Plants Vs Zombies: Replanted brings the popular franchise back to its origins, and while it successfully integrates top features from various iterations for a new generation, some significant drawbacks exist. The original Plants Vs Zombies was a pioneer in mobile gaming, but Replanted doesn’t try to do the same.
PvZ stands out as one of the greatest games ever made, and its disappearance from our screens is perplexing. It embodies the essence of what games once were: pure, unadulterated fun. With its inherently goofy nature and humorous zombie notes that keep players giggling, PvZ never takes itself too seriously. Replanted successfully preserves this charm while updating the game for modern systems and TVs, offering the definitive way to experience the classic. However, fans hoping for new narrative context will find Replanted to be a faithful, one-for-one retelling of the original, which comes with its own drawbacks.
Plants Vs Zombies: Replanted
Release date: October 23, 2025
Developer: Popcap
Platforms: PlayStation 5 / Xbox Series
The game primarily utilizes AI upscaling to implement its updates. This process involved enhancing assets from the original game to ensure better compatibility with various widescreen displays and to achieve a crisp, high-definition appearance. It’s important to distinguish this from “generative AI,” which I would not endorse due to its potential to diminish artistic integrity. Instead, AI upscaling serves as an efficient method for the engine to integrate existing assets into the new title. The development team subsequently refined many of these assets, further improving their visual quality.
And luckily this means the ugly PvZ2 mobile iterations are gone, and the original style of plants and zombies return.
Replanted draws upon resources from nearly every version of the game released, to create one enhanced experience. It incorporates quality enhancements from Apple store releases, content from the PC version, and game modes (including two-player options) from console releases. Additionally, it introduces two entirely new game modes, each with its own two-player functionality. The game also features several unfinished game modes for testing, though it regrettably omits the “unfinished ice level” that was an April Fools joke back in 2008. Luckily all the pay to play aspects the “sequel” offers on mobile are not present.
The core gameplay of dueling with peashooters, watermelon launchers, and exploding plants against a variety of football player and Zamboni-style zombies remains intact. The game runs incredibly smoothly, ensuring the strategic opportunities work flawlessly in Replanted. In fact it’s easily the best running version of the game to date.
My primary experience with Plants vs. Zombies was on the PS3, not mobile, and I even achieved the platinum trophy last year. This wasn’t due to the game’s difficulty, but rather the PS3’s hardware limitations. As many may recall, PvZ on PS3 suffered from severe lag, especially in more complex levels. Tackling the highest survival levels often meant enduring lag times that were extended after significant zombie attacks. This issue effectively restricted successful gameplay to a specific layout, as the game would otherwise borderline freeze up.
Replanted thankfully doesn’t have this issue at all. It runs perfectly fine from beginning to end. I’ve had the entire lawn covered with plants and so many zombies on screen I couldn’t see green at all, and not once did the game seem to struggle with the complexity of the horde. I was able to keep placing plants and collecting sun without a problem. This allows the secondary arcade-style mini games to work flawlessly and become more fun than the original release.
The game’s updates primarily focus on a 1:1 rebalancing, leaving the core balancing untouched and story levels largely consistent. While this approach is beneficial for new players learning the ropes, the difficulty spikes in other areas, such as mini-games, remain unaddressed. Players can easily transition from a smooth story progression to unexpected challenges.
However, a welcome addition for experienced players is the new game speed option. This feature significantly improves the early game grind, allowing for faster progression and sun collection. I personally utilized the highest speed setting throughout the story to introduce a minor increase in difficulty, and the speed can be adjusted at any point during battle.
But the “speed up” function in Replanted highlights its “lazy” porting. While the game’s visuals are upscaled, the finer details of PvZ are neglected. For instance, speeding up the game also unnaturally speeds up the soundtrack. The original soundtrack, a pinnacle in gaming soundtracks, cleverly built anticipation by accelerating as battles intensified. In contrast, Replanted’s songs simply loop at their tail end without building any suspense. Increasing the tempo with the game’s speed adjustment only reinforces this laziness, lacking the creative intent of the original.
“Rest in Peace,” a new game mode, acts as a New Game+ for the story, introducing a moderate challenge to the standard levels. In this mode, players must complete the entire story without dying, and each level provides only one randomly selected lawnmower. This means a single zombie reaching the door results in starting the entire game over. While this concept sounds enjoyable, it could also further contribute to the perception of “Replanted” as a lazy remaster.
