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YMMV / Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time

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For YMMV in the first game, see Plants vs. Zombies.

  • Anti-Climax Boss: One of the potential final bosses is the Zombot Tuskmaster 10000 BC, where the player gets Lost City plants (and Fire Peashooter and Hot Potato) to fight it. Since the plants cannot deal splash or multi-lane damage, one only needs to plant in the three middle lanes, and the plants not only deal good amounts of damage, the Endurian will help to tank the zombies, the Red Stinger serves as a secondary tank, and the A.K.E.E. will also bounce off and hit the mooks, the respawning ice walls AND the boss behind them, allowing the player to defeat it extremely quickly. Furthermore, Hot Potato is given regularly and allows the player to destroy the ice walls fast. However, it should be noted that Fire Peashooter needs to be obtained early or the fight becomes near-impossible.
  • Awesome Music: One of the main praises the sequel gets is how great the tracks are, and how amazingly thematically fitting every world's music is. So much that it has its own page, shared with the first game.
  • Breather Boss: A good number of the bosses tend to be sandwiched between tougher fights:
    • For the Zombot Plank Walker, the zombies Zomboss sends generally aren't that bad, and the only Demonic Spider he sends out can be easily countered thanks to Spikeweed being handed out like candy. You also have some good splash damage with Snapdragon.
    • As for the Zombot Tomorrow-tron, you are given the heavily damaging Citron, some good piercing with Laser Bean, and a nice defensive Infi-nut. You're also given Power Tiles, meaning even if Zomboss sends out a Gargantuar Prime or Football Zombie, Far Future's two Demonic Spiders, you can easily plant food a Citron and wipe them out. You also don't even need Plant Food to stop Zomboss's ramming attack; Blover can block Zomboss. This applies to the rematch as well, which is significantly easier than the rematch bosses from previous worlds, particularly the Zombot War Wagon 2.0, and gives a strong premium plant in the Electric Blueberry that will instantly One-Hit Kill zombies after every several seconds.
    • The Zombot Tuskmaster 10000 BC also falls into this, mainly because it doesn't summon the more threatening zombies (Weasel Hoarder, Sloth Gargantuar) and also because you have the Chard Guard to push back the zombies. The boss also has much lower health than most of the other bosses due to being a Shielded Core Boss, but if you have enough plants the "shield" doesn't take long to destroy. Finally, it also came after the very tough Zomboss Sharktronic Sub before the worlds were sorted by difficulty.
    • The Zombot Dinotronic Mechasaur. While it does summon dinosaurs that greatly help the zombies, the player does obtain the Primal Potato Mine (deals 90 NDS in a 3x3 area, the splash being able to hit Zomboss easily) and Bonk Choy (PF it to hit a group of zombies AND the boss for good damage), Chard Guard and Primal Peashooter (excellent at pushing the zombies back). As such, it's not nearly as hard as the previous boss, the Zombot Multi-Stage Masher.
    • The Zombot War Wagon in Modern Day Day 32. The Infi-Nut does a good job at tanking, the Laser Bean and Citron take care of the weak and strong enemies respectively, and the latter also deals huge amounts of damage to Zomboss. Plant Food on a Citron essentially clears a lane and deals even bigger damage to the boss and also makes Gargantuars a non-issue. Note that this boss can be randomly selected, however.
    • The Zombot Tomorrow-tron once again, in Modern Day Day 33. Due to having Power Tiles, Magnet-shrooms to remove Bucketheads, and Fume-shrooms, even the toughest zombies Zomboss summons aren't much of a hassle thanks to the Fume-shroom's penetration plus heavy damage/knockback from Power Tiled PF. It helps that the zombies give out a generous amount of Plant Food in this battle, and the only problem would be the sheer length of the fight due to lower damage plants. Getting a boosted Fume-shroom can make this the easiest boss in the game. Note that this boss is randomly selected too.
  • Breather Level: Premium Plant Quests, which are Special Delivery levels featuring at least a premium plant (either gem-costed ones or money-costed ones). Usually, premium plants have a better performance against zombies, so there isn't much problem to deal with to complete the level. However, sometimes a player gets stuck with very, very poorly performing premium plants such as Pea-nut and Chomper, which then can make a level difficult to the point of being That One Level.
