Suddenly You're Spacedad! - Pragmata Review

Preface

I actually skipped the queue for this one because I had so much fun with this, and I figure doing something actually recent would be nice. That said, I’ve been so busy with the move back to Thailand (and the social stuff that comes with it) that I’m really behind on writing and such, and FORGOT TO POST THIS. So here I am now, three days late, just posting finally. I hope you enjoy this one, it’s a bit shorter than the usual review, but it was a really fun game! 

Introduction

So, what is Pragmata? Pragmata is a new sci fi shooter with a pretty interesting twist created and published by Capcom. If I’m being completely honest, I had zero interest in this game up until I actually played it. I’d seen some of the trailers and I thought it was fine, but nothing really hooked me. That being said though, I saw some pretty positive reviews being posted on youtube by people I followed, and I figured that since I do share similar tastes with them I’d enjoy it too.

I am happy to say that I really like the game. A lot. The story is really entertaining, nothing groundbreaking, but well written enough to really tug at your emotions. The gameplay though I would say really stands out, being one of the only shooters that I’d actually play on a controller. I’ll explain more of that later.

The game runs extremely smoothly on my laptop, which is where I’m writing this review from. After seeing how well it runs even on the Switch, since my friend is playing it on there, I’m convinced that the RE Engine is actually magic. Well, as long as they don’t try to make an open world game with it I guess, considering Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds. 

The game itself isn’t actually super long, but there’s a lot of post story gameplay stuff you can do. I actually think that this kind of length, like with RE2’s pretty short runtime, is actually a strong point. While the gameplay and story are entertaining, I think it’s good to finish up before the gameplay feels stale, and just have the rest of it be optional so it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The difficulty options available are Casual, Standard, and Lunatic. My first playthrough was on Standard, as Lunatic is only unlocked after finishing the game once.

As always, I’m keeping the footage in the early parts of the game so that there are no major spoilers. For this game specifically, I’ll be using footage from a new save on Lunatic difficulty, since I wanted to try that difficulty and you get the ability to unlock most of the gear from the start at a cost. 

Story and Presentation

Let’s start on the story and presentation of this game. The story starts off with Hugh and his crew landing on the moon to fix an issue that they were called in for. After entering the facility however, everyone else on his crew gets killed and Hugh is injured and left unconscious. Diana finds Hugh and patches him up, and they work together to try to get Hugh back to Earth.

The story overall is actually really cute, with the main focus for the most part being the two of them working together and growing attached to each other. It’s a pretty predictable story, but I think that for what it tries to be, it’s fine. I really enjoyed the dynamic of the two characters and I had a lot of fun while I was here.

Hugh is the main character that we play as, and is basically the space dad. From the start, we find out that Hugh doesn’t quite like kids, and he doesn’t quite like robots. This actually is a key factor at the start because he doesn’t quite trust Diana yet, but we see him actually really make an effort to be nice and good to her. Over the course of the story and in ambient dialogue, Hugh drops a lot of tidbits of personal history in the conversations he has with Diana, and I really enjoyed how they did it because the way he opens up more over time really feels natural. I also appreciate that he doesn’t just get over his team’s death immediately, and does actually talk about them a decent amount.

Our other leading character is Diana, who is a Pragmata. She is a robotic child who has a lot of control over the tech in the facility and her hacking is a key part in what is keeping Hugh alive as they fight.  Honestly she’s just a really funny and cute character. She draws crayon pictures for you once you find crayons for her, it’s super heartwarming. And when she hacks things, she chants in binary and it made me actually snort laugh the first time I heard it. Oh and can’t forget about her “taking a byte” of the hard drive. 

Can I just say that Diana is really well crafted? I know from other games that people tend to be really polarized when it comes to young characters like her. Either they’re only cute without so much of the childishness (and the chaos that comes with that) and people love them, or they get annoyed at how childish and useless they are (in story/gameplay) and how much they get in the way. I think Capcom has managed to actually strike a good balance with Diana, where she’s still quite childish and naive, but also provides a lot of gameplay use and a lot of cute scenes so that she is endeared to most players. There’s a lot of cute and heartwarming scenes between Hugh and Diana, and I just really enjoy it. Capcom knew what they were going for, and I definitely enjoyed it a lot.

