After a long wait and several delays, the game finally released in 2026. I have to admit, the first thing that immediately captivated me was the visuals. The retro-futuristic art style with a cyberpunk feel is truly one of the best in its genre.

Every frame looks like a living digital painting, and the atmosphere created by Sad Cat Studios is incredibly rich, truly conveying the loneliness and violence of the world within the Phoenix Corporation. The pixel art and dynamic lighting are incredible. The city and industrial districts feel incredibly immersive, and the premise of an AI trapped in a human body is intriguing and executed with a fairly intense pace.

Character movement feels agile, fluid, and responsive, especially when moving between platforms or engaging in combat. The audio design and soundtrack perfectly complement the dystopian atmosphere, heightening the tension at key moments.

While the combat feels stylish, the mechanics can sometimes feel shallow after nearly 16.7 hours of play. Some platforming segments feel repetitive or less challenging once you've mastered the movement patterns. There are times when the narrative feels slow midway through the game, sapping the momentum built up early on. Some of the side missions feel like routine tasks rather than enriching experiences for the main story.

Replaced isn't a perfect game, but it's a remarkable visual achievement for its developers. However, as a fan of cinematic platformers with a sharp pixel art aesthetic, I found it to be a perfect fit for all aspects of the game. This is a great start for Sad Cat Studios, and I certainly hope to see further improvements in future releases. 💯

Not terrible by any means but hardly good either.

Most of the game is clunky platforming with an awkward combat encounter every so often. The combat can be great every now and then when it really works but these moments are few and far between.

Also incorporates a lot of 'hiding' sections like INSIDE and Little Nightmares would, but the controls are so unresponsive they become a bit of a chore and a general annoyance instead of tense.

Haven't finished the game yet, but story seems just very okay. I'm not particularly into it but I am going to finish the game anyway because I'm stubborn.

Can't really recommend it, which is a shame because the visuals are incredible.

EDIT : Finished the game now. Story continued to be super generic not worth the time. Combat became more and more frustrating towards the end. Definitely not recommended.

The unabridged version of this review can be found on the Summit Reviews website.[summitreviews.biz]

Replaced made such an arresting first impression on me when it was revealed in 2021. By blending a 2D retro-cyberpunk aesthetic with a cinematic, action-heavy platformer, it presented such a unique and confident identity to the world that could only be neatly compared to, of all games, the as-of-yet unreleased sister game The Last Night. After a few delays of varying lengths, Replaced finally made it over the finish line, and I am beyond happy to write that it came together brilliantly. Its art direction is consistently breathtaking, and the gameplay supporting it is always simple but nonetheless engaging. It doesn’t always put its best foot forward, but it is a package that impressed and surprised me far more than it left me disappointed.

This cyberpunk story is set in alternate history 1980s America, where the tech-focused Phoenix Corporation has taken a stronghold over the lives of much of its inhabitants. You embody Reach, an AI who has inadvertently trapped themselves inside the body of a Phoenix Corp employee, and end up going on a sprawling cinematic journey across the city to try and return to their natural computer habitat, uncovering a deep conspiracy in the process. This description may sound formulaic, but it’s the fantastic scene-to-scene writing, deft exploration of many core cyberpunk themes, and a couple of neat twists that make it a standout story for the genre. Reach contends with not only the backstory of their creation, but how this links to the person within which they inhabit, makes them naturally ponder what it means to be alive, and how to take control of their pre-written destiny. Intriguing environmental storytelling and references to real-world history also help to properly ground this story within a believable reality. I think some may lament the lack of voice acting, but stellar cutscene cinematography and perfectly-timed soundtrack cues smartly worked in tandem to evoke emotion from me.

Replaced casts a reasonably wide berth in terms of the gameplay department, covering combat, point-and-click sections and platforming. This latter part is probably the dodgiest of the bunch; there are plenty of well-designed movement sequences that require everything from jumping up and across platforms and swinging between poles, to using a pickaxe to hold onto broken parts of the wall. Most of the time, this all flows together nicely, but there was some noticeable clunkiness in the controls that made certain movements far more difficult to execute than they should have been. This part of the package generally feels less polished than everything else.

