Plants Vs. Zombies 2

Today's Pinata Party... never thought I'd see Big Wave Beach, Beghouled, Pinata Party and Flawless Victory (no plant death, no powerups used) in the same level, but there we have it.

Helps that we get Cactus, Cabbage-Pult, Bowling Bulb and Kiwi at the start, and Cabbage can be upgraded to Melon then W.Melon while Bowling Bulb can be upgraded to Dusk Lobber.

Bowling Bulb would be great for Beghouled, since its biggest weakness is that they only regenerate the weakest balls... but that's not an issue if you're constantly cycling out plants.

I greatly enjoyed the challenges included in the Electric Currant Epic Quest. The Currant has an enjoyable mechanic, especially in minecart-filled levels, but outside of the special challenges designed around it I doubt it'll be ever used.

It would definitely have use if you have a pirate level where gangplanks don't cover the top and bottom rows. Throw in two infini-nuts, and maybe something to take out the occasional boarder or seagull, and use all your sun to create a death field of spikerocks, spikeweeds and cacti.

So I started to play this game again. Few thoughts, on top of my head.

• Anchylosaurus is outrageous. How on earth am I supposed to counter that? Also, why is that dinosaur pops up so often, at least Wizard and Octopus zombies have decency to not to show up in the selection screen as often.

• Man, I SO want to get the Explodo Nut. Along with the Freeze Dragon, it would be one hell of a worthy purchase.

Yep, the Ankylosaurus is one hell of an ***hole. There used to be a counter in Spikeweeds/Spikerock, but those no longer stop the pushed zombies.

As for the Ice Dragon, get it. It's broken as heck and a direct upgrade to the Snapdragon. Explode-o-nut is sadly a seasonal premium, but it's extremely OP as well.

Ice-Dragon is one of the plants that are most definitely worth its money, along with the imitator and Power Lily. In fact, the Ice-Dragon and Primal Peashooter are my primary offensive plants.

I actually do have a pretty cool setup with E.Currant, involves currant, Sweet Potato, Cold Snap and spikes..

And yeah primal Peas are pretty good. But my fave setup for most endless (AE, PS, DA, LC) is Cold Snap in front/middle plus 2 columns of Laser Beans at the back. Laser Beans are better than Fume-Shroom when it comes to fighting Barrel Rollers, Wizards, Imp Cannons, and Turquoise Skulls.

Electric Currant is also fun in Frostbite Cave if the slider arrangement is right. Beware of Dodo, though.

Otherwise you kind of pair it up with Garlic, and Garlic dies way too easily.

If you drag out a fight long enough to get out a bunch of power tiles, Fume Shroom is superior to laser bean where plant food is concerned. Laser Bean just deals damage, Fume Shroom will also push everyone back to the start, making them able to counter Gargantaurs as well.

Sometimes that's my only hope against dark ages endless maps.

An idea for Electric Currant: plant a Garlic as far into the top and bottom lane as you can, then plant a row of Electric Currants behind each Garlic. For added effect, plant Spikeweed in between the currants. Very few things will get through that.

Thing is, Garlic was nerfed. It's far less survivable than it was in the original game, and it still can't redirect plants that don't directly eat them. Additionally, robot zombies and pharaohs are immune to the effects.

Unless you've got a good supply of plant food, I just don't see it working.

Ok, I don't see a thread in the forum, so I guess it'll be okay if we discuss Pv Z heroes here?

My opinion... I only play it because it's Pv Z. I hate luck based games, I hate competitive games, and collectible card games are the worst of both worlds.

You can't really tell which way casual online matches will go, because there's no way to know whether they have the starter deck or a deck loaded with legendary cards. Campaign missions can't be rechallenged after you beat them, so you end up at a brick wall and no way to advance without spending gems or beating your head against an opponent you can't beat.

Boss fights can be surprisingly unpleasant because of the bonuses they get, but ones that have unbalanced fields are even worse (For example, Neptunia has a deck loaded with aquatic zombies, and her campaign has two aquatic lanes.)

