgrade system is no less heinous. If you wish to level up your plants, you must grind for random loot-crate like piñatas to slowly collect enough cards. In the first game, I loved the fact that the design of the levels often made them challenging, but I knew I could figure out a strategy and combination of plants to overcome the challenge. When I face a challenging level in this game, I simply wonder if my plants aren’t high enough level or if that particular level is in fact winnable with base-level plants. It saps almost all of the fun and satisfaction out of game with so much potential for those qualities. I feel like the developers and publishers have put much more time and effort into developing ways to get into customers’ wallets than they have into creating a fair and fun experience. If that’s not enough to leave a terrible taste in your mouth, the endless ads should be. What a shame...

by XXRed-RagerXx

I’ve been playing this game for about 2 years now, and I loved it the entire time. I’ve deleted it several times, but now that I got it back I love it even more. I am writing this review not to only tell you that the game is good, but there are also some issues. There is one bug that makes it so that Crazy Dave and Penny will talk about the travel log every time I go into a world. It’s been happening since ancient Egypt, and now I’m in dark ages. It still doesn’t affect my gameplay though, it is just slightly annoying and I gets in my way. Now the micro-transactions. I find these in many mobile games, and that does include this one. I would usually ignore it and just play the game without it. It’s not really a problem to me, but I see that it is a problem to some other people writing reviews. So I would at least want you to make some features more accessible, or maybe you could pay gems or coins to rent one of those plants to play with in an actual level, just like you can with the extra seed slots. Now for the good things about this game. I could mention so many, but here are a few: It is fun, it is funny, it’s easy to get, it has many different things to do, it give new plants so you never get bored with old ones, and so much more. There are some problems with this game that I would want fixed, but it’s just to good of a game to give any less than 5 stars.

by Grand-Mom !!

A few months ago I contacted their “help” center about the game crashing constantly in the Arena. (Both mine and my husbands) Help offered me a lot of coin and gems. I said no thank you just please fix the problem.
What would you think if right after contacting them; on the daily calendar, EA says you got so many gems and coins but you DO NOT get them. What gives? EA Who is getting them?
Strange the piñata’s don’t go missing only the gems and coin?Every day they go …missing… on my game but not my husbands. (He never contacted their “help”)
Contacted them again. Lots of words but no help? Weird. My husband and I have both played this game for years; in our 70’s and retired loved it… after contacting them this time I now get commercials between the first 2 Arena games that slow me down. My husband does not…Not fair play EA. Handicapping my play. That is Not fair play at all EA ! Tonight we decided to play Ice Bound Battleground…I now get a commercial after every game. My husband who did not ever contact “Help” did not get one commercial.. not Fair play at all EA ! I used to pay the $20. A plant… and I get Handicapped, lied to, and what would you call gems and coin going missing……. Why? It is a …g a m e…. It feels vindictive to me??? Something has gone terribly wrong. SAD we used to play hours a day…… can not see why they are doing this? Lesson …not a good idea to contact “HELP?” Bad business.

by Tiltturf67

The game is fun, don’t get me wrong, but when looking back at the original game, it’s easy to see the heart and inspiration that went into it. When I open pvz, I’m greeted with a calm, memorable menu, it’s the opposite with pvz2, you get a boring background with new, recycled events, and plants you can buy for around 5 dollars, and that’s just the beginning. The original game was never supposed to be hard in my opinion, i mean, if I could beat it as a 7 year old, it seems fairly reasonable that it’s not supposed to be difficult and I think the reason for that is because most people want to get levels over with so they can get the next new plant. With the games accelerating difficulty, the process of gaining new plants becomes slow. You can buy plants for 5 dollars, most of them are pretty trashy cards designed to appear interesting. Some of the purchasable plants can also be won for free in the first game. Another complaint is the music, obviously I can’t expect this game to be perfect, but it seems very far from that on the wide scale. the game lacks the same relaxing music as the original and adds in an amazingly annoying attempt at an ost. Once again the gameplay is great, the same as the first game, I like the plant good idea and the changes in the maps. I like the battlez idea but EA milked money with that idea also.

by Koko4appz

This is a classic game that I’ve played since it first launched. Since then, with its garnered popularity, it’s become a much better game with improved gameplay, better artwork, and new challenges.