  • Broken Base:
    • The mechanics of the endless zones, where you start off with a few basic plants and can choose one of a randomly-selected three to add each level. Does it turn the game into a Luck-Based Mission and reward noobs, or does it give the game more interesting replay value and reward versatile players rather than "Stop Having Fun" Guys with Complacent Gaming Syndrome?
    • The inclusion of female zombies in Big Wave Beach divided fans, but most are happy that female zombies exist now.
    • Big Wave Beach Part 2. One part of the fanbase thinks that Popcap made the levels too hard by having overpowered zombies that can disable plants and/or ruin your set-ups without having any particular effective counters introduced among all the new free Plants, as well as having big waves of zombies appearing before the player likely has any chance of building a strong defense against said waves, which might entice players to buy coins for Power-Ups or gems to boost plants. The other part of the fanbase feels that those people are blowing the issue out of proportion, despite a chunk of them also having the opinion that Big Wave Beach 2 is the hardest update yet.
    • The Chinese version. Is it a fun addition to the series due to having more plants, mini-games, worlds and the Allegedly Free Game status being thrown out, or is it bad for most of the plants being bad (with most of them suffering from only existing to counter a single zombie's attack or gimmick and literally nothing else), lots of the exclusive gimmicks being boring or reused, the low-quality animations and music, a gacha system to get new plants, and the entire thing being exclusive to China?
    • Premium plant prices. Lately, the latest premium plants have their prices increasing like no tomorrow. First, we have Toadstool and Cactus that cost $4.99, then we have Electric Bluberry, Jack-o-Lantern and Grapeshot which cost $6.99. Many fans are VERY unhappy as they feel that EA is only raising their prices due to how successful sales of Toadstool and Cactus were. Thankfully, this isn't the case with Cold Snapdragon and Shrinking Violet, as it brought back the same price as Toadstool and Cactus.
    • The leveling system. Some feel it adds some depth into the game, and makes otherwise useless plants such as Bloomerang more usable. Others feel that it's a complete mess that makes the game less fun and isn't very well balanced. There are also some who feel like it is good, but too grindy, and others who felt that it'd be better if it was there from the start.
    • The kazoo that plays in Dark Ages and Frostbite Caves. Some find it extremely annoying and out of place for both time periods, while others find it funny for the same reasons.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The game provides some incentive to mix things up with the Zen Garden to avert this. The randomness in acquiring new plants in the Endless Zones can also help (or it can make them a Luck-Based Mission). However, still played straight in the way that players hope for really powerful plants like Winter Melon, Blover, Tile Turnip and the other two sun plants.
  • Contested Sequel: The game as a whole causes some breakage - does it deserve to carry the PVZ2 name, or is it a dumbed-down Allegedly Free Game cash grab?
  • Demonic Spiders: Examples from the game are on the franchise-wide page.
  • Disappointing Last Level:
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Some people want Aloenote  to return in the future, since the last time said plant was available was back in April 2020.
  • Fan Nickname:
  • Game-Breaker: See here.
  • Genius Bonus: Draftodil's Almanac Entry mentions that she's not full of hot air, but highly compressed air. This is much more meaningful to those who understand the ideal gas law, where pressure and temperature are directly proportional to each other in a closed system where volume and number of moles in the gas is constant.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the game is popular in other countries, where it really took off was in China, to the point China has all different kinds of Plants vs Zombies content.
    • The Chinese have an exclusive version of the game with six unique worlds: Kungfu World, Sky City, Steam Ages, Renaissance Ages, Heian Ages, and Fairytale Forest, along with many exclusive plants and zombies and exclusive mechanics.
    • There are even comic books published by a Chinese government-backed author, based on Plants vs. Zombies.
    • A lot of bootleg Plants vs. Zombies merchandise exists only in China, from LEGO Plants Vs. Zombies characters to build-your-battle dioramas.
  • Goddamned Bats: Examples from the game are on the franchise-wide page.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • After a zombie's head gets knocked off, sometimes the Lightning Reed's attacks will magically put the head back on just for the X-Ray Sparks visual, which can be somewhat amusing.
    • In the Endless Zones on the Android version, the game's crashing can sometimes be in the player's favor, resetting a level that's otherwise hopeless. Of course, the majority of the time the crashing results in moving onto the next level without getting a between-level reward (or worse, a Game Over), but at least there's a possibility of an upside.
