Pragmata

2026-05-23
Hugh is a fucking drip. Featureless, no personality, no charisma--no wonder his biological parents abandoned him. Needless to say the perfect choice for the human mentor to a tiny robot girl learning what it means to be a person. His big contributions to her education in humanity? "It's nice to eat a meal with your family." "Sometimes it's good to have someone really listen to you." Fuuuck, dude, shut the fuck up. He just watched all his friends die and he's reciting Hallmark cards to a child while showing zero emotional response to anything happening around him. How a man with the intelligence of Forrest Gump made it into space is truly some scifi ass shit.

Fuck it, you're not here for Hugh. This is a Capcom game, we're here for combat.

Combat in Pragmata is a true blue Zweihänder and once it clicks it does not unclick. It's like ice skating, shooting neon lightbulbs with a .22 in your right hand, and playing Snake on a cell phone in your left hand, all at the same time. Except sometimes the .22 is automatic and sometimes the lightbulbs are giant stumbling robot babies with pulsing red tendrils reaching out to grab you. Doing all of this with a barefoot autistic robot daughter who doesn't know what a high five is latched onto your back is something no other game has offered me. The closest comparison is Astral Chain, which is to say it is Astral Chain, except now your partner is an adorable child instead of a robot dog thing.

There are, however, two grievous sins.

One: no iframes. Not on dodges, not on climbs. Getting plinked off a ledge because you can't be invulnerable for the half second of the climb animation feels incredibly unfair in a game otherwise built around movement.

Two: it takes too long to reach a pleasing difficulty. The combat sounds complicated but will click quickly and then become repetitive soon after. Then it's a matter of the game layering on abilities, weapons, and enemy types to push your movement and hacking to Michelle Kwan levels of grace and efficiency. Which it does do. In the post-game.

I think my real problem is the Hugh of it all. It's Hugh, sure, but really it's that the world Capcom has built is as braindead and lifeless as the robots exploding pleasingly in front of you. Capcom writing has always sucked ass and is only ever good when it's stupid and funny--God Hand, Resident Evil, DMC. Pragmata is trying to be earnest and it cannot do earnest. So between the great fights you get Hugh droning, a transparently telegraphed evil-girl twist, and the truly fucking dire "Cradle Infiltration Log" collectibles, which would be hilarious for their Epstein-coded name if not for it basically being "Got to the space station today. Wow this place is big!!" doggerel.

The request for docking came in from Capcom. What new brand of carpal-tunnel inducing gameplay would I get this time? And 12 hours of robot cracking, jetpack blasting later, I am content, smiling, looking down at a single ribbon of smoke rising from a bullet hole in Hugh's helmet. They should have left all the fart-grade world-building in the airlock.