PvZ3 Evolved is still disappointing
I’ve been a long time fan of the series and played previous versions of PvZ3 over the years. It’s finally out in the UK and was excited to see what the potentially final version will be and it’s unfortunately very disappointing. It’s the fastest I’ve bounced off a PvZ game.
Plant/Zombie levelling will always be a flawed concept that removes balance and strategy and replaces it with grinding. Needing to grind seeds for every plant, including tier 2/3 plants makes for bad situations where a T1 is stronger than a T2/3 due to levels or zombies can be too strong and there’s nothing you can do but grind. It ruined PvZ2 and it breaks this game too.
Connected to that, the zen garden is incredibly tedious. 3 hearts a day to grow a plant and 3 energy a day to play a mediocre mini game to get an item to grow the plant. All for a tiny amount of seeds anyway, feels deliberately malicious to keep you logging in every day but for a tiny reward.
Maps early on are very boring and the star scoring system doesn’t feel good. When you’re starting out and your strategy works but you get 2.5 stars, it feels like you failed rather than accomplished anything. It’s to encourage replaying old missions with stronger plants but it is quickly exposed as yet another tedious grind for scraps because progression is so slow.
Unlocking new plants is very slow and you’re left worrying about making bad choices because you don’t know what’s ahead of you. Why can’t we just get plants as we beat levels to introduce new mechanics?
I’m still not liking the art style. It’s not awful but it feels cheap and uglier than PvZ2. The style is trying to bring a sense of hand drawn sketch book but it ends up making everything uglier than before with less personality.
Communities and the neighbourhood watch system is actually a clever idea. It could probably be balanced better this early on but the concept is fun enough to encourage clan play and can easily be expanded with server events.
The combining mechanic is not bad but I don’t love it. It does help reduce plant redundancy like being able to equip three separate pea shooters for example. However, remembering combinations is stressful. Meanwhile, planting two pea shooters who then shoot two bullets feels more satisfying than planting two plants, combining them and one shooter fires a slightly stronger bullet. It makes the concept of evolving plants into T2/3 feel flatter than what we had previous.
Fundamentally, the game doesn’t feel fun as long as seeds and levels are in the game. We just want to play PvZ, not grind to reach power levels to scrape by an ever increasing bar.
If it must be an F2P game then boosts, cosmetics and conveniences are better than flat out power levels and currencies. PvZ works best as a proper premium game where fun is the central focus, not trying to keep us hooked with daily log ins.
The whole game just feels worse and every decision made in the design makes me not want to play. It doesn’t feel like it respects my time, nor does it feel like a game to “solve” like PvZ1 and early PvZ2 did. It feels like a game where if you play enough, you’ll get enough currency to eventually beat it without learning how the game works because it doesn’t make you care enough to learn. I know PvZ3 has had a very troubled development it honestly, I’d scrap this one and try again. It’s just not the game I love, sorry.