    • In Endless Zones, there was a way to bypass having to pay for the fourth card (which is hidden), by selecting an already revealed card, selecting the unknown card, then hitting accept on the card you had first selected. The downside to this though, is that you will not know what you have selected until the plant selection starts.
    • If a Gargantuar Prime kills a Chili Bean with its Eye Beams, the Gargantuar Prime is considered to have eaten it, and it is destroyed via gas like a normal zombie eating the bean.
    • Before the 4.1.1 Update, MC Zom-B would use his Spin Attack whenever there was a Sap-Fling puddle or Lava Guava lava pool around him, allowing those plants to stall him.
    • The Power Lily could be killed by Hair Metal Gargantuar's Shockwave attack, allowing it to be revived by the Intensive Carrot if timed right. Pop Cap realized this and took it out in the 4.1.1 update, making Power Lily invulnerable.
    • Primal Sunflower was not disabled in Last Stand, allowing for sun production in Last Stand levels. This was also fixed, however. note .
    • Once Witch Hazel gets to level 7 and above, the zombies it transforms will be turned into Fume-Shrooms instead of Puff-Shrooms. If these fume-shrooms are dug up during a Last Stand, they will drop Sun if you have the shovel upgrades, essentially allowing you to get more Sun in a Last Stand level.
    • While it's very difficult to do with most mints, if a mint is planted within a vine (Pyre Vine cannot be used), the mint can be frozen with the vine, keeping the mint effects until the plant is unfrozen.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Many people who played the first game wanted Hypno-Shroom to be able to brainwash a Gargantuar (who just smashes it) because it would be cool. In the sequel, using Plant Food on the Hypno-Shroom makes the first zombie that eats it turn into a brainwashed Gargantuar!
    • Way before PVZ2 was created, a PVZ fan uploaded a video of a fanmade plant called "Grape Cluster Bomb", which exploded into a spread of multiple smaller grape projectiles. Then, the plant Grapeshot was released... which exploded into a spread of multiple smaller grape projectiles, even having a similar design.
      • Coincidentally, the same user uploaded a video during the early days of PVZ2 about a Prehistoric world, where a T-Rex enters the lawn and is invencible to the plants' attacks. Years later, Jurassic Marsh, a Prehistoric-themed world, was added into the game, with dinosaurs that enter the lawn and are invencible to the plants' attacks, with the Raptors in particular, acting similarly to the T-Rex of the video. And coincidentally, actual T-Rex were added later.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: For some, the Ancient Egypt, Pirate Seas, Wild West, and Far Future bosses are all generic one-eyed spider robots that only vary in their move sets and difficulty. Averted with the bosses from the Zombot Dark Dragon onwards, since each of them has an unique design.
  • Moe: Some plants can count, such as Power Lily, Shrinking Violet, Moonflower, Shadow-Shroom (who is described as cutie-pie in its almanac entry), Red Stinger, Ghost Pepper, Iceberg Lettuce, A.K.E.E, Toadstool, Lightning Reed, Sweet Potato (who invokes this trope in and of herself), Bowling Bulb, and Sun Bean. Also Thyme Warp, just look at its adorable smile and cute little dance in its idle animation!
  • Older Than They Think: PVZ2 isn't the first instance that female zombies appear in the series. The first game had Evony parody ads, and Plants vs. Zombies Adventures (A now-defunct Plants vs. Zombies Facebook game) had Conga Dancers.
  • Porting Disaster: The version on the Android is prone to crashing, and certain updates rendered it completely non-functional. It has gotten a lot better over time, though.
  • Praising Shows You Don't Watch:
    • Some international players praise how the Chinese version has so much cool exclusive content, and wish that all of it could also be in the International version. Mostly because it’s just the fact that there's another game’s worth of new content that gets mentioned about the version, and not the content itself. Fans who have actually played the Chinese version are not afraid to say that it would make the game worse, as what most international players don’t realize is that a lot of the new content itself isn’t the greatest, and just how many more bad things the Chinese game brings with it.
    • In a complete reverse of what was just described above, Chinese fans are actually the ones who are jealous of the International version. You’d feel jealous too if the rest of the world got a polished game while your country (and your country only) got a buggy mess that values quantity over quality and is even more monetized and filled with microtransactions.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • The Dandelion had a low rate of fire and attacked one lane at a time, severely hampering its usefulness, cost a huge bit of sun, and had a mediocre recharge time. Naturally, it was a Scrappy Weapon. In the 4.6 Update, they doubled its rate of fire and made its Plant Food ability stronger and faster, making it much more useful now.