And yet, on top of that, there's these little glitches that are extremely common. The music has the same issue Pv Z 2 has (it eventually fades out completely, and you have to reset the iPad to fix it), but there's also occasions where, for no reason, the game will shut down completely, and have to be restarted. Or when it just sits at the end of a battle, and does nothing but try to connect. The latter is especially frustrating when it's after a clean sweep.

Non-replayable campaign? That's a damn horrendous design. These kind of games are based on endless grind, so not allowing grinding is, uhh...

In an unrelated note, I have boosted Infi-nut for today's Pinata Party. Easiest Beghouled ever.

I've been stuck on a boss fight for so long, that they ended up giving me a premium card pack for free. And none of them saw any use in the fight, because I think it was the Captain Combustible fight, who specialises in buffing and speed kills, and they were very high cost cards.

I mean, it's not like the cards you can grind are that good: Hero Points are earned from standard battles, and can only buy common cards, which can't be recycled for more powerful ones. Gems are earned from special quests that pop up every 3 hours or so, and can buy premium stuff, but if you buy them in groups, you get free cards, so you're encouraged to save up, and try to scrape by on the common stuff.

By the time you start dealing with Neptuna and Captain Combustible campaigns, they start using several different strategies at once, and you just won't have the versatility to deal with it unless you've been obscenely lucky with the card packs, or bought gem currency.

But if it was easy, nobody would buy gems. And therein lies the flaw in the microtransaction model.

Games like these are designed to make you buy in-game currencies, albeit to different degrees. Some are more free-to-play friendly, while soe prevent your progress unless you whale a lot.

PVZ Heroes sounds like the latter.

I think the problem here is that if you play too much of the campaign, (and are extremely distrustful of multiplayer aspect), you've got no way to earn gems from the quests, so you have to play very slowly.

I've heard that you can repeat the final battle of each campaign as often you want, but getting there will be an issue, and it sounds absolutely ludicrous. Plants have to deal with Brainstorm where every card he draws is Eureka, while Zombies will have a deck containing every zombie card in the game against Citron with a deck containing every plant card in the game.

Talking about Pv Z Heroes, not Pv Z 2.

edited 11th Aug '16 7:07:08 PM by Ekimmak

I usually grind at the Endless Modes. More zombies, more gems/pots.

Holy shit, can we talk about how ridiculously unfair today's Pinata Party is?

Constant Chicken Wranglers and the occasional Robo-Football and the player gets... Puff-Shrooms, the occasional Potato Mine, and maybe, maybe, MAYBE a Lightning Reed. The first Chicken Wrangler is guaranteed to take out at least two lawnmowers.

Seriously, this is amazing bullshit.

Suddenly, I don't mind losing access to the game because I'm staying the hell away from my iPad.

So there's been quite a huge change in things... thanks to Plant Leveling System.

Yep, it's out, and you're going to be needing it for the extra levels in Ancient Egypt, Modern Day, and Far Future (so far).

Among some of the best plants to upgrade are:

• Laser Bean (goes from being a pretty good plant to one of the best plants in the game thanks to the very nice damage increase)
• Tile Turnip (massive cost multiplier reduction, thanks to it growing exponentially, a reduction in the multiplier is very huge)
• Bowling Bulb (finally recharges the blue bulb first)
• Pea Pod (get this high enough and it hurts like heck through a Torchwood. We're talking about 7+ NDS per shot here behind a blue torchwood)
• 1 NDS plants (Peas, Puff-shrooms, etc, will help a lot in Pinata Parties)
• Melon Pult and Winter Melon (self explanatory)
• Dusk Lobber (It's already painful and now it gets even more painful)
• Sun-Shroom (gets a sun production upgrade every 2 levels rather than Sunflowers which need at least 5 levels to even produce any more suns)
• Moonflower (again, gets a sun production upgrade every 2 levels)

So after many months, I picked this game up again and holy shit has it changed.

Most crushingly, no gem drops? Goddamn, buying the slots for Zen Garden is going to be agonizing...

I picked the game up...

And then mangled my charge port for my iPad... somehow, so I can't anymore.

Aaaaand after losing the entire progress for the 5th fucking time in the span of 3 days, I give up. It's no longer worth the effort for me.