Recent reviews by Medic

TL;DR at the bottom.

I don't recommend this game because it's good. I recommend it because of the experience. Replaced is the 2026 equivalent of a janky Nintendo Hard SNES game. Unresponsive controls, trial and error platforming, backtracking, visual glitches, enemy spam. The issues hinder what could have been a great game, in it's current state Replaced is so hindered by these issues my two playthroughs was reminiscing about how the last time I felt this frustrated was playing Battletoads or Ghosts n Goblins. This truly felt like a remastered jank NES/SNES game with better visuals and music.

The first half the game is enjoyable and like the demo until serious bugs and issues change the game in the second half. Around then your skill with a 3 second cooldown to deflect a single shot gets nerfed. The ranged enemies begin shooting two bullets instead of one. Multiple enemies on screen will attack simultaneously and multiple times. It's common to be shot at from the front by two enemies, one shooting from behind, two armored melee units protecting them, a heavy charging, and more all at once leading to unavoidable damage.

Around this time gauntlets become more frequent requiring battling through 3+ rooms of 15+ enemies on low health with death resulting in a respawn at the start. Followed by the issue of inputs being eaten or delayed, certain actions are needed for a specific enemy to make them vulnerable, but being unable to target them when there's five enemies in a stack. The lack of clarity, being unable to see, and being incapable of targeting a specific enemy is a huddle until the credits roll.

Stat upgrades like more health, more damage, and more ability uses come from doing side-quests and finding collectibles that only available in that chapter. Neglecting will make the game nearly unplayable with how weak Reach will be. Dying from a single simultaneous attack would be constant threat. As mentioned this threat doesn't become prevalent until halfway in. Without a way to go back and get skipped upgrades, by the time the problem is obvious over half of all available upgrades are unattainable. Leaving the only real option of starting a new game.

Difficulty wise, I played on both Normal and Hard. Until Chapter 6, both are cakewalks. There were several gauntlets that took me over two hours and two quests that took an hour due to bugs resetting progress. The gauntlet problem was just unavoidable damage, on paper it's possible to avoid damage in a 1 v 4, but it becomes Nintendo Hard dealing with 6 or more enemies striking multiple times, simultaneously, overlapping/layering attacks faster than you, and moving faster than you.

The serious bugs is quest progress not triggering properly and on the Technician quest my progress reset on death but spawned at the end of the quest. Requiring backtracking to the start and back without dying. The platforming is not precise, it's common to get teleported 5+ feet in any direction to grab surface, while also failing to grab a pole/ledge/wall you are literally on top of. Random visual bugs are rampant around this time with the added challenge of the hazard effects appearing out of place or at the wrong time.

A less serious bug is achievements not triggering. After two playthroughs on Normal and Hard I'm still missing the unmissable achievements for completing chapters in the story and others. Hopefully if this gets a update it would be a minor combat tweak, it's so close to being enjoyable that one small adjustment is all it would take to make it more palatable. But, what I would call issues or flaws are so numerous, and so minor it feels like their intention was to make a video game that invokes nostalgic frustration at early video games for when all the issues appear and compound at once.

if you're a certified Unc that still thinks about games from the stone ages this if for you. If not, and/or you were born after 2000, you can safely skip this one.

TL;DR: 1st half is chill. 2nd half is a Nintendo Hard tribulation for masochists of a magnitude I can't describe.