    • Bowling Bulb had a crippling weakness in only recharging the aquamarine (weakest) bulb first and kept firing it when there was a zombie in its lane. As such, it could not be used to its full potential. Come the Plant Leveling system, and that weakness is rectified; at level 3, it recharges the blue (medium strength) bulb first, making it far more useful against the incoming zombie horde.
    • Torchwood had this effect without even any serious changes from the leveling mechanics. On release, it was unpopular due to being a premium plant and losing its splash damage effect. However, it received much warmer attention once Battlez started using Zomboss battles as a mechanic, and Torchwood was often visited for its high damage output combined with Threepeater and Tile Turnip, allowing for massive damage to Zomboss and constantly stalling him so that he can't shoot missiles or dash through lanes. Torchwood being turned into a seedium and being given out to new players by the end of their first week improved this even further. Then Torchwood actually got buffed, now dealing damage to zombies touching it as well as exploding in a row of flames upon death like a weaker Jalapeno/Hot Date, and any remaining scrappy-ness all but vanished.
    • Snow Pea was initially seen as an inferior ice plant, even when the Plant Leveling System allowed it to have a chance to freeze the zombie it hit. However, a later update gave it a massive buff — the ability for its shots to splash chill/freeze in a 1x1 radius. With enough columns of them and/or enough luck (and no Frostbite Caves zombies on the lawn), it now becomes possible to stunlock groups of zombies via freezing them, and it can also extinguish Explorer/Torchlight zombies hiding behind zombies in front, making it far more useful than before.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • The fact there's no way to restart Endless Zones without dying. If you have lawnmowers but want to start all over again, you have to just wait for a zombie to kill you.
    • Gravestones. While Wild West and Pirate Seas' special features results in a change of strategy and add to gameplay, the Gravestones in Ancient Egypt are just an obstacle forcing the player to bring the Grave Buster. But it's not until Dark Ages, where the graves can pop up under your plants, moving them at random and disrupting any sort of strategy that they become hated. As a bonus, zombies can then spawn from the Graves, sometimes circumventing defenses entirely.
    • Low Tide in Big Wave Beach. An ambush where a whole bunch of zombies pop up anywhere beyond the tide line. Unlike gravestones in Dark Ages this cannot be circumvented, and unlike Sandstorm and Snowstorm, the zombies appear immediately instead of pausing while they're in the sandstorm/snowstorm. The kicker is that besides imps and normal zombies, coneheads and bucketheads can spawn too! Have fun with Bucketheads popping up on the third column from your house! Even more of a kicker: This ambush seems to occur when a certain number of the zombies from the previous wave have been defeated, meaning that using the Cherry Bomb to take out a large horde of zombies can sometimes trigger the ambush... which is ironically when it would be ideal to have the Cherry Bomb handy.
    • The ice wind in Frostbite Caves and its Endless Zone, Icebound Battleground. While the ice wind isn't that bad during regular levels, it does get MUCH worse in later endless zone levels; one gust is enough to completely freeze over a non-fire plant. If you don't have enough fire plants, you'll be seeing your defensive and offensive plants get frozen over and over again every time the wind comes in and taking a long time to get out of said freezing.
    • The prehistoric reptiles in Jurassic Marsh can make things get out of hand very quickly. Each of them cannot be damaged by the plants and have an ability that greatly benefits the zombies. Raptor kicks zombies like breakdancer, only affecting one at a time, but kicks them four squares forwards, up to the third column. Stegosaurus snares zombies with its tail spikes, then launches them on random lanes... four squares away from your house. Pteranodon places zombies in front of your lawn so that they can eat your defenses from behind in a manner similar to the Digger/Prospector zombie. T-Rex boosts the speed of all zombies in the lane. Finally, Ankylosaurus knocks zombies forward into your plants to push them back/throw them away ala Mecha-Football zombie! You can use Perfume-shroom to make the dinosaurs fight for you, but if there's multiple of them in different lanes, you won't be able to convert all of them.
    • Portals in Modern Day can appear in the middle to the back of the lawn, bypassing defenses and displacing plants. These then spawn certain special zombies from different time periods, a good number of which are Demonic Spiders- a Mecha-Football spawned in the middle of your plants will immediately begin pushing them back, a Jester will make all your projectile plants hurt your own, an MC Zom-B will instantly decimate your attackers via his microphone spin, etc. Fortunately, the portals aren't in too many levels.