During one play session, I encountered a teleporting zombie that abruptly ended my late-game, near-perfect run. Despite my elaborate defenses of plants and booby traps, a standard zombie somehow bypassed everything and entered my house, leading to an instant “game over.” I’m still unsure how it happened.
On a subsequent attempt, I made it to the end, only for the game to inexplicably trigger a lawnmower, disabling my last trophy/achievement. These issues are incredibly frustrating, especially when they prematurely end a lengthy run and force me to restart from the beginning.
The game mode quickly loses its appeal after the initial playthrough or failure, becoming a repetitive grind. The levels remain unchanged, all unlocked plants are available, and there are no new elements to introduce challenges. The only real goal is to avoid complacency and mistakes. My third attempt at this mode was particularly frustrating, especially since my previous two losses weren’t even my fault.
Furthermore, the mode lacks aesthetic effort. While selecting it in the menu offers a cool visual, the actual gameplay adds only a static, purple, cloudy filter. This filter doesn’t even move with the camera, making it look terrible as the camera pans between levels.
I would have loved the mode to introduce some more creativity to say the least. Add more environmental effects, make the zombies sound different, or even look different. You could keep the same gameplay, just make it more interesting visually to play, but none of that happens.
Playing with a second player makes the experience significantly easier. While the co-op and versus modes from the console versions were included, the removal of associated trophies renders them largely irrelevant unless players prioritize casual fun. Interestingly, several other modes offer a co-op option that functions differently from the standard co-op. In these instances, Player 2 has the ability to shoot butter and access all features except digging up plants, a task exclusively reserved for Player 1, rather than being limited to their own plant selections.
Firing butter at zombies effectively halts their advance, granting valuable time to establish defenses. This ability is unusually limitless and has no cooldown, allowing players to perpetually hold back the initial zombie wave for several rounds if desired. While this simplifies the campaign, it introduces an innovative and engaging cooperative gameplay element. I found this to be the most positive change to the game, as it keeps both players fully engaged rather than the often frustrating system of dividing plants between them.
Cloudy Day, a second new game mode, introduces a refreshing and challenging twist. Unlike Rest In Peace, this mode features a dynamic day/night cycle and a new way to play. During the day, players can collect sun and place plants, but all items are full price. At night, sun does not spawn, sunflowers become inactive, and mushrooms cannot be used for sun. However, all items cost less during the night, allowing players to purchase two items for the price of one during the day. This innovative mechanic dramatically alters strategy, requiring players to plan for night attacks while managing spending during the day. This simple change creates some of the most intense battles in the game, though it’s disappointing that the mode is limited to just 12 levels.
Replanted misses an opportunity for creative freedom by playing it safe and not updating core elements. Many original game aspects, such as blurry textures, strange visuals, and dated “old school” animations, do not translate well to the new title. While faithfulness to the original is understandable, this update should have been a chance to modernize and improve areas that clearly needed it, along with having creative freedom to introduce new mechanics like Cloudy Day. But instead any changes that have been offered are half baked, or not lengthy at all.
In some regards the “updates” actually are a step backward. For example the opening sequence goes from a cool menu introduction, to the new Replanted logo covering everything. Or the extremely lame purple texture on RIP mode, and of course the terrible alteration to the music. Which also creates a really random guitar riff glitch when your plants die.
My one unforgivable grievance, however, is the game’s ending. While it commendably offers a faithful recreation of the original – complete with authentic music, old-school low-resolution visuals, and an undeniably catchy soundtrack – its presentation is baffling. Why is it relegated to a tube TV within the character’s home, playing out like an old VHS recording? The entire motivation for this journey was to witness the true ending with updated visuals, and this is what we get? This could have been an insanely iconic moment for fans, and it simply isn’t.
This contrast highlights the appreciation for Replanted’s upscaled graphics, yet also underscores the lack of attention to the intricate details that defined PvZ’s iconic status.
Is this a major issue overall? No, not in the same way that teleporting zombies in Rest in Peace are. This is more of an aesthetic detail that only dedicated fans of the series, or those who recently replayed the game, might even notice. In fact, many of the issues in Replanted will likely go unnoticed by new players. The game itself plays extremely well and remains outright fun to revisit. Zombies are welcome on my lawn any day.
