Back in the early years of the Resident Evil series, Capcom used it as a jumping-off point to create a few other franchises. Dino Crisis, Onimusha, and Devil May Cry all riffed on the hit survival-horror gameplay of Resident Evil in their own ways, to varying degrees of success. It’s been a while since Capcom took a swing at that idea, and the Resident Evil series itself has changed quite a bit over the years. I can’t say with any certainty that Pragmata is an intentional spin on what the publisher has been doing with the Resident Evil games in recent years, but it feels like it was born from a similar spark.
Having apparently never seen any sci-fi horror movies in their lives, a response team is dispatched to a lunar research base that has gone silent. As they explore the eerily desolate station, a huge lunar quake occurs. Most of the team is sucked into space, and one member, Hugh Williams, takes a nasty fall deep into the station. All hope seems lost until a young girl finds him and patches him up. While Hugh is at first hesitant to have a child tagging along, he is quickly informed that she is, in fact, a Pragmata, a sort of android made from Lunafilament. She proves her worth quickly when the station’s AI, IDUS, identifies Hugh as a threat to be terminated and sends some robots after him. She is able to hack these robots, making them vulnerable enough for Hugh to take out. If Hugh has any hope of surviving long enough to get back home to Earth again, he’s going to need her help.
Hugh gives the Pragmata the name Diana, and she soon becomes more than just a practical tool for him. Despite being a mechanical construct, Diana’s behavior generally fits her child-like appearance. For all her capabilities, she knows very little and is eager to learn. Pragmata, the game, bets a lot on the player forming a connection with Diana both in narrative and gameplay terms. The story has a lot of twists and turns, and Diana is a big part of most of that. Her hacking ability is similarly inseparable from the game mechanics, particularly combat. It’s a good idea to hack even the most mundane of enemies before you start shooting.
The hacking is, fortunately, quite intuitive. You simply aim at the target to bring up a little grid. Use the face buttons on the controller to navigate a route to the marked cell, crossing over whatever useful boosters you can along the way. Once you do that, the enemy will temporarily be more vulnerable and take far greater damage from your attacks. There was a high risk of this process becoming a chore over the course of the game, but the minigame is kept simple with weaker enemies and throws in some interesting twists with stronger ones over the course of the game. The bosses, in particular, play with the hacking mechanic in sometimes unexpected ways. Diana will also occasionally have to hack systems that aren’t connected to killer machines, but those are fairly simple most of the time. It’s an interesting way to mix up the business of shooting ‘bots and exploring spooky places.
As for those aspects of Pragmata, they’re mostly familiar yet quite comfortable. Hugh moves around smoothly and can use his thrusters to jump, hover, or dodge. Aiming and shooting is a simple process that will be recognizable to pretty much anyone who has played a third-person shooter in the last couple of decades, and you can quickly switch between weapons by using the directional pad. As you make your way through the game, you’ll constantly be upgrading your abilities and parameters using the materials you find around the station. This allows you to customize how Hugh plays, to a degree, in order to fit your preferred play style. It’s quite satisfying to see your capabilities grow throughout the game. Since those upgrades depend on collecting items and completing certain tasks, they incentivize poking around every corner of the station and keeping your eyes open for goodies.
The lunar research station itself is as much a character as anyone else in the game. You’ll be visiting its various areas in a largely linear fashion, with new sections unlocking as you complete the previous ones. There are reasons to revisit them even after you’ve completed them, as there are some items you won’t be able to collect until you’ve done other things first. Each location you visit has its own vibe, with tons of little details to feed your eyes. They feel completely distinct from one another yet thematically appropriate, and each is generally capped off with its own extremely impressive boss battle. It makes for a really great loop where you come off the high of beating a boss only to roll into the excitement of seeing what’s waiting for you next.
This is the third time this year that Switch 2 owners have been allowed to get in on the ground floor of a AAA Capcom release, and you can generally expect a similar result in terms of technical performance here as we saw with Resident Evil Requiem a couple of months ago. The framerate is mostly consistent, but when things get busy, you can expect some drops. Diana’s hair also shows off the same stiffness we saw with Grace’s hair in the Switch 2 version of Requiem. The resolution benefits greatly from DLSS upscaling, naturally. The end result of all of this is a game that looks and runs quite well for the platform, with plenty of visual spectacle to make you happy you have Nintendo’s latest console. The audio is equally on-point, as one would expect from this level of production from Capcom. It does its job in raising the tension as you poke around the space base.
I really liked the overall atmosphere in Pragmata. It’s not quite full-on horror, but it’s very unnerving. It has some light moments to balance the dark, and Diana’s excitement at learning new things can certainly be heart-warming. The Sanctuary really helps manage the dread, providing a safe space for you to chill out and not have to worry about a robot slicing you in the back. Collecting knick-knacks to brighten the place up is a fun little side activity, and the place really does start to feel like home after a while. That comfort only lasts for so long, as you’re not going to get back to Earth by loafing around and chatting with your robo-daughter in a space lounge. Still, it’s a nice way to break up the action.
Pragmata is, on the whole, a truly compelling experience once it gets its claws into you. Whether it’s the story pulling you along, the prospects of your next upgrade hanging just out of reach, or simply a desire to see what wonders await you next in this bizarre research station, the game is extremely hard to put down. I’m actually happy that the game’s structure has natural break points in it, otherwise I might have just kept on playing until either my console’s battery or my own wore out. It’s a very smooth game to play, and once things really start ramping up, its grip becomes quite strong indeed.
While I had my doubts early on as to whether or not Pragmata was going to stay interesting all the way through, the game ultimately more than went beyond my expectations. It’s nice to see Capcom apply its considerable skill and craftsmanship to a fully new franchise, and the results are excellent. It’s gorgeous, packed with ideas, plays like a dream, and has a story that will take you on an absolutely wild ride from start to finish. I’ll never argue with having another top-notch science-fiction game on the platform, either. If you’re on the hunt for another great action game for your Switch 2, don’t let Pragmata slip under your radar. Do it for Diana.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Capcom
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