Visual and Sound

Visually I think that Pragmata is a really pretty game. The style is quite sci-fi, while being quite realistic with a lot of twists. Initially I thought we’d be stuck in moonlabs the entire time, but the story managed to figure out why the areas would be visually varied and it worked out quite well. There are multiple costumes for both main characters to play around with too if you want to customize. I stuck with the basic one for the most part but it’s nice to have options if you want to change it up a bit. 

On the enemy side, I think overall it’s pretty interesting. I’m not a big fan of the style they were going for, but for what it’s meant to be, it looks pretty good. Enemy telegraphing is generally pretty good, visually and audibly. It does happen sometimes where you get caught off guard by an off screen enemy though, but if Diana will actually help tell you about incoming attacks so it helps a lot.

Gameplay

On the gameplay end, the game is actually really good. You will be playing as Hugh for the entire game, and his controls are generally great. You have access to four gun types at any point in the game. Main Guns have unlimited ammo and will be your last line of defense, though the damage they do is not top of the line. The rest of the gun types have limited ammo, but are much more powerful and you can find them out on the field. Red Guns do strong damage, Green Guns which help you manage large groups and Blue Guns help you manage different enemy mechanics or supplement your strategy. Initially you can only have one of each gun type, but once you get past a certain point you can hold two of each special gun, leading to massive flexibility in how you can approach any situation.

The other half of what you control is Diana. Diana rides on Hugh’s back during combat and hacks enemies that you face in order to open their weak spots so that Hugh can actually damage them. While your initial hack is free and unlimited, there are special hacks that work similarly to the special guns and are limited. Utilizing these can really force the fight in your favor. This varies from boosting your hack damage so that they basically just explode, turning all the nearby bots against each other so you can just pick them off, or even boosting the shooting damage you do. Different combinations can really help in different situations, so it’s always really nice to play around with. The combination of both Hugh and Diana really leads into gameplay that is very engaging and fun, with a large amount of flexibility depending on your preference.

I have to note here actually though, that I actually played this game on a controller. Now that might sound normal to most people, but anyone who’s been around a while will know that I genuinely hate shooting games on a controller. However, the combination of hacking and shooting, as well as the fact that you don’t actually NEED to hit a small weak spot consistently makes it feel quite good to play generally. Also I actually did initially plan to try keyboard and mouse, but I saw the hacking controls and went nope immediately.

Moving on, enemy design from a gameplay side was generally really good. There’s a good amount of variety in enemy designs and types, with upgraded versions having much more fluid and aggressive AI.  I will say, with the enemy density there is by the later points in the game, it does feel like AoE hacking should be a default thing, or the damage you can do without hacking should be a bit more noticeable. Another issue I did have is that sometimes the enemies will attack immediately as they spawn. This is honestly only an issue because the spawn animation hides the wind up, so it’s a lot harder to notice and avoid.

The bosses in this game were all really interesting and cool as well. Each featured unique mechanics and I just like them in general since, as I mentioned before, they telegraph their attacks really well and are visually and audibly interesting.

Once you finish the game, you actually get access to a bit of post story content. If you return to any of the old areas, you’ll actually be able to face upgraded versions of every boss. You can also refight these upgraded bosses, which is fantastic because it lets me just grind out currency to max stuff out if I want to while not being limited to grinding some rando mob a hundred times.

There’s also a set of new simulation challenges that you can tackle after the story as well. These are generally high difficulty challenges that really test your knowledge and skill, with rewards such as costumes and new weapons as your reward. The only part I didn’t like about this final set of challenges is the fact that you have to 100% the normal maps, which was unfortunately really annoying as someone who didn’t actually try to collect everything the first time around.

Conclusion

So, I think I’ve made my thoughts quite clear over the course of this review. I really liked Pragmata, and I’ll easily suggest this game to most people. It’s got a pretty strong set of mechanics, with a story that does resonate, though it doesn’t push any boundaries and is relatively predictable. For a player who likes complex moment to moment gameplay, this game is actually really crazy good. For a story focused player, I think as long as you keep in mind that it’s relatively predictable, then it should be quite an enjoyable time. If you’re in the middle like me, I can easily recommend it! I hope that this video has helped you decide if you wanted to try the game out!

I hope this helped you make a decision on whether you wanted to buy the game or not! Let me know if it did, or what I could do better otherwise! I hope you’re having a fantastic day, and I’ll see you next time!