Is replay really that hard to do in game?

If you’re in live multiplayer mode with live time and live weather, with live traffic. Even pressing ESC to go to the main pause, will still have the clock ticking, and the air traffic moving about. You just can’t interact with anything until you unpause it.

It’s different situation when you’re not in Live time under non-live multiplayer mode, where a full pause will pause everything including the time and the traffic. But not under live mode.