    • The Plant Leveling system. It's nice to be able to upgrade your plants and all, the problem is that in order to do so, you first need to collect enough seed packets for that specific plant, then use coins to level. The only "free" way to obtain seed packets for plants of a specific world is to play Travel Log quests, and they give out about 5 seed packets for up to two random plants of the world they pertain to. Each plant requires anywhere from 10-25 packets to be leveled up from 1 to 2, and usually over a hundred to level up from 2 onward. The only other way to level them up is to buy Pinatas for an exorbitant amount of gems. Also, the core game is, for the most part, not balanced around high-level plants, so going through all that effort to level up will effectively destroy the challenge of the game outside of Arena and 3-Jalapeno difficulty Penny's Pursuit levels.
  • Scrappy Weapon: The series' page includes examples from this game.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike: Not only is it far harder than the first game with waves of Demonic Spiders coming quite early in the game, very difficult levels and bosses, and high prices on powerups and plants within a typical game, it's so hard it's possibly the hardest game PopCap Games ever released.
  • Special Effects Failure:
    • When the Pelican Zombie is electrocuted to death, the pelican carrying the zombie inexplicably turns into a seagull, which is the animation used for its predecessor, the Seagull Zombie.
    • A major complaint the Chinese version receives that the International version doesn't get is how low quality, buggy, and stiff a lot of the version’s exclusive animations feel. The bugginess and low quality even extend to the music, which has infamously been a problem with the Chinese version since its first release. Similar criticisms would later be applied to some animations from the International version, with plants like Chilly Pepper and Bun Chi being widely disliked for their animations being stiffer and more repetitive than those of earlier plants.
  • Surprise Difficulty: The previous game is disliked by a few for being too easy, so this game would be the same, right? WRONG. It's quite possibly the hardest game PopCap Games has ever created. With constant waves of Demonic Spiders, very difficult levels and bosses, and high prices on plants and powerups, this game completely blows the easiness of its predecessor out of the water.
  • That One Attack:
    • Dr. Zomboss uses a similar attack (in that it's just as easily predictable) as in the original but it gets worse. You can block Zomboss with a Plant Food attack (this also stuns him for a few seconds) but if you just so happen to not have Plant Food, he could destroy two rows of your plants and then place either a lot of zombies or a Gargantuar or two for a cheap victory/lawnmower fatality (Thankfully, this attack kills the zombies in the lane as well, but only if they were there beforehand). Powerups make this attack easier to deal with, naturally.
      • The Dark Dragon's is even worse- it does a fire breath that scorches the tiles instead, making you unable to plant on them for some time (and even instakilling any Plant-food powered up plant on it after it wears off). Thankfully Zomboss will not summon any zombies on scorched lanes.
      • The Aerostatic Gondola's version. Zomboss drops a sandbag on a flame tile, which kills one lane of plants and zombies. What makes this annoying is that unlike the other Zombots' "destroy rows" move, this one cannot be prevented.
    • The Gargantuar Prime's Eye Beams. Not only can the Gargantuar Prime instakill any plant in front of them, they can also incinerate any plant behind it as well! Not to mention said attack comes out very fast, targets a random plant, and if you're unlucky, the sweeping beam can take out more than one.
    • The Wizard Zombie's transformation beam, which turns a plant into a completely useless sheep until the Wizard is killed. They can use it multiple times if not killed in time.
    • Similar to the Wizard above, the Octo Zombie's octopus throw which can also be used multiple times. Not only does it render a plant useless, the octopus also needs to be killed in order to be removed, and said octopus is pretty tough in itself.
    • Punk Zombie's moshing. He normally eats plants, but when a Punk Jam comes up, he begins doing a punk kick maneuver that kicks a plant back to the nearest empty space or off the lawn if there isn't any. Even worse, the Punk Jam makes him move extremely fast. This is very bad news especially against stuff like the Close-Range Combatant Phat Beet.
    • MC Zom-B's microphone spin. Like Punk Zombie, he normally eats plants, but when his Rap Jam come up, he gains the ability to do an "Instant Death" Radius Spin Attack around him that comes out extremely fast and is powerful enough to destroy a Wall-Nut in two hits and anything less tough (except Endurian) in one. Chard Guard and Celery Stalker doesn't help- he's faster on the draw than they are. And Infi-Nut's shield is destroyed within 2-3 attacks.
