Replaced Review – All Shell, No Ghost

In 1945, the world’s first nuclear test took place in New Mexico. This revolutionary, yet catastrophic scientific advancement continued. Ever since, the weight of nuclear devastation has hung over our heads, especially right now, considering ongoing global politics. But what if those tests in 1945 had gone wrong? We witnessed the devastation of nuclear incidents with Chornobyl in 1986 among other nuclear disasters, giving us a terrifying example of the cost of nuclear science. Sad Cat Studios’ narrative 2.5D platformer answers that question, presenting a world where after the 1945 tests made a third of the US uninhabitable due to radiation followed by economic and social collapse, a mega corporation took over, creating a utopia city settlement protected by grand walls, at the expense of those remaining outside the walls being treated as little more than cattle awaiting slaughter.

In an alternative 1980s where, due to the effects of radiation, organ and other tissue transplants are in higher demand than ever, the people living outside the city walls, known as ‘Disposals’, are picked off one by one for “voluntary” organ donation. R.E.A.C.H. is an AI designed by Warren Marsh, tasked with finding donors for people in need of (or just want) a transplant. But when an explosion occurs in the lab, R.E.A.C.H. somehow ends up occupying Warren’s body and finds itself outside the city walls when the facility’s guards attack it. Stuck in a human body, Reach must find a way back inside the city so that it can reupload itself and continue its work.

As a side-scrolling 2.5D platformer, the majority of Replaced’s traversal involves moving from left to right, often having to overcome some platforming obstacles to do so. Despite the limitations with camera placement and pixel graphics, Sad Cat Studios has done everything in its power to make Replaced as immersive as possible. If it is nothing else, Replaced is an absolute visual and auditory glory to behold.

While it is in 2.5D, Replaced is not short on various camera tricks to keep its visuals looking varied. The camera will pull in and out of focus during key moments, adding depth to each scene, and there are even times where it switches to an almost hand-held style as it pans over a scene. There’s a masterful use of lighting and colours to give the pixel graphics detail and also make them pop, and to also resemble that iconic, vivid cyberpunk look that easily could have been lost in the graphical limitations.

In a game where you’re mostly moving in a single direction, the developers have built on the experience by adding a multitude of layers to the ambient sound to reflect the changing environment and also make this world feel truly alive; footsteps sound different when moving across various surfaces, rain bounces off different materials, you can hear mumbling from a television as you move through a settlement or the crackling of a campfire.

As much as a spectacle Replaced is, however, that’s about as much as it has going for it. If that’s all you’re looking for, then you’re in for a treat. If you were actually interested in its story, platforming, or combat, however, these are the areas that are unfrotunately far less polished.

Replaced starts off slow… very slow. In fact, an hour into the game, you will still be performing the utmost basic platforming feats. And even towards the end of the game, there’s still plenty of rooms where your only obstacle is needing to move a box from one side of the room to the other to climb up onto a ledge. With the introduction to the gameplay mostly consisting of just pushing the joystick or pressing a key to move, slowly, right, it’s a very poor and tedious first impression. Once platforming becomes more challenging, albeit it takes far too long to do so, things get a little more engaging. However, I couldn’t shake the constant thought throughout the whole of my time with Replaced that this game would have been so much better off as a Metroidvania.

Unfortunately, the more challenging platforming segments are only so due to clunky and unreactive controls rather than presenting well-designed obstacles to overcome, especially when compared to other 2D platformers. Reach often fails to grab onto ledges, leading the player to waste time thinking that maybe the ledge they’ve been attempting to grab is not the right way to go. And there was one too many times, both during platforming and combat, where I thought “I could have sworn I did just press the right button in time” when Reach has just stood there and taken a hit to the face during combat, or failed to perform a platforming stunt. Platforming levels also just don’t have the best indicators of where to go next, despite the game being very linear, resulting in a lot of trial and error in trying to find what ledge or platform we’re supposed to grab next.

