some dude's pvz review posted:

This is a fun and addictive game and I’d love to give it a 10. It’s close to that very high rating but a few issues hold it back. I’ll outline the good first and end with its flaws, most of which are correctable and hopefully addressed in the near future.

The game has a style and charm that are immediately recognizable and enjoyable. The various buildings and characters all look like 3D realizations of the plants vs. zombies 2D games and the weapon effects are highly appropriate; the zombie foot soldier’s stink bombs leave lingering purple clouds, the chomper looks like the dangerous predator it is while still maintaining the comical look of the game universe, and such things as fake noses, snack tray hats, concrete glasses, and a host of other customization options all aptly display the game’s whimsical nature even while shooting the opposing team with gusto.

The sounds are also well done and add even more magic to the atmosphere of the battles. These range from the various zombies cries of ‘brains’, the sunflower’s happy chirping vocalizations, the way the zombie engineer’s devices all sound like someone making machine sounds with their mouths, the pseudo-speech of both Dr. Zomboss and Crazy Dave as they declare various in-game events, and the zombies ‘rar rar raring’ the chorus for Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ when they win a round of Gnome Bomb.
Game modes and maps are a bit limited but still enjoyable.

The maps are really well done and so far I like them all. The game features one co-op mode; Garden Ops, the rest are all team vs. team and include; Team Vanquish (death match), Gardens & Graveyards (plants defend, zombies attack), and Gnome Bomb (hot potato to blow up 3 enemy gardens/graveyards without losing yours). The Vanquish Confirmed game mode is not on PC at the time of this writing. Gardens & Graveyards is my favorite and it seems to be many other players’ as well. It allows both teams to use the stickers they get from the shop to summon reinforcements and the attack/defend mechanic works very well in this game making these modes great fun as either side.

Star challenges are how you level up your classes and are in-game tasks to unlock a star, once you unlock enough of these that class will level up. At first this is how you unlock your additional special ability slots but later you get class specific sticker packs you can open via the Sticker Stop.

The sticker shop is quite fun and despite some rumors it does not require you to spend real money, although that option does exist. You get PvZ coins for playing the game and then spend them at the shop to open various packs of stickers as well as the aforementioned automatic class stickers. The better you perform in game, both on a personal level but also by helping your team, I want to stress how much the game encourages teamwork here, the more coins you get and the higher your placement in the scoreboard at the end of a round. Packs currently cost from 1,000to 40,000 coins depending on what you wish to buy.

The stickers open up class variants, customizations, weapon upgrades, and reinforcements you can use in Garden Ops mode (plants only) and Gardens & Graveyards (both plants and zombies). You also get revivals and re-tries for Garden Ops mode and star challenge cards, these last cards will let you bypass challenges by using the stars to complete them immediately.

With all that good comes the bad. The DRM has been brought up other reviewers and it requires Origin to buy and play since the game is always online. Also the lack of maps and map modes may be limiting its longevity but this is easily fixed in patches and they’ve already added maps and mods since its initial console launch. The game auto-connects to servers when we should have a server list that lets us pick as well as tagging servers as favorites or blacklisted. Team balance is overall good but you can get stuck on a team for round after round and if it’s bad, your only recourse is to get lucky as people join/leave or you leave the server. But if you do leave a bad server team, and join the same game mode again, it will often just put you right back where you were since you can’t pick servers.

The worst thing right now however is the microphone issue. I cannot stress enough how annoying this can be. The game has no way to set it and it defaults to auto-voice detect with no option to mute yourself or set push-to-talk like we really need. You will often join a server and be bombarded with coughing, static, background noise, etc. until you can tab out to the scoreboard and toggle mute all. This is a serious irritation and must be addressed ASAP.

In conclusion this is a fun and addictive experience with a lot of charm and is a blast to play, but with a few flaws that need to be corrected, especially that microphone problem. I’m an older gamer (44) and I love this game and look forward to fixes and more content!