    • The Hair Metal Gargantuar's shockwave attack during a Metal Jam. This nasty attack can kill defensive plants very quickly, and One-Hit Kill almost all non-defensive plants in one hit. And they can keep using it as long as there's a plant on their lane. The only ways to prevent this? A "dead" Infi-Nut's projector, which will absorb the shockwaves even if it's dead, or a few Primal Wall-Nuts (a plan you don't acquire until the next world, Jurassic Marsh), which can withstand multiple hits from the shockwaves before being completely destroyed, and which recharge quickly enough that you can replant them as a stalling tactic, assuming you have enough sun.
    • The Rodeo Legend's charge attack. Unlike the Zombie Bull, the Rodeo Legend's charge is far faster, and also deals incredible damage to any plant it contacts with. Since this isn't an instant-kill attack, it actually does more damage to Primal Wall-Nut than most instant kills and won't cause full HP Explode-O-Nuts or Hot Dates to detonate. And worst of all, unlike Zombie Bull, it can perform this unlimited times even if the rider Imp has been thrown off.
    • Both the All-Star Zombie and the ZCorp Chair Racer have their opening attack: a high-speed charge that instakills the first plant it hits in the former, or deals massive damage and launches the zombie over your defenses in the latter. Both are highly likely to take out anything that isn't Primal Wall-Nut, and Primal Wall-Nut won't help against the latter being launched. After that, they eat as fast as a normal zombie and cannot use the attack again.
  • That One Boss:
    • The Zombot Sharktronic Sub. It can easily drag your plants into the water (and it will be able to pull them one space right even if you immediately clogged it with Tangle Kelp), summons very tough zombies including Deep Sea Gargantuars, Surfer Zombies, and in the final phase, multiple Octo Zombies, which can easily kill and/or disable your plants very very quickly.
    • The Zombot Multi-Stage Masher. The battle opens up rather quickly with a Punk Jam where all the zombies move quickly (and the punk can kick away your plants), the third phase may sometimes spawn the Breakdancer+MC Zom-B combo which can kill plants quickly. But the worst by far is the final phase with Metal Jam- it re-spawns its speakers quickly that can blow away a lane of your plants in one shot, and it spawns only Hair Metal Gargantuars, which thanks to their Jam, move much more quickly, and can use their shockwave attack. The speakers can One-Hit Kill any of the gargs if they fire on the same lane as the gargantuar, but this is unreliable as it is random. Finally, you probably wouldn't have many plants left on the lawn thanks to the shockwaves killing them quickly, making it even harder to damage him before the zombies overwhelm you. It doesn't help that many of the Neon Mixtape Tour plants have mediocre to average offenses to counter it.
    • The Zombot War Wagon 2.0. For the rematch with the Wild West boss, your only means of offense is the Hypno-Shroom. Since individual Zombies are too weak on their own to fight off the swarm, storing and managing Plant Food for the Hypno-Shrooms to turn them into Gargantuars becomes mandatory, but even then, they're slow and unreliable against a Zombot that constantly jumps around. The boss truly becomes nasty in the second phase, when it starts summoning the notorious Demonic Spiders of the Wild West. If you miss a single Chicken Zombie or Rodeo Legend Zombie, you lose instantly, but they come out so fast and among so many other zombies that you need insane attention, reflexes, and preparation to keep up. Even then, the War Wagon can and will easily destroy your defenses, allowing a single chicken to slip by before you can do anything about it. And if you run out of Plant Food before the final phase, good luck surviving the enemy Gargantuars. It's quite telling that the easiest way to take down this boss is via spamming lots and lots of Power Snow, which is about your only method of doing any reliable damage to it and its minions.
  • That One Level:
    • Big Bad Butte, Wild West's Endless Zone has a nasty habit of hitting you with powerful zombie types right from the startnote , before you have a wide range of plants to choose from. If you aren't lucky enough to get a powerful plant or two in the random selections, you're doomed.
    • Dark Ages Night 14. You not only have to face Wizard Zombies and Gargantuars, you also have to get 5000 sun with no sun-producing plants other than Sun-Beans and sun-giving graves. Normally you can use Cherry-Bombs to make the level easier, but they take a long time to recharge.
