Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted Review
Blog Andrew Joseph 23 Oct , 2025 0
Call it an aging millennial sentiment, but I couldn't help but feel some comfort playing Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted. Not only does it update the original's excellent blend of approachable tower defense and puzzle gameplay, but it also recalls how quirky and endearing the games were in the late 2000s. Developer PopCap Games returns to give this classic game another well-deserved moment in the sun, adding new content, quality of life improvements, and features from other ports to create a more complete package. That said, Replanted strives to strike a balance between updating while retaining the look of the original. In the process, it delivers an uneven remaster that's the most complete version of Plants vs. Zombies released to date, but one that also feels incomplete in the most important ways.
PvZ's charm comes from its upbeat and fun atmosphere, which feels like an afternoon cartoon show you'd watch on Nickelodeon. In keeping with the series, “Replanted” never attempts to explain how the weirder side of the zombie apocalypse got started, or, even stranger, how the plants gained enhanced sentience to fight back. Honestly, that's still for the best, because the atmosphere alone helped the Plants vs. Zombies series go even further. The tone is always kept fast and loose, and the premise is enough to keep the sense of absurdity building.
The remaster brings back all content from the 2009 PC version, as well as nearly all new content from subsequent console and mobile ports, including material from the discontinued Chinese version of PvZ. Even local co-op and competitive modes from the console port return, something I missed the first time around. This makes Replanted a great opportunity to revisit why the original still exists today, and the many upgrades it's received over the years.
What makes Plants vs. Zombies so engaging is that it blends real-time strategy with the feeling of putting puzzle pieces on the table. It really comes down to the satisfaction of finding a specific method and adapting your unit to your needs. When the action begins, your squad of Peashooters and Walnuts will hold the line against zombie quarterbacks, “zombie” drivers, and other strange undead creatures, and it's fascinating to watch. Even as someone who played it many times over 16 years ago, I still find myself immediately drawn to placing my plants in the best tactical positions to keep zombies away from my doorstep.
The original's overall challenge remained generally fair and easy, but there were some unexpected difficulty spikes, and Replanted doesn't do much to address that. Granted, a lot of the challenge that cropped up was due to the light-heartedness of the campaign, which made the more difficult stages catch me off guard, thanks to the tough new zombie units I encountered. I found the challenges generally reasonable, but the difficulties can still be severe when you least expect them.
Replanted really strives to change things up and add something of their own that isn't seen elsewhere. A very welcome update for returning players is the ability to speed up combat. You can hit the fast-forward option to increase the animation speed by another three notches, which adds to the challenge of making combat feel even busier at this accelerated pace. This often helps clear waiting time in tasks that previously took up a lot of time. However, one drawback to this is that, unfortunately, changing the tempo also changes the music. While I did enjoy the more up-tempo remix of the songs, this means that the classic music that was added as the combat escalates has been disappointingly removed from the soundtrack.
One of the more novel additions is “Rest Mode,” PvZ's take on permadeath in the main adventure. With fewer defenses protecting your home, even a single zombie breaking through your defenses will result in immediate defeat and send you back to the start of your run. As a concept, it fits the style of PvZ very well, and I definitely felt that familiar tension from more intense missions. However, having you bring in all unlocked plant and seed slots at the start of a run does undermine a lot of the intended challenge, making it an odd choice if this is considered the most difficult mode in PvZ. It ended up not being as developed as I'd hoped, so trying new modes mostly felt underwhelming.
Replanted's most interesting and creative new addition is Cloudy Mode, which combines day and night gameplay elements into one battle. This shift introduces an interesting twist, making the sunny phase focus more on resource gathering and planning, while the cloudy phase focuses on building units with the advantage of lower resource costs. It's a neat blend of two styles of combat in PvZ that kept me very invested when the tide turned and when I was trying to make the most of combat moments. It's Replanted's most impressive innovation yet.
This remake also generally looks great in motion, especially when the action gets increasingly intense as the zombie hordes go all out and your plants do their best to stop them. Unfortunately, the upscaled visuals often stay a little too close to the original version's style and structure, and their expansion to larger resolutions can sometimes feel very artificial and uneven. This results in inconsistent and unintentionally sub-par quality, such as blurry and grainy character portraits or animations in menus, and unsightly grim filter overlays in Rest mode.
This unevenness also led to one of the stranger changes: the treatment of the original iconic ending music video. There are no spoilers or exciting endings to this ending, but it's shown as a video in another cutscene, condensed onto a classic picture tube television set in the character's home. This unnecessary flourish detracts from the final sequence, which precedes it by being on the same level as Portal's brilliant “Still Alive” finale. It's unexpectedly frustrating to see a celebration of the joyous energy of Plants vs. Zombies turn into one that feels like I'm just watching the end credits on YouTube in 360p resolution from 16 years ago. This type of decision is very much emblematic of the overall problem with Reborn, in that it plays it too safe as a remastered version of the game to avoid remaking elements of the main game, which has the downside of making it feel diminished in the process of trying to retain it.