Since I have now gotten to the 3D Zelda's in my Zelda marathon, and they're usually a lot longer than the 2D ones, I've decided to play a game or two in between entries. There will be new games here and there, but it also gives me a good opportunity to replay shorter games I love. Plants vs Zombies is a game near and dear to my heart. I've played it countless times in the past, even tried to Let's Play it years ago, and even still in 2024...it's one of my favorite games ever.

The concept of PVZ is pretty simple. Zombies are trying to get to your house to eat your brains, you have to stop them by using plants you acquire throughout the game. Incredibly simple plot but it works because of the constant humor throughout. The only non-zombie, non-plant character is Crazy Dave and he also helps with the game being hilarious. He's iconic for a reason and is also home to all the dialogue in the game. The zombies themselves are also very humorous. I've seen them all hundreds of times not but on a first playthrough, it would've been a blast seeing each new zombie type as they appear and seeing what methods they use to try to get to the house.

The gameplay is also pretty simple in this game. This is a tower defense game, meaning as enemies slowly (or fast depending on the zombie) move to the point you have to defend, you must defend it with your arsenal. The game is on a grid system too so you must plan out your plots of land/water/roof as well. Your arsenal, the plants, are also varied in their uses. The sunflower is your most important plant as, while you can get sun here and there from the sky, they are the best way to produce sun in the game. Sun is your currency that let's you buy plants so obviously it's incredibly important. The game makes it known pretty much right away that you'll want sunflowers at all times. Other than that, you have offensive plants like Peashooters or melon-pults. You have defensive plants like wall-nuts or pumpkins that can hold off zombies for a bit. The reason they can is because they have much more defense than other plants and as such take longer to eat, vs like the usual 3 or so seconds it takes to eat a plant. You have TSPP's (temporary solution to a permanent problem as coined by Nintendocaprisun) which are plants that destroy a single or group of zombies and then disappear afterwards. They're amazing in a pinch but also usually take longer to charge. That's another thing in this game. Besides plants needing different amounts of sun to plant them, they also have different recharge times until you can plant them again. Sunflowers or offensive plants are usually the quickest while defensive or TSPP's are usually a lot longer. It adds just even more strategy to the game I feel.
The zombies are also varied in their ways to try to get into your house as well. I already said their various ways are humorous but they're practical too. A regular zombie has 10 health. Then there's an upgraded zombie with a cone that has 25. Then ones with buckets have 50. Not only that but some zombies are faster and behave differently than others. Pole-vaulters are very fast at first but once they get in front of a plant, they pole-vault over it and then walk normally. Dancing zombies literally dance over to you and summon 4 zombies all around them like a backup crew (they actually were originally Michael Jackson zombies doing the Thriller dance but had to change it due to him passing around that time). Gargantuars have 100 hp, the most of any zombie and when they get to 50 they throw a little imp on their back like 5 grid spaces ahead of you. AND the imp itself has like 3 hp or something but is super quick. It's just really cool to see all of these zombies with their own unique properties combined with the many different plant types in the game.

So, you know how the gameplay works. How about the levels themselves. That's also pretty simple. There are 5 levels in the game and each has different properties. The regular lawn levels are the most basic and there's actually nothing special about them. The nighttime levels don't have falling sun so you must rely on cheaper mushrooms that can only grow naturally at night and maybe some sun-shrooms instead of sunflowers. Pool levels introduce the water and also 6 rows instead of 5. You must plant lily-pads before you can plant any land plants. There are aquatic only plants (lily-pads as well) that you can plant without a lily-pad tho. Fog levels are pool levels except at night but also with fog. So apply everything I said about the night levels here as well as fog that covers half the level. So you'll either have to deal with not seeing half the level at all or use specific plants that let you deal with it. Finally, the roof levels which don't allow you to plant pea shooters, because of the angle or the roof, and you must plant these flower-pot plants first before any other plant. Besides the first level, which is basic for a good reason considering it teaches you the basics, each level is varied enough so it doesn't ever get boring. Also, every 5th and 10th level, the game breaks the pacing up a bit by letting you play a mini-game or a conveyer belt free-for all style stage. These as well are very fun and again makes it, so the game doesn't get tedious. This campaign all culminates in a battle with Zomboss, the final boss of the game and the mastermind/leader of the zombies. His fight is super fun and challenging enough to the point where it's not too easy. I didn't mention it before, but the main campaign is honestly not very hard at all. Some people might take issue with it but I always found it to be a very relaxing and chill game to play so I welcome the easier difficulty.

If you want difficulty, the other modes have you covered. Yes, the main levels aren't the only thing in this game. In fact, I'd say it's only around the halfway point if you want to do everything. First off, before I get into the various other modes PVZ provides, let's talk about the other things you can find on the main menu. Once you're at a certain point into the main campaign, you'll start unlocking other things you can do. The shop let's you buy various plants, items for your lawn, stuff for the zen garden and even a tree you can grow. You can buy all this stuff with money you get randomly from zombies. The zan garden let's you grow plants you get from the store or from killed zombies. This is a great way to get cash and is relaxing to check out every hour or so since it takes plants a bit to grow. There's also built in achievements, which I did get all of them back in like 2021, but this time I only got 11/20. I could've done them all again but a couple of them take a long while to get.

As for the actual modes, this is where the real difficulty comes in. Minigames contain some of the ones you played in the main campaign and a bunch of new ones. They're mostly very fun, some are more fun than others, and mix up the general gameplay a ton. There's a minigame where you feed brains to zombies that swim in a fish tank like fish. There's one where you must match plants like bejeweled. There's one where you play slots to obtain plants. They're all very different and the later ones especially can get quite touch. I'm looking at you Pogo Party and Bobsled Bonanza. The 2nd mode is puzzles. Here you play two types of little puzzle games. Vasebreaker where you must break vases that you don't know have a plant or a zombie in it (unless they're green then they always have plants). And I, Zombie where you actually play as the zombies and you must carefully figure out what zombies to place down to eat the plants. There's like 9 or 10 versions of each of these but they're pretty quick and a lot of fun. The last mode is survival where you must survive waves of zombies with whatever setup you have. In between waves the lawn doesn't reset so you can build a pretty crazy defense by the end. There's a normal and hard version for each of the 5 levels and the hard versions can get pretty ridiculous. Dare I say the hardest thing in PVZ1. I did everything in all of these 3 modes tho (besides the endless stuff cuz yeah that's a thing too) and got the gold sunflower trophy so I'm satisfied. Idk if I'd do the survival hards again tho, at least not all at once cuz they can get a bit tiring lol.

This game's soundtrack is something special and I have to give props to the composer Laura Shigihara. Not only is she an amazing composer and also vocalist (she voices the sunflower in "There's a Zombie On Your Lawn"), she also streams a lot and just seems like a cool person. Anyway yeah, she composed an absolute banger of a soundtrack. My absolute favorite song was always Watery Graves and it's still my favorite now. Other than that, my other favorites would have to be Ultimate Battle,Loonboon and Braniac Maniac.

This replay was fun, even if 100%ed it on replay a couple years ago, I can never get enough PVZ1. Like I said, Ocarina of Time is next and after that I think I'm going to replay Katamari Damacy before I get into Majora's Mask so stay tuned for all of that!