While still a great game this one definitely had the most wasted potential overall. Most bosses drag on for far longer than they should (Looking specifically at the boulder boss and final boss). The purchasable special attacks are absolutely broken in power. And overall this game has the worst pacing, with an inconsistent story which they could have done so much more with. Time travelling to thwart a dark alien invasion is so cool I really wish it was realized to the fullest. This game was the most needed for a remake, so sad alpha dream is gone :(

Got all 121 main stars with my friends in one night with SM64EX Co-op. What an experience. As a casual who's only beaten 64 once this difficulty is really something else, it put all my Mario 64 movement knowledge to the test with some of the craziest platforming challenges I've ever seen. Would never have been able to 100% without my friends there, the later levels get extremely demanding with constant difficult platforming. While nowhere near kaizo requirements you definitely need to be prepared for a challenge greater than the original 64.

Feels hard to review a game like this in its infancy, but right now this has been one of the funniest and most unique experiences I've had with my friends ever. The proximity voice chat is used so well and opens so many avenues for scenarios that would never be possible in a simple voice call. The ambience and style is top notch, and the monsters are delightfully horrifying.

After you've seen everything and start following a meta it definitely loses a bit of the replayability, but luckily its still being actively updated so new stuff is on the forseeable horizon. Overall this is a massive solo dev W and I'm so happy its outselling Triple A games such as the new COD.

After 100% completing the original PvZ just recently it felt appropriate to play this game, after all I had played 2 back when it launched and did quite enjoy it. I knew the game had gone to microtransaction hell but I never really knew to what extent. And unfortunately I was not prepared for just how egregious this game has become.

But before I get into the bad I really do want to bring light to the bit of stuff I really enjoyed. The games visual style is a great upgrade from the original, from plants having more expressive animations and zombies acting far more zombie like is really nice! The game also made some design changes to the original cast that I really enjoy, and the new plants for the early story mode really feel at home with the series like the Bonk Choy and Bloomerang. I also think the new plant food mechanic is really fun and can be used in so many strategic ways, you are basically activating the plants final smash attack and its nice to know that almost every plant in the game besides for instant activations like the Cherry Bomb all have them. I really enjoyed some of the challenges from the first 4 story mode worlds, with quite a lot of the original games feel and design of "Here's a new plant, and here's a new obstacle to use that plant for.". The gimmicks each world have are really cool to play around, graves that appear and block your plants attacks, minecarts that you can plant stuff on and then drag around freely to create mobile attackers and defenders, arrows the zombies follow to switch which lane they walk on. Some levels really get you thinking, and strategies can be far more varied than they ever were in the original.

But now for the bad, and sadly all of the bad for this game was all deliberately and slowly done post launch to milk the game for everything its worth.
Where the first game is as simple as progressing through levels and earning new plants with occasional checks to the zen garden and shop the second one forces you head first into it's micromanaging nightmare. It doesn't waste any time to show you all the new ways you can spend money to get an advantage, from power ups, plant rentals, to extra seed slots that all cost coins to a gacha system for actually levelling up your plants giving them permanently increased stats. The levelling mechanic motivates you to use the same few plants each level as you are actively making the game harder on yourself by using lesser leveled ones. And for a game about adding new challenges and then giving you new plants as the solution having a system limiting who you want to use is terrible. And while I never had a moment in the 6 main story worlds I played where I felt a challenge was too hard for what I had, the games other modes it so badly wants you to participate in are far more demanding. The Penny's Pursuit boss battle is seemingly impossible for me, even on easy mode with boosted plants I couldn't take it down in the time limit. The game also has an online arena, which is just there to be an unfun chore and remind you that there are always players with far more exclusive and higher level plants.

The game makes sure you can't do anything without it being unreasonably slow, the UI is horrible and really bad to control on my phone, loading times for simple menu's or game mode switches are long. Just going to the almanac before a level starts to upgrade plants or see their stats needs 2 loading screens and a level intro replay before you are back to picking your plants??? Every level requires an ad break between them, and an ad to restart the level as well, and of course ads to get seed packets or gacha draws to level up plants, ads for coins, ads for gems, even one of the DAILY CHALLENGES is to watch an ad. And no not just play the game and encounter one naturally, you have to go out of your way to watch an unskippable ad for that challenge. Its so desperate it's actually histerical.

And while a lot of the game is ad-walled and grind-walled, some of it is just unapologetically paywalled with no way around it. I couldn't believe that staples like the Ice Pea, Cactus, and even Chomper all from PvZ 1 are now exclusively locked behind 7$ paywalls EACH. The game even gives you dedicated story mode levels where you have to use them and get to utilize their strengths just for them to be taken away the next level.

I'd really love to rate this game higher for its actually pretty good gameplay at times, but EA did the most EA job imaginable. They made sure their greed reached every crevice of a once great game.

TLDR: Game is designed entirely to waste your time and suck you dry. Even if you enjoy PvZ 1 this game is not easily recommended for its uneeded daily grind, gacha system, ads, paywalls, and so many anti-player systems I couldn't begin to count.

Best of the "New" series definitely. It's the first, and only one that tried doing so many new things regardless if they stuck or not.

Here's a list of some things that were never in 2D Mario before this game: Star coins, triple jumps, wall kicks, ground pounds, player 1 playable Luigi, bonus minigames, mini and mega mushrooms, fake final level, and many other one off gimmicks or minor things that are now mainstays Mario.