Similarly, combat doesn’t do much better. While combat initially feels very satisfying, with attacks feeling weighted and enough variety in animation to make each fight feel cinematic despite the basic controls, this wears off very quickly. There are four types of attack that an enemy can perform: parryable attacks, non-parryable attacks which we need to dodge out of the way of, ranged shots which we can deflect once acquiring a certain upgrade, and explosives. All of these are given clear indicators. This sounds very simple, and it is to begin with, until the groups of enemies that we are facing grow larger as the game progresses.

Because these are 2D sprites, they can overlap each other, which can get very messy, constantly interfering with the player’s attacks. Certain enemies are armoured and need a specific, slow-moving attack to break through that armour before they can take damage. There’s no lock on, so if you’ve finally found a gap where you can perform this move, another enemy can easily dive in the way at the last second and take the blow instead. Similarly, when shooting an enemy with a shot that the player has slowly worked to gain (our gun is charged up by hitting enemies), or deflecting a bullet being fired at you, if a still-armoured enemy steps in while you’re mid animation, then the shot is wasted on them. This causes a constant loop of needing to roll to one side of the room to pick off the enemy that’s on the edge before rolling to the other side once the crowd catches up. Because there’s no manual lock-on, Reach will often turn around to hit an enemy that’s just coming up behind you rather than the one you were just about to perform a specific move on. Or, because of the unresponsive controls, will fail to turn around to deflect a bullet or parry an attack that’s coming in from the other direction. In the background of fights are “substitute” enemies waiting to step in once you’ve taken an active one down. Rather than standing to the side, they are in the background, but in some environments, the lighting doesn’t clearly differentiate them from the enemies already in combat, so they will look like they are part of the fight, and I would often waste a few seconds trying to hit them.

What’s more, there’s not nearly enough boss fights to break up this combat loop. We just keep moving right from one combat encounter to the next. If Replaced had focused more on some interesting boss fight designs to at least keep things interesting, a lot of its combat problems could have been ignored.

Luckily, Replaced is a narrative-focused game, so does that hold up? No, it does not. While Replaced’s story starts really well, with Reach having to learn what it means to be human while realizing its sole purpose and reason for its creation has been abused for a corrupt system, and the setting of this cyberpunk world which focuses heavily on forced organ transplants is a horrific one, the writing barely scrapes the surface of this despite both premises holding a lot of potential. Instead, it focuses on the revolutionary tale of the Disposals, who have set up a settlement outside the city walls called The Station, where the broken and the downtrodden seek someplace to call home, where they can recover from the suffering at the hands of the Phoenix Corporation. After Reach escapes the facility, it brings the one thing that the resistance has been waiting for to make its move, apparently it’s a real game-changer. No, it’s not Reach’s knowledge of the Phoenix Corporation or the organ donation process. It’s not even the fact that Reach has just escaped the facility and could know a way back in. It’s the gun it scavenged off a slain enemy, and its combat abilities. Was this the only gun in the world? No, but apparently they won’t be using that gun to kill more corpos and build an arsenal, instead the plan is to storm the city with the one gun. While the other leading NPCs find this plan just as stupid as I did, there are one or two further instances where characters make nonsensical decisions that seem random or don’t align with their ambitions in order to progress the plot or force drama.

The story isn’t helped by the unskippable dialogue. Strangely enough, the dialogue for the minimal side fetch quests is skippable, which makes the unskippable main dialogue feel even more of a drag. Especially without voice acting, there is no reason why the text needs to remain on screen long after the player has finished reading it – it just further drags out conversations, which I didn’t find particularly interesting to begin with.

Replaced is a visual treat built on a great concept, and does a fantastic job at immersing the player into its world through gorgeous scenery and deeply layered ambience. Unfortunately, that’s where the praise ends, as it doesn’t utilize its concept well enough to remain interesting, delivering a predictable story and tedious platforming and combat elements. I only recommend Replaced to those who really care about the visual elements, even at the cost of gameplay.

Jess reviewed Replaced on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.