Purely in terms of level-design and plant-design, I feel like PvZ2 wins over the first game easily. However, literally all the elements of this game are undermined by the fact that the game is made much harder if you try and ignore the micro-transactions, and made much easier if you either invest a lot of time into grinding bonuses, or pay up. Sad!

And I do feel sorry for this game, as it feels like Popcap made a really good follow-up to Plants vs. Zombies, and halfway through development EA made them glue stupid pay2win mechanics to the sequel and made it worse for it. I think that scores like 0.5 or even 3 stars are overexaggerating how bad this game is, but I don't blame anyone for being insulted by how this game treated them. Again, sad. Very.