My review of each of the Plants Vs Zombies Shooters
All games are good but they've all got their flaws.
GW1:
Good: Nice aesthetic compared to GW2, fun game as a proof-of-concept. Better maps than GW2. Night and Day maps (this would be nice in BFN, but I'd prefer evening over night)
Bad: No good single-player experience, plants aren't as fun as zombies, no herbal assualt/graveyard ops. Garbage levelling system. Questionable balance (super commando). 7/10.
GW2:
Good: Impoves what needed to be improved and kept what was good. Good levelling system, great single-player experience, well-rounded cast (zombie sniper), herbal assault/graveyard ops. Better balanced at least today. Upgrades. Lots of things to do and ways to play, like Trials of Gnomus. Lots of new features like Quest Board. Abilities from Rux are cool I guess.
Bad: Things that needed to be improved weren't improved, like how the Capture Points work (fixed in BFN). Consumables are still a thing and they're unnecessary. Overall bad maps. Legendary Variants suck, both in how you obtain them and just how strong they can be. Upgrade system is badly executed, you don't get anything at the start and stronger variants don't miss out on upgrades. Character design is still lacking, Mech is too strong, Chomper is a lame gimmick class. Not ability focused but the abilities are so strong it just feels stupid. Some variants are still better than others. Cosmetics suck, just a ton of crappy recolours. 8/10
BFN:
Good: Improves what needed to be improved. Capture Points are designed better, ability cooldowns are numbered, no stupid "I'm running out of Coffin Zombies!" minion system. Health bars, timer for health regeneration. Etc. Great PvE experience. You don't need to go to a portal to play the weekly mode. Battle Arena is just better than Soil Survivors. Regular content updates. More fair for new players (no legendary variants). Characters better designed e.g. Chomper and Pea Hover(with the exception of Citron). Better balanced. Actually good maps. Upgrade system is better executed, if you want to play Thorn Rose, you need to sacrifice upgrade points. RNG is purely for cosmetics, so no dumb consumables. No hint of P2W. Less grinding for things that actually matter. Turf games don't consist of taking a trek to the top of Mount Everest to reach to the next point.
Unpopular but better monetization system: I'll take free monthly prize maps (3 new costumes a month) free reward o tron, free PvE skins, free characters and upgrades, new modes every week and new maps. The extra rainbow stars would be nice but it doesn't really hurt my experience. You can't have absolutely everything, but in BFN, you can come pretty close. Just because you can get everything in GW2 doesn't mean it's fairer than BFN. Who wants ugly recolours anyway? The main point is that BFN is half the price of GW2 and has a better single-player.
Bad: Movement feels better in GW2, BFN relies on abilties (which is fine) and sprinting (which isn't). Battle Arena Ranked is badly executed. Ops phase 3 when? Not as many ways to have fun. Can get boring if you only play a few characters since there's no variety. No damage drop-off. 8.5/10
- @shurikeninja You put everything near perfectly on what are the strengths and weaknesses of each of these games.
I don't want to talk about each one of the points you brought up, because that would take too long, but I feel like the 'earnables/rewards' is something people don't talk about a lot yet should be.
BFN does a great job at fixing all the *filler* that was in GW2. It was one of the main reasons I didn't play it as much as I do BFN now. I always feel like I am actually working for something in BFN and it is fun. I don't need to go through packs and packs of just duplicate cosmetics and tons of consumables to get something worthwhile. And don't get me started on how you could just buy characters and variants with real money. While the same could be said about the text bubbles and emojis, I don't feel like they're *nearly* as bad as GW2 was with everything.
