Replaced Review - Style, substance, and a few rough edges

Replaced is one of those games that grabs you immediately and refuses to let go, at least visually. Its incredible pixel art, pulsing synthwave soundtrack, and dystopian Phoenix, USA setting create one of the most unique and striking premises I've encountered in years. But getting here has been quite the journey.

Replaced was first revealed at the Xbox showcase back in 2021, and it blew everyone away. Despite Microsoft showing a stack of impressive titles that day, Replaced was one of the most talked-about games to come out of the whole show. The pixel art alone was enough to stop people in their tracks. Then the years passed, and we heard very little. When information did start coming through, and release dates were announced, delays followed, which is never the most reassuring sign. Even the build I played arrived just a couple of days before this review, which is far from ideal when you're trying to do a game justice.

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Phoenix-City in the distance, glowing through the smog. From the very first shot, Replaced tells you exactly what kind of world you're in.

But we're finally here, and I'm glad to say the wait was largely worth it. Replaced is a very good game. It has issues, ones I'll get into below, but underneath those rough edges is a unique and memorable experience that justifies every year it spent in development.

Getting there, however, requires wading through a frustrating number of bugs that, while never quite game-breaking, came close enough to test my patience on more than one occasion.

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R.E.A.C.H. surveys Phoenix City from a crane gantry - A stunning image, and moments like this make the bugs all the more frustrating.

One particular bug caused the camera to lose focus entirely, blurring the playable area and making the game almost impossible to navigate. It eventually resolved itself when I reached the next area and triggered a loading screen. On top of that, I lost count of how many times I had to reload a checkpoint because the character simply refused to grab a ledge mid-platforming sequence, ignoring jump commands entirely and sending me back to square one. It's clear that Replaced needed more time in the oven, and these rough edges are hard to ignore in a game that otherwise deserves far better.

A world worth getting lost in

Let's start with what Replaced does brilliantly, because there's a lot of it. The visuals are simply stunning. Replaced is one of the most unique-looking and prettiest video games I've ever played. The pixel art is so artistic, so carefully crafted, that every asset and every object feels placed with real love and intention. From lush forests and the depths of sewers to cranes high in the sky, corporate buildings, slums, and backwater boonies, all of it looks incredible. The art team deserve every bit of praise they get.

The way Replaced plays with light and shadow is particularly impressive, even by the standards of a 2.5D platformer. Neon lights bleed into polluted mist, sun god rays pierce through smog, and smoke drifts from fire barrels in the streets. The result is an image completely soaked in a dystopian atmosphere. It genuinely feels like a living, breathing city on the edge of collapse.

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Every corner of Replaced looks like it was painted rather than designed.

The music matches it perfectly. Expect aggressive cyberpunk synthwave during combat and boss fights, and quieter, piano-led pieces when the game slows down. Some tracks even transition from synthwave into full-blown metal, guitars and all, which had me pulling my best bass face more than once. What makes it even better is that you can collect tracks as you explore and play them back on a mini radio you carry with you. It's a lovely touch for those of us who appreciate a great soundtrack.

The story of R.E.A.C.H.

In terms of story and lore, Replaced is a genuinely impressive piece of writing. You play as R.E.A.C.H., an AI trapped in a human body against its will. After an accident in his lab, he finds himself dumped in a disposal site where Phoenix Corporation discards those deemed incompatible with their organ harvesting programme. From there, his only goal is to get back to the lab and undo what's been done. Beneath that is a larger story about Phoenix Corporation itself, an organisation that began as a genuine people's project to help humanity rebuild after nuclear catastrophe, before turning into something far more sinister.

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The world Replaced builds is full of quiet, human moments like this.

The story is genuinely unpredictable, and I enjoyed every bit of environmental lore I found along the way: documents, fragments, and small details about the nuclear disaster, the corporation's origins, and the world that emerged from it all. The characters you meet are surprisingly good, too. There isn't enough time in a ten-hour game to build each of them into something fully fleshed out, but the writers do an excellent job with what they have.

Some of the themes Replaced deals with have obviously been explored before. Dystopian fiction has covered human suffering, corrupt corporations, the collapse of society, and sinister plots many times over across games, films, and books. But Replaced borrows just enough to make its setting feel richer and more immersive without ever feeling like a copy of something else. The organ donor story beat and the idea of a corporation that was founded to protect humanity and ends up exploiting it genuinely feel fresh, which is no small achievement in this genre.