HOWEVER, this free-to-play feature comes with heavy drawbacks through the ads. I understand ads are necessary for the game creators’ revenue, but the amount that it shows is excessive and moreover, their design is frustrating. Most, if not all ads, have trick close buttons which will force you to PlantsvsZombies Store. This isn’t the worst part though - the constant ads and forced app switching ends up glitching the game and requires you to restart the game. In other words, when you return to the game after being forced to PlantsvsZombies Store, you’ll see the green screen, the daisy loading animation, and then a blank green screen for minutes until you realize it will never load. Why play the game if half the time I’m being switched to PlantsvsZombies Store?

This ad-loving campaign leaks into the game design as well. The start screen has so many pop ups for different plants and coins, it’s like you’re watching an advertisement for the game you’re about to play. It’s gaudy and significantly lowers the gameplay. It makes me wonder how long PvZ will be playable.

by Greyk3036

I really like the game when you were still doing updating it. I started when lost city part 2 came out and it was good. New plants, old plants and new worlds made things interesting. I even like how each world had a certain gimmick that makes it harder like the cold wind in frostbite caves. It gave more challenge during the story more than the first one. However, now half of the plants are premium and you have to buy them with real money. Plus after level 8 in ancient Egypt you get all the world keys. What happened to the extra hard challenge level that rewarded you with a key. And what happen to the music that made that level fun. All the worlds have now only 2 themes. The normal theme and the end of the world boss theme. I really like hearing the remixes of the mini game theme in each world. (like the matching camel tiles in ancient Egypt or the coconut canons and the buccaneer pirates in pirate seas) Other than that, the game is a good challenge and gives you some good plants. Oh and what’s up with the piñatas in the world map. If you played the game before the update that introduced them, all of the piñatas would be used and you would get nothing out of them. If you just fix the premium plants, piñatas, and somehow get the music back for the mini games and challenge levels (like the levels were you used to get a world key when you had to fight a bunch of Gargantuan zombies halfway through the world) the game will be great. Until then the game is ok.

by Awm357

I decided to write a review after sending in a bug report because the arena matches have been crashing and closing PlantsvsZombies just seconds before the clock runs out multiple times for the past few days. After the 5th time today I decided that I’ve had enough. The matches cost gauntlets to play and you receive no points if it crashes, which is frustrating. So you have to use gems to buy more gauntlets. If you don’t have enough gems you can buy some with real money or watch multiple ads for 3 gems a piece…. Someone has already alluded to the fact that it’s highly suspicious and nearly impossible to reach the full reward for a win streak also. But you can spend more gems to keep the streak alive even tho you lost…. Tell me the game isn’t rigged without telling me the game is rigged.

The amount of micro transactions in this game is disgusting. Half the plants cost $5 EACH. The constant ads are annoying. What happened to paying to not see ads any more? That I would gladly do. But it’s all about the money so sit there and suffer through 30 seconds of “gameplay” in ads that look nothing like the real games.

The first PvZ game was fun for my daughter and I to play on the kiosk at Olive Garden one day waiting for our food. This game is one big money grab and I’ve had enough of it.

by Bacardi6

Pound for pound, this is one of the best games out there. From mechanics to game play, it’s simply unbeatable. It’s biggest flaw though is the greed of the company and it’s ads. It started with a few ads here and there, to where they now disable to x button so that if you click it, it brings up the download section of iTunes instead of closing out the ad. The record so far is 11 times I clicked on the x before it finally closed. Even if you choose not to see an ad, they show it anyway. It gets so bad at points that I’m watching upwards of 5 minutes of ads just for 10 minutes of game play. Unacceptable This is deceptive and quite possibly illegal when it comes to spam, as the law doesn’t just apply to emails. If you want to be that greedy, give us an option to buy the game or get out of advertisements. I’ve been playing for close to a decade now between both PvZ versions, and I have spent money on that the game. But the greed is killing this game. True fans will pay for the game, but what you are doing is driving them away from in droves. Make a quick buck now at the expense of your players tomorrow…not a good look

