Overall Rating: 8/10
Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville is the epitome of a fun, wacky and hilarious shooter for all ages. Developer PopCap has put a lot of effort into making sure we never get bored with weekly LTMs that differ from normal game-play and regular patches and ensuring the community is satisfied.
A class-based shooter is a very difficult subgenre to master but for three entire titles, PopCap has shown they know how it's done. In my opinion, single classes are better than Garden Warfare's class variants. Sure, there's less variety but there is still never a lack of choice. The characters have all been tuned so they match a certain play-style: for example Rose's Arcane Enigma is now a lot more supportive and team-oriented. And the best part: we now have confirmation there will be more playable classes down the road so there will be even more choices and fun play-styles. The social hub has seen major improvements and now team-communication is a lot easier with all-new expressions. They're not as effective as a pinging system or voice chat but they get the job done.
I personally preferred the Garden Warfare 2 campaign over the BFN PvE but it's still fun nevertheless. Grinding is a fun and enjoyable aspect to any game and PvZ has made sure they implement this into Battle for Neighborville.
PopCap have also shown their will to listen to player feedback with the introduction of one of the most requested features: private play.
There are some major improvements that need to happen, including:
- We need more developers and community managers browsing the BfN forums
- Toxic behaviour, harassment and communication abuse go unpunished without a way to report players in-game
- Although not 100% necessary at the moment, cross play and cross progression can help push this game to its limits
- Again, not completely necessary at the moment, but a version of BfN for the Nintendo Switch will really help this game
- I feel that Battle Arena really lost its fun feel when they decided to make it competitive and skill-based. I know we're already in like Season 2 or 3 but it would be better if it's dropped
- Add more PvE content and regularly: it's relatively easy to finish all 4 regions and then there's nothing left to do except Multiplayer!
- Instead of having the ability to purchase every single cosmetic item from Rux, there should be weekly and daily rotations to make players not want to miss out
And any other issues we may see on the forums.
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