The bosses are also the most visually unique, even if not very challenging, Monty mole tank went hard.
I also really respect that they had the balls to hide 2 of the games unique 8 worlds behind a secret method, when I was a kid and found them I felt I had done something no one ever had, it was so cool.

Leading up to this game I was super excited for what it would add and how it would build upon the first, and in a lot of ways it did build upon the first and have many much needed things. It did it's job, but I can't help but think it could have done so much better.

The amount of new content for building is great, but I had really expected there to be much more extensive updates to the game after launch which it didn't really have, world editor is a super cool idea but even then I wish they could have added more to it.

The 100 Mario Challenge was basically ruined, with no Amiibo costumes in the game you don't actually get any rewards for playing the mode besides for maybe some mii avatar stuff. The set amount of levels to beat was changed to an endless mode with a high score counter, which kind of made me play 100 Mario challenge only once.

This game has the single worst online for any switch game. I did not have a single Online game which wasn't playing at 5 frames per second. It felt like those Smash Brawl online videos. It's like they made a whole part of the game I just couldn't even participate in due to how unplayable it was.

Story mode was however really nice, having only levels that can be made in the actual editor it allowed for them to create exemplary levels to teach and inspire players on what they can make.

The game is still pretty good, but I think it could have done so much better if they found more ways to reward playing online levels and the 100 Mario Challenge, had better netcode, and gave the game a few more content updates.

For a game I got for free it was pretty alright. The ambience and visuals were really good from what I remember, but the gameplay was nothing more than just a walking simulator. It had multiple endings I wanted to figure out but they were so cryptic and easy to miss out on steps a walkthrough was necessary, and playing a game while looking at a walkthrough every two seconds isn't very fun. I don't really know how much I can recommend this game now, you might get something out of it, or you might not.

Roblox, a game profiting off of child labor more than Somalia and India combined and somehow getting even more away with it.

While it has its hidden gems, and I've certainly had some very great and funny moments on Roblox, good experiences are hard to find as every game is fighting for home page visibility.
The homepage, and by extension the whole platform is primarily made up of content farm slop with predatory gacha and live service models plaguing every corner, most games want both your undivided attention and unbelievable amounts of money, making many games impossible time commitments to play and massive money sinks.

They've lied about how easy it is to make games on Roblox, and how easy it is to start making money off of them. They've promoted speculative marketing and cryptocurrency to the tens of millions of children who frequent the platform. Even if the games were good the corporation behind it is vile and shouldn't be supported.

It takes a really special game to get me to play it for over 600 hours. They did a whole lot really right with this game, and a whole lot wrong.

The Right
The games visuals are the best the series has ever had, the animations are incredible, and the new fighters are really good, minus a few exceptions.

The game has some incredible stages with so much variety in how you can play them. You can disable hazards or play on a different flavored omega or battlefield stage version of every stage which is really nice.

While still heavily flawed, this game does have the best balance out of any Smash roster, in most cases bottom 5's can still take down top tiers with enough skill, which is something you can't say as easily for any other Smash game.

Gameplay feels the best it ever has in the series for casual and semi casual play, it definitely isn't perfect but its consistent and easy to control, something which both melee and brawl don't have.

The new music is absolutely astounding I think, most of the new tracks feel like perfect celebrations of the games they are from. (minus that one Splatoon one)
It's really cool how they were able to get every old character to return in this game, it really added to the celebration feel as some of the newcomers were also highly important or requested amongst the community.
Krool and Ridley are portrayed so well that they deserve their own mention.

The Wrong
World of light is just bad. Far too long for how repetitive it is. removing any and all story, cutscenes, and in extension any unique gameplay because people will upload it to video sharing sites is the lamest excuse I've ever heard from a game this big.

The tail end DLC characters Steve, Pyra/Mythra, and Kazuya have gimmicks far too separated from normal smash, giving them unfair potential that really makes fighting them on a semi competitive to hardcore competitive level absolutely horrible. The community had to come together to BAN Steve from community tournaments.

Certain legacy characters feel far less consistent and heavily dated when compared to how a lot of the new characters play and compared to the overall consistency of their move sets. Characters like Kirby, Ganon, and Dr Mario especially deal with this as they lack the tools to really compete with the top tiers.

Flawed online matchmaking system that can pull you into rulesets you never agreed to participate in, such as queuing for 3 stock games and instead getting a 1 stock match or a timed match. As well the whole GSP system just doesn't work all that well.

Spirits were a cool idea in concept, but functionally they don't work well and end up not being fun to use.

The negligence to deliberate sabotage of the competitive scene has and will still heavily damaged this games longevity and community.

The inability to record clips from smash onto the switches library itself to force people to use their pointless Smash World app instead of twitter.

Final Verdict
While it may look like I had far more bad to say than good, this game really is special. When it was regularly getting updated it was a internet wide event, and it was so fun to interact with the community while characters were being added and fighter specific discords were active and competing with each other. While a great game, there were some very easy things Nintendo could have done to make it almost perfect, such as more online matchmaking improvements and less restrictions on community tournaments, removing the barriers to sharing replays, and to just give the game more balance updates to fix both the highest and lowest characters before ending updates.