Instead of hovering over a garden and placing amped-up plants to defend against a variety of silly, undead fighters, you now take direct control of a single creature on either side of the conflict and engage in one of a few types of online, third-person-shooter battling. GW2's core concept remains the same as the original-meaning the series barely resembles the popular, accessible tower-defense game it's named after. In short, everything good about the original 2014 game has gotten better, and everything bad about it has gotten worse.

GW2 does a lousy job inviting players into its universe, because it wallops them over the head with a sloppily curated single-player campaign, a confusing meta-structure, and a ridiculous focus on grinding for content unlocks. Platform: Xbox One (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Windowsīut boy, do EA and Popcap seem to have it in for players in search of that content.