*Update* No surprise no one gives a crap. Just more of the same greedy ads over and over and over. Like do I really need to see the same “save the king” garbage after every match. Way to slowly strangle the life out of the game

by FELIX6329

The original Plants vs zombies game is a classic. You had the core game and didn’t really need micro transactions for anything. Now cut to this one where after every level is an Angry Birds ad and pop up ads for the “premium” plants that should’ve been included in the base game. This is another example of EA taking a wonderful franchise and ruining it. I played this game when it first came out, I only got back into it because I remembered that PvZ turned 10 to find it not as I remember. Instead of awarding keys to levels after you got a challenger of a level done, now you get all of them after Egypt level 8 I believe. I wanted to love this game now but I can’t. It was amazing when it first came out but now I end up stop playing at times because of the ads. And I refuse to buy anything because I don’t to sell my soul to EA for one plant. Please if you ever make Plants vs Zombies 3, don’t do this again. Update! After playing this game for more time and thinking about how this games state is I have come to a finale conclusion, EA did right for a bit. Going by other games this company has made its good. Sure it has a lot of ads and it’s almost a necessity to eventually get a premium Plants it runs smooth, and it’s fun that’s the rest thank you for reading if you do.

by 7462846295619

I love Plants vs. Zombies, and I’ll start off with the positives by saying that this is a very fun game. It’s addictive! I like all the different themes and the cool new plants. Power ups make the game exciting. There’s a lot to do and endless hours of levels to play. I probably enjoy playing this one more than the first one. However, my main complaint is that everything is RIDICOUSLY overpriced. Some plants you have to pay for with real money, $5 a plant is insane!!! It should cost maybe $5 to unlock all premium plants, then that would be reasonable, and Popcap would get way more purchases. It’s sad that Popcap is turning a classic family game into a money grabbing charade. It’s sad and greedy. You can have a lot of fun with this game, but about half the things are locked unless you pay like $50 to buy it all. Anyway, Crazy Dave is back again, but I don’t like how differently he acts compared to the first one. His new personality is annoying and you should’ve left him as the original way he was. There’s a lot to explore in this game, and it may seem a little overwhelming to a new player. It’s a complicated set-up when you open PlantsvsZombies , so maybe organize it more. But yeah, I still really like this game, it’s one of my absolute favorites. But please LOWER YOUR PRICES. And continue making Plants vs. Zombies games.

by AWESOMEKID32204

First of all,I <3 this game, but they took a few things that kind of ruined it a little. First of all, I have noticed me winning against a few zombies and then not appearing in the almanac. This is annoying because I sometimes check the almanac when I can’t beat a zombie. And sometimes they make a zombie rediculously annoying and it doesn’t even appear in the book so I have no way of knowing how to defeat it easily! Also, if someone has found a way to get the bucket of money in the piñata I would like to meet them because the alternative is spending MORE money on the bucket. Not only that, I’ve encountered a glitch that makes me unable to play the game on my phone. It shows the title screen and then kicks me out! What’s more, this hasn’t happened on any other device so could you please fix it? Another thing is that they took the really good plants and then charged money for them! The ones they didn’t charge money for they make you play gems or mints for. And then I end up spending more money on gems! Like I’m trying to beat this game without spending money but it’s complicated. So please take these things up with the creators thank you

by Disappointed, Yet Still Happy.

Fisherman zombies. The worst zombie in the game. PvZ is supposed to be a fun tower defense game and having a strategy to deal with zombies with mechanics. Most zombies are bearable, the torch zombie and shovel zombie can sometimes be annoying but have their weaknesses. Gargantuars are easy enough. But the fisherman. It doesn’t make the game any more fun, and it doesn’t even feel good to beat the level with the horrid amount of fisherman zombies because you’re so stressed out by their stupid mechanics. They’re just so dumb, literally. It’s so hard to defeat them, because in beach there are tons of zombies blocking your plants from attacking them, and tangled kelp helps a bit but there are sometimes more than 5 all the time, and the kelp can’t take them all. And you always use your single use plants to defend your plants with the zombies upfront, but you end up losing because you didn’t defeat those stupid fisherman zombies. If I waste my cherrybomb to attack a group of fisherman in the back, the bucket head swarm gets my plants and I lose. I don’t have the jalapeño, and it wouldn’t even work because it only gets a single lane of fisherman zombies. I don’t expect you to remove the zombie, maybe not change it at all, but I just want to voice my opinion on how it ruins the game experience for me. But I still have arena so I guess this is alright 😔

by Lovelyhelper

This is an amazing game. The graphics are pleasing, the zombies are repeated with different out fits but the outfits look funny and or amazing. Each world has a few twist, like the dark ages where your sun plants won’t work so you have to use the sun shroom and other very unique plants. The outfits for the plants is hilarious and cute. The only complaint is the vase smashing game, it is an alternative to doing arena and normal levels, but the thing is that the vase is completely turned against your favor and you are completely outnumber when they give you the worst plants, you can’t even defend your lane when you run out of plants and lose, and if you upgrade it helps, but the upgrades don’t do much all it does is make it stronger, after 5 or 6 levels you get a 25 sun reduction and very little damage upgrade. What good is the sun reduction in a vase game? Never mind the fact that the upgrades cost INSANELY large amounts of coins, where if you don’t buy the coins and you grind, it would take over 300 levels to get to at least level 6! Maybe reduce the coin amount and make it where you have a slight advantage over a zombie horde behind a vase where you don’t know if it’s deadly or not, it probably is.