    • Day 16 of Big Wave Beach. You have to survive a huge wave of zombies, and the only plants you're given to attack them with are Bowling Bulbs, Tangle Kelp and Chompers, and this is via a very slow-moving conveyor belt which will give you eight Lily-Pads in a row, so even if your strategy is sound, luck will manage to screw you over. To make things worse, you have to defeat large groups of Surfer zombies, as well as three Gargantuars. And to top things off, you have no lawnmowers.
    • Day 5 of Neon Mixtape Tour. You're tasked with protecting two Phat Beets and Two Wall-Nuts... who are very near the zombies' entrance. To make matters worse, the Punk Jam plays throughout almost the entire level, making all zombies move and eat three times as fast, and the Punk Zombies have the potential to kick the endangered plants off the lawn for an instant loss. It got so bad that the level was remixed into an easier one by switching the column positions of the endangered Phat Beets and Wall-Nuts.
    • Day 16 of Neon Mixtape Tour. You're given Kernel-Pult, Phat Beet, Celery Stalker and Thyme Warp (rarely, use only when needed). The problems are that 1. Kernel-Pult only affects the nearest Zombie, allowing MC Zom-B to get into your Phat Beet defences and start wreaking havoc during a Rap Jam due to your other attackers being close-ranged. 2. When Hair Metal Gargantuar appears and the Jam turns to Metal (and making all the zombies faster), he starts decimating all your plants in the lane with his sonic blast attack. Hopefully you have butter to stun them and a Celery Stalker to deal great damage from behind while the Phat Beets in adjacent rows dish out the damage.
    • After a Nerf that made Nightshade recharge ridiculously slowly, Modern Day Day 14 became nearly impossible, as Nightshade is your only offensive plant. You just can't get enough down before the constant waves of Mecha-Footballers overtake your lawn. Thankfully the nerf was reverted and made the level easier again.
    • The special extra levels of various worlds are these. Most of them contain tons of extremely durable and tough zombies, and have some extremely tough challenge levels. After a certain point in those worlds' levels, the game even removes the lawnmowers for the following level in that world! You're required to have leveled-up plants if you even dare to finish these with any level of ease. At least Crazy Dave and Penny both warn you that you'll need leveled-up plants to even stand a chance.
    • Every world that has 4+ peppers of difficulty.
      • Dark Ages. Firstly, no sun falls as the world is a night world, making resources scarcer over time. Secondly, graves appear as usual, but now zombies can spawn from under them. Unlike Ancient Egypt, more graves can pop up, sometimes even under your plants if there's not enough space, easily screwing up your layout and allowing Necromancy ambushes to destroy your defenses. It also contains three Demonic Spiders- the Jester Zombie, the Zombie King, and especially the Wizard Zombie. The only saving graces are some good plants (Namely Sun-shroom and Fume-shroom) and that it's shorter than every other world in the game, for no reason in particular.
      • Big Wave Beach. Nearly every new zombie type is a Demonic Spider without a decent counter, the water mechanics work almost entirely against the players, and the new plants are underwhelming. The worst part? It's the first world with a whopping 32 stages. This was acknowledged by PopCap when they assigned difficulty levels to the different worlds: Big Wave Beach is the only one to receive the maximum difficulty rating of 5. For comparison, the next two worlds - Frostbite Caves and Lost City - received difficulty ratings of 3. Also, while the Travel Log normally recommends you do the worlds in order, it prioritizes some of the later worlds over Big Wave Beach, basically saying that skipping Big Wave Beach and getting plants from later worlds first is a good idea.
      • Neon Mixtape Tour. The world has a "Jam" mechanic where certain themes will power up certain zombies. These jams turn the special zombies into Demonic Spiders. And unlike Big Wave Beach, these jams will turn up early, making things really hard early on. Even worse is that the new plants, sans Thyme Warp, Phat Beet and possibly Celery Stalker, aren't that great either. In the Endless Zone, Greatest Hits, a level will often start with the Metal jam, giving you no time to prepare your lawn for the Hair Metal Gargantuar's devastating attack.
