OT, below we are discussing about Plants vs Zombies 2, not Dungeon Keeper. But free to pay game from the same company...
P1na: I can now see what you meant. The game is indeed harder, not sure if the zombies are more resistant or the nuts are weaker, but it is indeed harder. I have noticed that the early game is easier on any level, due to the duble sun. You can get your plants set rather quickly. However, even with the layout I want I get overrun easier than on the first game. I think one of the reasons is that they rush you with a lot of enemies, yet I do not have advanced crowd control plants available.
I think the level where I am at the moment, 24 I think in the Egyptian levels, is also a good example. You don't have any flowers, so you have only a set amount of money to set up defenses, after which the game starts it attack. So it is not the normal level type where you hurry up your defenses as the enemies start trickling in.
So there is actually quite a less strategy involved there. I just put the most powerful units on each line, until my money is depleted. Then I fill rest of the free blocks with the freeze bombs, as they are free.
After that it is merely watching, as the enemies start marching in. The only way I can affect the game at that point is:
- Keep putting those freeze bombs on free blocks whenever they become available. They come very slowly, and frankly their impact to the game is quite small.
- Use powerups to get you out of tight spots. In the beginning you have three, and naturally you can buy more of them with the gems (meaning eventually using real money). Such tight spots will happen quite often, ie. there will be lots of instances where you need to use the powerups.
Also as you suspected, that level really shows that e.g. the bucket-head zombies seem to take far more beating than in the original game. I'll be happy if two double-pea shooters can kill one such zombie before it reaches you, let alone if there are three of them coming. Not to mention those sarcophagus enemies which are even more powerful.
And when the zombies finally reach your plant, it seems they can destroy it in less than a second. In the original game, I think it took at least e.g. 5 seconds, if not even more.
So in the end, that level near forces you to use powerups (which cost money) because other than that, you can very little affect what happens on the screen, and just hope for the best and try many times until you get lucky. Once I got pretty close, but still I was overrun by the last zombies.
I guess EA and others are now experimenting different ways to lure (or force) people to use micro-transactions in these free-to-pay games. In PvZ2 it is making the game more dependent on luck and causing lots of tight spots where the only way to survive is to use the powerups/cheats that cost money eventually, or Dungeon Keeper where the players are inconvenienced by having to wait several hours or even a full day for mundane tasks, unless they pay up.
Yes, it is a business, but it would be nicer if they could hide it better that they are doing it only to maximize profits.