by Gunter76(425

Well, I love the game! It’s so addicting I’ve been playing it for like five days straight. But once you have beat ancient Egypt it gets kind of boring and is not as addicting. My First suggestion is that there needs to more levels for ancient Egypt or a like a prestige or something so that you can go through ancient Egypt again but instead of new plants there are level up points for each plant that was in there before and you got double the rewards but it was double the difficulty. Second more plants like maybe a triple peashooter that shoots like the fire peashooter or a triple sunflower or something like that. That would be great. And you could put those plants instead of level up points in like my last suggestion. My third suggestion is that can you make the areas longer like for instance ancient Egypt, instead of 25 levels there could be 50 levels and like after you beat the first 25 levels it would get twice as hard.

Please if you can, add these in because the game has became boring.

by Rainbow Gamer 37

This game is awesome. It’s one of my favorite games, there is a few issues to be addressed, though. 1: There is absolutely NO time to prepare for zombies. And once you get further into the game, it gets even worse because most of the time you only have expensive plants. 2: premium plants. Most of the plants from the previous games or plants you cant get in adventure cost money. You would expect the plants to be like, 1 dollar or something. NO. FOR ONE PLANT IT COSTS 5 DOLLARS. And I pretty much understand why. It’s a game made by EA. Electronic Arts should try to be much less money hungry. Seriously, 50 dollars for what, 10 plants? 3: plant costs. Some plant costs like for fire peashooter or cabbage pult make sense, but I have some specific sun costs I’m angry with. First, Melon Pult. It’s literally a cabbage pult with more damage, I mean, fire peashooter can do more damage AND warm plants. Might as well make it 325 SUN! Second, cactus. This is one that is too low and might make the game boring. It’s several mechanics mixed. Scaredy shroom, spikeweed, peashooter, AND a weird piercing thing. I think melon pult and cactus’ sun cost should be swapped. Those are really all the issues I can think of. The animation is nice, speed of opponents and allies are balanced. But I do recommend changing the issues here because it annoys A LOT of players, over 50 thousand I’d assume.

by Mamo4u

I love this game. It is super entertaining and I’m kind of addicted. But.. there has been a little bit of problems. 1. Whenever you update the game and add a plant, there is a load data part that takes 10 minutes, which can result in devices overheating and losing battery. 2nd. The game has too much adds, can you make it every 5 levels you get one add? And lastly, the game doesn’t get any new maps added in it. This is making me sad because I wanted plants like scarcely shroom and umbrella leaf to return. But alas, the game is very fun. Also, why is Chomper a premium plant that costs money, but torch wood and hot date are not? That’s kind of weird. Also, can you make snow pea a non- premium? I would say you could put it in the castle map. Also, Star fruit should cost gems, and squash should be buffed. Also, why is laser beam doing more damage than bloomerang when 1. Laser beam can hit every zombie in the game, but bloomerang cant hit the jester or shovel zombie. 2. Laser beam can hit every zombie in one lane, and bloomerang can’t. 3. Laser beam shoots faster than bloomerang. And 4. Laser beam only costs 200 sun for what it does? Why doesn’t bloomerand cost 150, and why doesn’t lazar beam cost 250? Also, Why does tile turnip go all the way up to 10K when I don’t even have it up to one lane yet? And a suggestion: can you make Twin sunflower 100 sun?

by Bfdifan101

PvZ 2 Part: This game is good but, I agree with the people when EA came in, they added EVERYTHING to ruin the game. Now they did add some good things, like more worlds and battlez, battlez is fun. But until they added plants to premium, the game got.. out of hand and not fun.. people who got these plants lost them. EA made The game lose its follower’s and fans.. I hope in PvZ 3, They Remove and rather fix the way premium plants. Like you have to buy with diamonds (like some in PvZ 2) and coins. PvZ 3 Part: It look’s fun, it looks like it’s a remake of the first game, but please add extra worlds, like a graveyard level, that could be for only the good player’s. Because of this graveyard themed world, near IO zombie’s would shuffle faster to the plants. And, change the art style to how it is in this game, I think it would work well, but, I’m gone with the current art style I just don’t like the color’s, just fix the color’s to how they where in this game. Pea shooter in a olive green color doesn’t sit well, I want the pea shooter color from this game. And that’s all, I’m sorry this review is wrong. Anyways, thanks for reading!

