Recent reviews by Leafbox_

why the ♥♥♥♥ did I play this when I was like 9

How to get a death threat 101

Don't let the artstyle convince you this is a kids' game. I assure you, most of the playerbase is mid-20's, sweaty young men and women.

10/10 because of Galaxili.

I spent probably half of my hours on this drawing app procrastinating and watching Youtube videos in the background, and I don't know half the tools. I still had a blast.
I will update if it becomes more or less.

This is basically a poor man's HOI4.

It's hard to say if this is a cheap knockoff of some Roblox game or of Block N Load.

No, in all honesty, I've played this game for a bit in the past, and back then, it was... something, but then this new total overhaul came out, and I think it made this game a bit better, I'd really say this game is alright. There's pay to win elements, which, well, I don't like that, but the thing is, I personally find the artstyle kind of... dull?
I just don't like the artstyle and the maps. They're more killboxes than anything, and the element of a "completely editable world" is something I got way too used to after Block N Load, plus, this one doesn't have any special kind of blocks that aren't just bricks with more health.

The gameplay genuinely is fine, I couldn't find a lot to criticize in it, except for it being maybe just very basic for a shooter. We got all the obvious choices- Shotguns, snipers, SMGs, rifles, the standard deal, and of course then the building element, which I think is quite finely done, but I've played games that did it better.

If you really want to play this... go ahead.

The only reason I bought this was so that I don't have to endure Electric Slide's afro.

I want to make a genuine review for this game that I hope allows people to make a better decision for if they want this game or not.

Starting off, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville is, of course, a PvZ shooter, and the last entry in that franchise, but here's the main thing about it: This game and Garden Warfare 2 are actually relatively different from each other the more you go into it.

These comparisons will be made all over this, so clench your cheeks, I will judge this game.

Main comparison: Variants. Battle for Neighborville has removed them in favour of an upgrade system that, even though it's actually really good compared to the previous game, it does not sufficiently replace variants, and streamlines the game a bit too much in my opinion.
Variants with an even more expanded upgrade system and possibly tweaks too, would've been incredible in my eyes, because there's so many ideas that one could add in there.

Popcap did eventually realize this and add legendary upgrades, which basically are variants, but this did little to quell the fact that we still had way too little content compared to the other two games.

I give it to them though, removing variants did actually help the game to become more balanced, especially after subsequent patches over time, although I feel like the soft and then full release of the game was too rushed and the developers didn't test enough to make sure everything was good enough by the day 1 version availible to potential players.

Another big minus point compared to the other games is the sticker "shop". In Battle for Neighborville, most *really* nice customizations are locked behind Rux, and most of the rainbow stars you will *not* get without buying at least a thousand and then nagging off another 4000 with the quarter yearly star doublers. The other method of getting items, Mr. Rewardatron 9000 gives you one item... for 30.000 coins. In Garden Warfare 2, that was at least 5 or 6 unique items worth, and even though the cosmetics in that game weren't very good for the most part, at least you got more for your money.

A plus point though, is that the cosmetics that do exist in the game are, for the most part, pretty okay, decent, or actually really good. Spectrum Hats are a nice addition, these basically have a small palette of colors you can choose from. There are a lot of really nice costumes (most locked behind Rux unfortunately) that exist too, but again, I get the idea that, if we had variants, they could have so many interesting costumes of their own.

But now let's actually look at what the game has to offer. Around 23 classes, 11 plants and 12 zombies, all of which have their own 10-er pallet of upgrades after being promoted to Master. All of these also have their own quirks and upgrade points, which means you can't combine some would-be OP upgrades with each other, because they cost too many points if you try and chew them up together.
My only problem with this is that if the PvZ shooters were supposed to be relatively silly, I think you should've intentionally made some wack upgrade combos possible, which, there are some for sure, but nothing that feels overwhelming.
Yes, it's more balanced, but it's a wacky game in a wacky series with a wackier concept, I would've imagined absolute carnage.

When it comes to the actual gameplay, it isn't all that bad. A lot of classes you know exactly what they are for, and they do their job sufficiently. What I do not like primarily is how some abilities which I groaned about being too overpowered in Garden Warfare are *still* overpowered in this game. Husk Hop is easier to avoid now, but still pretty annoying, Pea gatling is still a genuine tumor on me enjoying fights against Peashooter mains.
I hate one primary strategy, and it's essentially just the entire team sticking together. Teamplay, especially if it's Swarm characters, has never been more annoying to play against. You will never win as long as your own team doesn't out-bum them. And don't even get me started on TV Heads and Wildflowers sticking together. Probably one of the most annoying things in the game next to toxic Brainium Basher users.

There's one very nice part about it though, and it's the aiming. I like the aiming in Battle for Neighborville a lot more than in Garden Warfare 2. Your weapons don't feel barely usable anymore. You no longer have to do a physics exam of trajectory and time-of-hitting projectile calculations for anything beyond 10 meters range. Instead in BfN, everything's a lot more hitscan, some weapons might actually be hitscan, now that I think about it. No character in this game feels like a chore to play, which is a huge improvement to GW2, where characters like Chomper, Engineer, and also Peashooter felt impossibly hard to land shots with, which made me, and probably a lot of other players, just want to rely on cheesy abilities like Pea Gatling, or variants like Agent Pea. (Yes, I'm looking at you, "pros" who only play that guy, because he's the easiest.)

I do not want to spoiler everything, since I want people who want to play this to figure out some of the classes by themselves, but here is one piece of advice: Do not buy the Wizard, you can get him from the Prize Map in March, which, yes, you know exactly where I'm going with this.

Yes, this game has a battle pass, but before you're groaning at the mention of it, it's actually nothing too extreme, and it's a cycling one, which means, your progress between all of them saves between all months. You will not lose progress from your current pass if the other one is coming up, and I think that's a good implementation of a battle pass. The only annoying thing about it is the fact that you have to wait out to get to all of them. I finished the September Prize Map a few days ago, and now I have to wait almost an entire month to get to the October one. There is one version of the game, on the Nintendo Switch, that allows you to switch between all of them, but that will be discussed more at the end.

Speaking of the end, I still have a few more things to note that I don't think have to be written down in lengthy sentences:
-Better campaign than GW2 with multiple proper areas for them, and actually a lot of nice rewards.
-Content drought compared to the other games is very feelable, this game does not hold my attention as long as the other games do, because there is less to do, and less to play. Proper Variants with more interesting upgrade and tweak trees (and a slight change in style, why are we back in Suburbia after the events of GW2 where we literally travel though time?) would've given this game a lot more replay value, hell, it would've possibly saved it from it's cancellation.
-The Switch version trades your framerate for a lack of microtransactions, which, I guess that's good.
-Team play is a lot more important in this game, running around shooting people isn't an effective strategy anymore.

In summary, I think Battle for Neighborville offers enough to justify it's price tag in a sale, but I feel like it should've been more of an experiment and ingredient to a better Garden Warfare 3, as some of the ideas this game introduced are very interesting, but would be so much more interesting if we mixed it with the main line of the series.

Unfortunately only a 6.5/10 due to the issues that exist, but you can obviously see that effort was put into this game, it's balancing, technically also it's style but also it's general surroundings. Campaign, very lovely additions to it. Upgrade system, very good and interesting, but just not good enough.

Recommended, but seriously think about your purchase, and only in a sale.

This game is not accurate, you actually have an ROI on the stock market.

My favourite part was when the Imp said "Itz Impin' time!" and then imped all over the place! Truly one of the games of all time.