Pragmata review – a giant leap for sci-fi games, despite a slightly tired story

Alright, alright – I’ll admit it. I was torn between excitement and skepticism when I first laid eyes on Pragmata‘s Nintendo Switch 2 trailer. On one hand, this looks like something I hadn’t seen before in the space genre – the concept of live hacking while you’re also trying to fight enemies. On the other hand, I worried about the cliche of another game set in space, and the involvement of the little kid who follows you around. What is the purpose of the quasi-parent/child dynamic? Would it serve the story? And why does Diana look kind of… oddly perfect? I worried that it was aiming to appeal to a certain (disgusting) portion of the Internet.

My fears surrounding Diana, the girl who follows you on your adventures, have not dissolved, but I need to take the game at face value for now. This is an excellent experience. Though some highly predictable elements did end up souring my enjoyment of the first hour, with classic space sci-fi tropes akin to “all my friends have died and I’m the last one left, I have to contact Earth”, Pragmata finds its feet pretty quickly for one reason: its gameplay is so strong that it almost doesn’t matter what the plot is doing or not doing. I’m just having a lot of fun – and it’s not just me, according to our Pragmata preview.

For the unaware, you play as Hugh (who sounds a lot like ‘you’, something I’m sure isn’t a coincidence for a character so self-insertable), the last survivor of an attack by evil AI on a base on the Moon. You’ll soon meet an AI, which Hugh names Diana. She’s a cheerful and friendly hacker, with the appearance of a seven-year-old girl. The two of them go on a journey to rid the base of bots controlled by an ominous entity called IDUS, meet talking cats, take down huge and fierce bosses, and fill up a home base with trinkets. 

While IDUS is a fantastic worldbuilding element, and the Moon feels abuzz with lore, the one problem Pragmata has is that there’s nothing particularly special about Hugh and Diana’s relationship, despite the game’s best efforts to make you think so. Though you gradually learn more about Hugh and Diana’s stories, their relationship feels stilted, as Hugh never really feels as though he fills the parental role the game tries to push upon him. They just feel like a pair of slightly awkward friends, even as Hugh is yelling at Diana to keep herself safe. Diana herself has a solid whimsy about her, though, despite some of her lines being cliched: “What’s it like on Earth?” When you’re able to give her gifts in the base, you occasionally feel connected to her joy.

Anyway, this is all to say that the story isn’t why you should pick up this game beyond the Pragmata demo. This isn’t a visual novel game, after all. No, you should pick up Pragmata because of the hacking, which is some of the most fun I’ve had in a game in years. While I’ll admit that I’m not very good at shooters (even despite my favorite game of all time being an FPS game), Pragmata’s combat makes me feel as though I am. It makes me feel powerful, stripping the enemy’s defenses down and blasting them to bits, and I think this is the mark of great action in a game. It’s certainly some of the most rewarding and riveting gameplay I’ve personally experienced in years.

It took me a bit of time to get a handle on the controls. While in combat, you have to plot a hacking path, all while dodging attacks, choosing one of four weapon slots, and potentially using specific hacking nodes. There are a lot of buttons in play, and a lot of muscle memory that needs building up in order to get good at it. Then there’s aiming and firing, which I’m not particularly accustomed to on my Switch – I typically prefer to play shooting games on my PC. That being said, I got good at Pragmata much faster than I had initially expected to – the game does a wonderful job of easing you into all its various mechanics.

There’s also a ton of weapon choices, modifications for your suits, hacking node upgrades, ability selection, and base upgrades. You unlock new stuff both as you progress and also as you hunt around for parts. Pragmata incentivizes you to explore the map, even past your primary objectives. The verticality and openness of each sector of the base surprised and delighted me. There were puzzles to be discovered, ones that not only felt satisfying to solve, but as though the game wanted to help you find them. That’s a testament to the level design, which is both visually striking and intuitive, particularly the Honkai Star Rail-esque Mass Production Array sector. Plus, even if you do get lost, Diana’s sixth sense can help you find your way back.

The saving system is one of my biggest gripes with many games like these. Doing things over and over again is one of my least favorite activities in the whole of life, but in Pragmata’s case, I can’t even be mad. You can only officially save at the base, but even if you die, the game autosaves, and Diana makes references to your defeat. The map also remembers your exploration, but the game warns you that you’ll have to defeat enemies again. This feels like the perfect solution for a game that doesn’t want to make things too easy for you, but that also refuses to piss you off. It’ll offer you to change the difficulty level, which I found myself uncharacteristically resistant to doing, and Diana will also analyze your gameplay and tell you what to do differently next time upon death, which I thought was neat.

Pragmata runs really well on the Switch 2, with minimal lag and a very consistent 60fps framerate on both handheld and docked modes. It really shines when you hook it up to the TV, as the dynamic lighting and beautiful environmental art are given the chance to shine – on the Switch 2’s screen, it can look a little fuzzy. My HDR-compatible TV gave the game its full range of colors and lighting, and I also preferred to play the game in dock mode as opposed to handheld. If you’re going to pick up the game, the Switch 2 is an excellent machine to run it on, in my opinion, so don’t hesitate there.

In terms of what the future holds for the game, I’d like to see more DLC. Some will be available, offering outfit options for Hugh and Diana, but I feel like the game could go further, offering even more fresh and exciting ways to play, with new modes akin to the Training Grounds feature. Just let me sit and hack for days, man. I’d also like to see this kind of gameplay in future games; a potential series could take the shape of an anthology.

Pragmata’s hacking/shooting combo is genuinely one of the most fun and unique combinations I’ve ever seen in gaming, environmental exploration is spectacular and feels very three-dimensional, and the number of ways to play the game is pretty unending. I didn’t sit down for a narrative masterpiece, and I didn’t get one – but I did sit down for some great action, and I was blown away by what I got. I hope Pragmata gets the excellent reception that it deserves, as its future is very bright.