Capcom has been absolutely killing it these past few months, and their latest title, PRAGMATA, is no different. Senior Editor Cassie Peterson and I have been playing the game over the past week or so, and she's got a full review for you on the Xbox version right here. As of my writing this, she hasn't written that yet, but I'm sure it's glowing because we've both been having a blast. The core gameplay of third person shooting along with the puzle-like hacking minigame really scratches that itch previously only scratched by The World Ends with You and its sequel. Levels are layered, detailed, and filled with secrets. And Diana is just an adorable little bean who protects you just as much as Hugh protects her. The story's great and it's just as replayable as Resident Evil games, though performance on Switch 2 isn't as good as Requiem's effort.
PRAGMATA puts you in the space boots of Hugh, who, through various circumstances, finds himself stranded on the moon base Cradle. The Cradle's scientists have been investigating a miracle material called Lunafilament, which can be used to print virtually anything. When Hugh and crew arrive, however, the Cradle seems to be abandoned, in a state of disrepair, and filled with hostile robots controlled by the station's AI, IDUS. When his comrades are all killed, he meets a state-of-the-art PRAGMATA, who he names Diana. While Hugh is a great shot with his Grip Gun, his robotic foes are virtually invincible unless Diana hacks them first. So, the two team up to find a way back to Earth, or at least inform them of the dangers present on the moon.
On the surface, PRAGMATA looks like an average third-person shooter, albeit with some fancy movement options like a dodge, jump, and float. Take aim at a bot, however, and Diana will pull up her hacking interface. This overlays on the right side of the screen while all the action is still happening, and to open up a bot for damage, you need to move your cursor to the green node on the grid while moving through bonus hacks, OPEN nodes to increase open time, and avoiding red nodes. Touch a red node or take damage and the hack will be reset, but reach the green node and you'll do a chunk of initial damage and open up your target for Hugh to shoot them. It gets a bit more complex once you add in other weapons, Diana's Overdrive, equipable mods and hacks, and more.
Hacking and shooting gives combat a super fun, "pass the puck" style pace where you need to pay attention to both gameplay styles while swapping the majority of your attention back and forth to deal the most damage you can. It's a great feeling when you finally master it, and can hack into an enemy and start hacking another while simultaneously shooting the former with a big laser beam or hefty shotgun.
I did just about everything I possibly could in the game (except for shooting the hidden statues scattered throughout each level), and it took me a little over 10 hours, including the post-game. It's a blast the whole way through, and surprisingly, feels perfect for portable play thanks to the segmented level design. As you explore each sector of the Cradle, you'll find passages that take you back to your home base, the Shelter, which slowly and adorably gets taken over by the toys you find for Diana. You find these hatches every 5 to 10 minutes or so, making it easy to play a small chunk of the game, head back to base to heal, upgrade, and save the game to take a break.
Despite being perfect for Switch 2 in that regard, performance does leave a bit to be desired, especially as the game reaches its climax. In docked mode, you'll be getting anywhere between 30 and 60 fps, with the game jumping around frequently but straying closer to the target of 60 more often than not (around 54 to 58 fps). Dips are annoying, but don't impact actual gameplay too much. That is, until you reach the game's final area, where things just break down. I can't show you that section here, but it genuinely made me nauseous and gave me a bit of a headache to play. You know it's bad when picking up collectibles will noticeably bump the fps up just a little. Here is where I was very thankful for the segmented nature of the game, and I would often return to base to complete some of the Training Simulator missions. Portable mode can help sand off some of the framerate edges in the rest of the game with the VRR display, but even that can't save you in this area.
It's unfortunate that the game comes so close with performance, and while it reaches higher heights than Requiem in terms of framerate and more consistently gets to 60, its dips feel lower and more noticeable. It's not as bad as Monster Hunter Stories 3, but does suffer from some low resolution issues which make text a bit hard to read in portable mode. I don't regret playing the game on Switch 2, especially since I plan to chip away at new game plus and the Lunatic difficulty modes when I have some free time, but knowing what I do now, I probably would have picked up the PC or PS5 versions instead. I hate to say this for every Capcom Switch 2 release, because all the one's I've covered have been really impressive, but hopefully they can fix some of these issues with a patch or two.
Even with the performance and resolution issues, PRAGMATA is a fantastic game and easily one of my favorites of this year so far. The gameplay is a ton of fun, the story is heartfelt, the world has tons of secrets to discover, and it's intensely replayable. If this represents the start of a new franchise from Capcom, I can't wait to see what's next.
