Plants vs. Zombies 2 Pro-Tips: Free-to-Play or Free Forever?

There is a dirty little secret that some are too busy worrying about Plants vs. Zombies 2’s microtransactions to acknowledge: It can be played for free, FOREVER. In the final installment of our pro-tips series we will discuss exactly how to do so. Penny pinching has never been so simple.

Free-to-Play or Free Forever?

Yes, there are certainly more than a few opportunities to shell out real cash monies to the talented folks at PopCap Games. It could even be argued that a few of the purchase exclusive items might be of benefit to the player; but they are far from critical. In fact, later on in the base campaign these seeds could prove to be weaker than the core suite of spores unlocked through the game’s natural progression.

Another major complaint is the fact that players must spend earned in-game currency in order to utilize one-time-use power-ups, much like the ones we discussed yesterday. The fact of the matter is that while the currency can be refilled using actual dollars, it's just as easy to replay/grind early stages again in order to earn cash. Could this be considered tedious? Probably. But if it were easy, why would anyone ever trade real cash for “funny money?”

Unlocking worlds utilizes a similar concept of iterating on a stage several times, only with a different gameplay wrinkle for each session. These stars are then used to turn around and unlock new worlds. The base set of worlds were easy to reveal, as long as the player has enough patience to play through stages a couple of times. Honestly, what fan of the series wouldn’t be doing this already? Each world had a low enough bar of entry that the minimal star counts were trivial at worst. Hopefully PopCap will continue with that trend in whatever additional content that awaits players in the pipeline.

At the end of the day PopCap may have made their game almost too devoid of the necessity to spend money. Plants vs. Zombies 2 may not be a free will offering, but with the way it's designed it might as well be. For this reason it is worth imploring players to actually consider buying an item or two, all in the name of supporting a developer that consistently gives fans more game for next to nothing in return. Remember, just because you can always play for free doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do. With great replayability comes a great responsibility.

So for the last time, never forget that there is no shame in having a green thumb if keeps the blood off of your hands! Thanks for a fantastic week and please continue to return to 148Apps for all of mobile gaming needs.