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Cinematics are surprisingly excellent for a sidescrolling platformer

The side quests add another layer to all of this. They are small, self-contained stories that give you more perspective on the world and the people living in it. I helped a man get a blood transfusion and then tracked down a photograph of his long-lost family as he lay dying. I fixed a telescope for a man who then blinded himself by accidentally pointing it at solar panels that reflected sunlight directly into the lens, burning his retinas. 

Fixing that telescope meant tracking down a pair of binoculars from a little girl, who only handed them over after I fixed her broken arcade machine and beat her high score in an actual playable mini-game where you collect organ donors and ferry them to the hospital. Simple writing, but genuinely effective, and the way these small stories chain into each other is quietly impressive.

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Donor Rush is a the playable mini-game hidden inside a side quest.

Combat, platforming, and a game that needs polish

Gameplay in Replaced is built around two pillars: platforming and combat. The platforming is what you'd expect from the genre: jumping over chasms, grabbing ledges, moving crates to reach higher ground. There isn't much you can do to reinvent traversal in a 2D platformer, and Replaced doesn't try to. What separates the good ones from the mediocre ones is the quality of puzzles and combat, and Replaced nails the latter while the former is serviceable. 

Puzzles are generally simple and won't require much head-scratching, though there are a handful that demand a bit more thought. It's clear the game is going for a narrative-driven, cinematic experience and doesn't want hard puzzles interrupting the flow of the story for too long.

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Combat at its best: fluid, cinematic, and satisfying even when surrounded.

The combat, on the other hand, is exceptional. It's fluid, the animations are stunningly smooth, and once you get into the rhythm of blocking, vaulting over enemies, and firing your pistol, it becomes something like a dance where you're always leading. 

It calls to mind those 1990s action films where one guy takes on a dozen thugs and comes out looking effortlessly cool. There are bosses too, and while they could be more inventive, the showdowns have their own charm. The music kicks in, you're blocking, dodging, charging your pistol and unleashing shots, and before you know it, you're genuinely having a blast.

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Boss fights are proper showdowns, even though they lack that real punch to make them a bit more demanding

The game is not particularly challenging in combat. I barely died once or twice to enemies. The real enemy is the platforming, which is frustratingly inconsistent. One moment, you'll jump from one climbable surface to the next without issue; the next time you do the exact same thing, the game decides your character won't grab the ledge, and you fall to your death. It's annoying, and it's the clearest sign that Replaced needed more time to smooth out its mechanics.

It can get overwhelming too when the fighting area is poorly lit and the game throws a large number of enemies at you at once. It doesn't necessarily make things more challenging, but certain enemy combinations and sheer numbers break the flow that makes the combat so enjoyable in the first place.

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At times, the game will throw too many enemies at you, which can make the combat feel less fluid and fun

I did manage to completely confuse the game once. I was supposed to grab a ledge and continue along the intended path, but didn't spot it immediately and found what looked like an alternative route. I actually set up a puzzle in a way that gave me access to it, only to find the game started acting strangely: bugs, deaths, unfinished-looking level geometry appearing on screen. 

At that point I genuinely thought it was a game-breaking progression blocker. Eventually, I spotted the path I was actually supposed to take. Relief, mostly, but also a small amount of pride that my creativity managed to break things so thoroughly.

Performance

On PC, a 2.5D platformer with pixel art graphics is never going to push hardware particularly hard, and that's exactly the case here. I had no performance issues and was regularly hitting frame rates in the hundreds. I played on an RTX 4080 and Ryzen 7800X3D, but players on more modest setups should have no problems either.

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You shouldn't have any problems running Replaced at high frame rates thanks to its pixel art nature

Verdict

Replaced is a genuinely great game held back by bugs and rough edges that shouldn't be there. The combat is fluid and satisfying, the story is smarter and more unpredictable than it has any right to be, and the world of Phoenix is one of the most visually distinctive settings in recent memory. The art team in particular have created something truly special here.

The inconsistent platforming and the camera and input bugs are real frustrations, and they're impossible to ignore. But they never quite break the experience entirely, and what surrounds them is too good to dismiss. Replaced is a game that just needed a bit more time to become the polished gem it clearly wants to be. What's here is still very much worth your time.

And if you're a Game Pass subscriber, this one is a flat-out no-brainer. It's available on the service, which means there is absolutely no reason not to play it. For everyone else, the asking price is more than justified for what is, despite its flaws, one of the most memorable and atmospheric platformers in years.

Replaced screenshots