Plants vs. Zombies™ 2 vs Rise of Kingdoms

How do Plants vs. Zombies™ 2 and Rise of Kingdoms compare on difficulty, ad pressure, in-app-purchase pressure and what real reviewers say? A side-by-side look, grounded in App Store data.

	Plants vs. Zombies™ 2	Rise of Kingdoms
Genre	Strategy	Strategy
Price	Free	Free
Difficulty	medium	medium
Ad intensity	high	high
In-app-purchase pressure	high	high
Typical session	medium	variable
Rating	4.7 / 5	4.5 / 5
Ratings count	432,148	186,195
Reviews say	What players like Hundreds of collectible plants and zombies with varied designs Engaging tower defense gameplay that's satisfying to watch Excellent animation and visual design of plants Common complaints Frequent crashes and stability issues on mobile devices High volume of ads, especially unskippable/buggy ones Expensive premium plants ($5 each) gating content	What players like Deep strategy with MOBA/RTS hybrid mechanics Engaging progression and rewards system Massive shared world with 80,000+ concurrent players Common complaints Extremely pay-to-win advantage (P2W players spend $500+/day vs F2P) Heavy ad presence exceeds actual playtime Unfair for casual/average players outside dominant alliances

Plants vs. Zombies™ 2 — Deploy an army of plants to defend against waves of hilarious zombies across time periods in this award-winning tower defense strategy game. (rated medium difficulty, high ad pressure) Rise of Kingdoms — Command 15 historical civilizations in a massive multiplayer real-time strategy battlefield where ancient Rome clashes with ancient China. (rated medium difficulty, high ad pressure)

Data: Apple App Store, as of 2026-07-10. Last updated 2026-07-10.