      • Jurassic Marsh. The world relies on a Dinosaur mechanic for difficulty. The dinosaurs can't directly hurt your plants, nor can they hurt them. However, the dinosaurs will help the zombies, helping them bypass your defenses in different ways. Your only saving grace against the dinos is Perfume-shroom, which recharges slowly and is pretty expensive for what it does. The dinosaurs become especially aggravating in the endless zone, La Brainsa Tarpits, where multiple dinosaurs can appear at the front of the same lane, and you can't tell at a glance which ones you've already Perfume-shroomed to do your bidding and which ones are still going to work against you.
      • Modern Day. It has assorted gimmicks from the various worlds, PLUS its own where portals appear that spawn the most aggravating enemies from each world. It contains almost every single zombie listed under Demonic Spiders (and the Neon Mixtape Tour zombies all have their special abilities on by default), and then some; the Newspaper Zombie has a stronger newspaper, and now eats and moves extremely quickly when enraged, killing most plants he touches and running through walls as if they were nothing. And the All-Star Zombie charges in at lightning speeds and instantly destroys one plant (except Primal Wall-nut) he comes into contact with.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The game being free-to-play and having certain features require payment. Electronic Arts, perhaps the king of this practice, publishing the game certainly doesn't help.
    • Then the December 2013 update for the second game ended the need to use keys to access certain levels, which pissed off all the people who'd used real money to buy keys.
    • And the February 2014 update made things even worse, with the change to having lost lawnmowers in the challenge levels disappear permanently unless you bought them back leading to accusations of "Allegedly Free Game!"
    • An update that completely removed both coin and gem drops was very ill-received by players of the game. While the coin drops have since returned in the next update, the gem drops were still removed... causing much vitriol and hate towards PopCap's decision (though this was remedied addition of Penny Pursuit, which would bring back gem drops during the Zomboss fights).
    • And yet another update which claimed to reduce the game's size by 20% did this when they removed the Ultimate Battle and Demonstration Minigame music scores altogether. Fan outcry was unanimous.
    • Around 2022 through to 2023, the game received a string of changes which everybody perceived as unnecessary, and even game-ruining. You are unable to skip the tutorial, certain hard levels (especially in Ancient Egypt) were trivialized and made stupidly easy (most likely to accommodate for new players), Cannons Away (the score-based Brain Buster minigame with Coconut Cannons) got removed, Adventure Plants were made to be gotten by seed packets instead of just playing the world, the Almanac got a complete redesign, and Seed Packets gotten from pinata’s had to be received one-by-one without being able to skip. So many bad changes have been happening that people are theorizing that PopCap is trying to kill their own game so that PvZ3 (which wasn't even well-received anyway) will perform better.
      • On a similar note, many fans criticize the stiffer animation of the newer plants since 2022. Their lack of fluidity makes them stand out from the other plants and feel like they came straight out of the game's Chinese version. Not even the zombies are safe; while their animation is still fluid due to reusing assets, the Zombot Hot-Rodicus from November 2023's "The Zombosseum" event has such bad and shoddily-put together animation that you honestly have to wonder how PopCap let this slide.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Neon Mixtape Tour, a Music-themed world set during the 80s... and Dancing Zombie (especially the Michael Jackson one) is nowhere to be found. It's relatively minor, but still.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • The Chinese version's Fairytale Forest world, unlike others, is based on fairytales instead of a specific time period. Despite this, there are only 3 new zombie types, with one being a reskin of another zombie, another being a stronger version of a zombie that already had a stronger version, and the last one is a Mini-Boss.
    • This is part of the reason why many consider Modern Day as a disappointing last level, as it barely utilizes the gimmick of portal ambushes,note  nor utilizing other world gimmicks,note  to create interesting and challenging levels, which fails to convey the idea that Modern Day is a world that's meant to be All the Worlds Are a Stage.
  • Ugly Cute: The Imps and the female zombies. On the plant's side, there's Primal Sunflower and the fiercely draconic Snapdragon.
  • The Woobie: The new Defensive plants as they take damage. Infi-Nut starts getting an Oh, Crap! look on his face. Sweet Potato tries not to cry, but she does get a very hopeless look on her face, the normally rough and tough Endurian and Primal Wall-nut begin to wince in pain, while Hot Date keeps his smile, it becomes increasingly pained-looking, and Murkadamia Nut's normally cute expression turns worried. Explode-O-Nut is the only one who seems happy as he's about to get eaten- mainly because he knows he'll take out a huge group of zombies once he goes down. Holly Barricade OTOH still keeps a serious look, but mainly because it's his leaf that gets eaten, not himself.

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