by Zack Makuliak

Warning: Mild Spoilers

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Plants Vs. Zombies. Both the games; the original I’ve beat eight times. I got into this one and thought, this one is going to be great! And it was. All the special little touches from the silly descriptions of the plants to the wacky zombies to the hilarious story of trying to find a taco. This game is a bit bonkers with the in app purchases (five dollars for one plant!? REALLY?!?) but I really don’t mind too much. I don’t really write reviews except for the games I truly love. iPhone has a problem, however, and it was weird at first but now it’s a big concern of mine. The music is off. But only for the home section of PvZ. The music in-world is fine but the home music and victory tune are all off. This started when I got to the world ‘Dark Ages’ and the music won’t come back on. I’ve checked if my phone was on silent mode. Nothing. I’ve checked if it was because the settings had music at minimum volume. It was turned all the way up. I’ve seen that others have been complaining too on the help section and I need a fix. All the music and new victory tunes as I traverse worlds is gone. Please help!

by Kimberlyc502

I saw complaints about this game being hard to beat, but I disagree. This game is so fun and way better than the first one. I loved the first one, but I have to admit this one is so much better. They give you plenty of opportunity to get the good stuff to beat the levels and win plants. They let you win plenty of gems, coins, gauntlets, and mints so you can purchase the necessary items or win in the Arena. If you’re not willing to spend extra money then you can watch videos to earn the extra stuff. I’ve been able to beat almost every level without having to spend extra money and I’ve had so much fun. I watch the videos and earn enough to make it through the game. Even without the videos I would make it through. They give you that much help. This game is worth downloading. Don’t listen to the people talking bad about it because I’ve yet to find a problem with it and I’ve played it nonstop since I downloaded it. I’m already to the second to last level and I still enjoy it. The Arena, Penny’s Pursuit, and all the extra little levels thrown in daily keep you occupied when you’re not playing the Adventure mode. The point is, this is a great game. Download it!

by Frutypebbles!!

This is the best game I’ve ever played.😄
I’m pretty picking when it comes to mobile games but, this game is a great strategy game that takes some thinking to strategize a good win. Now I’ve read some reviews about the game being to hard but, this game has ways around the...for example fishermen zombie just use the infi-nut power up and it covers all the lanes from the fisherman hooks from killing the plants. If you like fun games that you never get bored of, or a games with tons of plants to collect and zombies to kill, and 12 whole maps to beat, with and tons of game modes and daily activity than this game is for you. Now if you are a giver upper and get upset because you can’t beat a level the first try and are losing because of the fisherman zombies than this game isn’t for you. This game takes a good amount of time to complete but when is over you just want to play it all over again but don’t worry there’s still penny’s pursuit, and the arena which are super fun and you can still collect plants from. I don’t usually write reviews but this game deserves it and I’ve been enjoying this game ever since this game came out, I just love it . So download the game and you won’t be sorry, and thanks to the people who made this amazing game. God bless.🥳

by Infasand

I love this game because it has lots of new plants all the time, fun levels with crazy objectives, but most importantly, music. I love the music for this game and it is the prime reason I play it, but it has not been playing the music lately! I tried everything like uninstalling PlantsvsZombies and redownloading it but nothing works and it makes me sad because the music is the top reason I play this game! Please fix it!!! I also have some things to tell you: Some of the levels become ridiculously hard because you can no longer jump around other worlds to get the best plants for they job. It was better when you had the world keys, all unlocked in the first world, and you could play whatever world, whenever. Please please please put it back to that way. Also, the message you now get in pirate seas that says: remember: you can still play levels in other worlds, well you can’t, because of the new keys. I remember when the game didn’t have arena world or penny's rush, heck I even remember when it had the extra levels after you beat a world. It was better back then. But to the good part, I love arena mode and the frequent updates that keep the game awesome, and me and others hope you keep paying attention to this game and keep it great, and please fix the sound issue I previously mentioned, the game just isn’t the same without it!