Combat fares much better and has a solid amount of depth. Like any good Arkham-inspired model, it mixes hard-hitting melee attacks with counters, dodging, and a limited and chargeable ability set that can give you the edge during overwhelming moments. The main difference here is that there’s no combo meter, a deliberate choice to encourage the player not to relentlessly attempt to keep combat flowing. Certain enemies also require armour to be stripped with your pickaxe before they can receive damage, and one type can’t be easily hit without executing a triple counter manoeuvre beforehand. There’s a good amount of enemy and ability variety that’s progressively introduced as the game goes along, and most encounter designs have unique pacing that isn’t a direct repeat of a fight you’ve already had. Repetition does start to set in near the end of the game, but the model holds up pretty well until that point.

The final part of the equation comes in the form of this base camp that you’ll visit and return to after many of the game’s levels, slowing the game down to a level that feels almost point-and-click adjacent. You can blast through these pretty quickly if you want to, but there are a few quests and collectables to gather in these areas that house some pretty critical upgrades. There are even three arcade games with a cyberpunk flair to them, inspired by some classics I’m sure everyone will recognise. I quite enjoyed these sections, even though their presence is a bit lopsided towards the start of the game.

The main thing I should stress about Replaced is that it does take a while to get going. The first 2 hours felt wholly different to the game I’ve described above; its combat and platforming were really basic, and the first non-prologue area you do all of this within completely lacks what is interesting about all of the game’s later sections. From Chapter 3 onwards, it very rapidly shifts up to a higher gear of quality, just be aware you may be left wondering what the hype’s all about until reaching that point.

The big-ticket item above all else for this game was its visuals and art direction, and I think Replaced actually overdelivered here. Nearly every one of its major levels has a completely different location motif in mind, yet the overall direction nonetheless remains coherent. The city biome seen in much of the advertising is easily the standout, displaying an incredible sense of scale without skimping out on the fine details for everything that inhabits this space. The internal areas and quieter outdoors locations are also impressive in different ways, with plentiful within-biome diversity that makes even the less potentially exciting areas like the sewers still fascinating to move through. And even when an area isn’t particularly loud due to its subdued colour scale or less complex backgrounds, you can guarantee the lighting will still give you a show, piercing through the scene to demand your attention towards specific parts of the screen, whilst heavily contrasting with the darkest spots of the environment in a remarkable fashion.

Its visual identity is also perfectly in tune with its sound direction, most notably due to its diverse electronic soundtrack. Its combat themes are booming and adrenaline-inducing, never feeling repetitive or annoying, even when they repeat themselves. But it’s the slower tunes that I can see myself returning to the most; every return to the hub level is like an auditory warm blanket, mixing relaxation with melancholy in equal measure to really make you feel as if you just returned home after an arduous journey.

As for overall content, Replaced is much longer than I was expecting it to be. It took me nearly 11 hours to complete it on hard, tackling all of the side quests and mopping up nearly every collectable along the way. And with the recently added chapter select, my final 100% time sits at 12.5 hours. Even if you focus on the story and finish it in 8 hours, that’s still 25 to 50% longer of a game than many people were expecting. It feels like the absolute perfect length for what it was trying to be.

Replaced lived up to the expectations I had for it. It’s a compelling cinematic platformer that boasts effective Arkham-style combat, an incredible variety of locations and scenarios, and one of the most standout art styles the industry has seen in ages. I have grievances about certain encounters, the controls can be clunky even when you get used to them, and the finale is a letdown compared to the rest of the package. But, I can nonetheless easily recommend it if it caught your eye in the past. Sad Cat Studios delivered a great debut effort, and I can’t wait to see what they make in the future.

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A key was provided by the publisher for this review.