PvZ Heroes Review

 was finally able to get to Ultimate League and so I think I’m in a good position to write a thoughtful review about this game. Here is a list of the pros and cons, I’ll go in depth into each of these below.

Pros

• Easy to understand but difficult to master (deep gameplay)
• Large variety of viable decks
• Incredibly polished and detailed characters and animations, to be expected from the PvZ franchise.
• Easy and cheap to be competitive in current environment.
• Short games make it perfect for the mobile experience. 

Neutral

• Ladder, events, quest system and rewards in general.
• Single player experience. 

Cons

• Buggy client (though improving with each release)
• Questionable client-authoritative functionality that allows for hacks and abuses.
• Long animations make it harder for new players.

PROS

Easy to understand but difficult to master (deep gameplay)
The most important thing about a game is its gameplay. If the gameplay isn’t there then no matter how polished or how much rewards it gives, it won’t be enjoyable to play. PvZ Heroes shines in this aspect. It has various innovations to the online CCG genre, including a different way to solve the 1st turn advantage that other CCGs have by having the game designed around the order in which plants and zombies play their creatures and tricks. It also has the shield block system which adds plenty of strategy to the game, though some people might find it frustrating when they get unlucky with it.

Large variety of viable decks
The cards are generally well balanced, though there are a few stand out cards that are more potent than others, but the large card pool of solid cards allows for plenty of strategies. There are usually two strong deck builds for each avatar (and some of these builds repeat for other avatars) though some have more feasible strategies. Some avatars are slightly stronger than others and there is a subtle rock-paper-scissor effect where certain avatars have better matchup against others. All this takes time to learn and is part of the depth of the game.

Incredibly polished and detailed characters and animations, to be expected from the PvZ franchise.
Each card in the game has a detailed animation, complete with sound effects that rivals, and often surpasses, games like Hearthstone. Each of these animations has the same whimsy and endearing personality that made this franchise so popular. This game certainly does not disappoint in that aspect.

Easy and cheap to be competitive in current environment.
While getting a full collection would be prohibitively expensive for most people, the game has a number of progression paths that allow players to grow their collection at a very satisfying pace. First players will gather all the “common - basic” cards in the game. Everyone is guaranteed to get 4 of each of these cards, since these are obtained from hero coins that you get win or lose and you never get more than 4 of each. Once you have finished collecting all these cards, you stop receiving these hero coins. This ensures that progression is very fast at the beginning of the game.

In addition, you get various quests at the beginning of the game that give you plenty of gems, the main resource in the game. If you use these gems wisely and take advantage of the bundled packs they offer, you can get plenty of cards in a very short amount of time. There is also a ranked ladder that players will be able to start climbing once they get comfortable playing the game. Each hero also has a series of quests which award you cards, gems and sparks, which can be used to craft more cards. You can get additional heroes in packs and each week a different hero is featured and can be bought for a fixed number of gems so it’s fairly easy to complete a hero collection given enough time.

From these rewards it’s easy to get a fairly large collection of the premium uncommon and rare cards in the game. Most importantly, however, most competitive decks are made up of these rarities while the more expensive legendary and super-rare aren’t all that crucial, unlike other CCGs where they are critical to being competitive. I was able to climb to the highest league in the ladder with multiple decks that didn’t have any legendaries and only a couple of super-rare, so I can vouch for this. That’s not to say legendaries and super-rares aren’t important or exciting. You can certainly build some interesting decks with them that can also get you ahead, they just aren’t necessary.

Short games make it perfect for the mobile experience.
I’m quite certain that when the PopCap team got together to plan for this game they put as one of their objectives “to make the best mobile online CCG”. The game is perfectly made for playing on the go thanks to the fact that games are short and the quests don’t require hours of continuous grinding.

NEUTRAL

Ladder, events, quest system and rewards in general.
The reward system in PvZ is a mixed bag. On the one hand it has a fairly satisfactory initial progression, which will quickly get most people up to a competitive level. On the other hand, once you get past a Gold League, the rewards feel a little sparse, which can make those that depend on getting rewards to enjoy the game feel left out. For those that enjoy the game for its gameplay and the challenge of winning, this will not be a problem, but if you have been spoiled by modern F2P games that shower you with rewards, you feel dissapointed.

I should mention that in the most recent update, they added a series of events which allow you to get special tickets which accumulate to grant you a special event card. They also added optional ads that you can watch to get a few extra gems each day. These two additions currently are device independent so each device that you install PvZ and link to your account will get you extra gems and tickets for the event cards so they are an easy way to get extra rewards easily and this may very well make the game more palatable for those who require many rewards to enjoy themselves.

Single Player Experience
PvZ Heroes has a fairly lengthy single player campaign, with many, many levels for both plants and zombies. The levels are in groups of 5, which form individual story lines and have little comic book cut scenes. They are fun to play and even though the story is basically meaningless, it’s cute to see. To make things interesting, the AI opponents (which play surprisingly well most of the time) often start with a few extra enhancements or have certain special powers and this adds to the challenge. This would be all well and good except for one little thing, once again, a lack of significant rewards.

The single player games only reward hero coins, which means that once you collect them all, they don’t reward at all. They do help with the daily quests, so they are certainly a good alternative for when you don’t feel like playing online or want to finish a quest quickly, but they still lack that feeling of progression that most single player campaigns have. Another limiting factor is that once you pass one of the levels in the campaign, you can’t go back to play it.

I personally think that it would make for a better progression if some of the basic cards were reserved to be obtained from the single player campaign and even if some of the harder levels also rewarded with packs, gems or sparks, similar to how the hero quests worked.