2026 is a big year for Capcom, and while Resident Evil Requiem was always going to be a tremendous hit, it would be a lie to say that I had particularly high hopes for Pragmata.
I am delighted to have been proven tremendously wrong.
Pragmata tells the story of Hugh, a spacefarer who becomes trapped on an abandoned lunar research station, and Diana, the android child he finds there.
On the hunt for an escape back to Earth, Hugh and Diana are forced to contend with the station's hostile rogue AI, IDUS, who sends waves of militarised robots to eliminate them.
In terms of gameplay, Pragmata takes clear inspiration from survival horror, encouraging precise aim and strategic combat, such as kneecapping bots to knock them down.
It firmly sets itself apart, however, via its central gimmick of hacking.
All of the enemies you face have armour that makes them almost invulnerable. But, it's through Diana that players can complete a real-time grid-based puzzle to hack these enemies, exposing their weak spots and allowing them to be killed.
Just as a horror like Resident Evil creates tension in its atmosphere, solving these puzzles on the fly evokes a similar feeling through its combat, causing even the easiest fights to feel stressful.
This system is very cleverly augmented by a system of nodes. By passing through certain marked points on the grid, you can increase your damage or apply a variety of status effects on your opponents.
My personal favourite use of these is combining Multihack and Confusion, which when used together can cause a room full of bots to begin mindlessly attacking one another.
Hugh also uncovers a serious arsenal of weapons throughout his journey, offering everything from straight damage to holographic decoys that can be used to lead bots into laser traps.
While many games with such a specific central gimmick often grow stale quite quickly, Pragmata's hacking system never falters; if anything, owing to the additions of new weapons and nodes, it only gets better as the game progresses.
The early hours are often quite easy, with specifically denoted trial rooms providing the bulk of the challenge.
And while by the end, the game had certainly ramped up the difficulty, I still almost never found myself struggling. This is not to say that the game is easy, but rather that it forces you into more cleverly using the tools at your disposal.
The way Pragmata rewards your skill and your smarts makes for one of the best combat systems I have ever experienced.
View oEmbed on the source websiteThis is all supplemented by a linear world with plenty of secrets to find if you're willing to put in the effort, and a set of training challenges to help you earn upgrades – it's nothing spectacular, but I thoroughly enjoyed trying to complete them all anyway.
Although the combat was stellar from start to finish, I spent much of my playthrough far less enthused by Pragmata's story.
On the surface, Pragmata is a story of Hugh and Diana's quest to escape the moon, but the early hours are narratively thin, almost entirely relying on Hugh's belaboured lectures to Diana on what it means to be human.
The idea is fine, but the writing of these scenes is often quite stilted, and when combined with Hugh's overly friendly tone lend him an uncanny air, and one that almost makes you wonder if he is the robot.
Hugh and Diana's relationship felt forced enough, in my eyes, that I was reminiscing on the five minutes of banter between Hugh and his crewmates in the opening scene, wondering if perhaps Pragmata would have been better if he simply had an inanimate suit to do his hacking for him.
Thankfully, beyond this, Pragmata's narrative develops into a significantly more interesting story, an ostensible cautionary tale about the dangers of AI.
Of course, the main themes are not hard to grasp – you spend the entire game fighting against a hostile rogue AI after all – but the narrative threads that run under the surface betray a more nuanced fear.
Delphi, the corporation that owns the station, is mining Lunafiliment, a substance being used for a cutting-edge printing technology that allows them to create anything from footballs to entire cities effectively out of thin air.
Notes and logs dotted around the facility tell the stories of Delphi's former employees.
Initially, many are delighted at the opportunity to work on such important research. Lunafiliment is a miracle in their eyes, and one that will undoubtedly save humanity.
Later on, however, things begin to devolve. As is the case with many corporations, the pristine public faces obscures more sinister goings-on.
Delphi progresses from building cities and buildings into weaponry, churning out the robots that plague your trek through the station; a technology billed as having the power to save humanity cynically twisted into one with the power to destroy it.
It is not difficult to draw parallels between Delphi and contemporary tech companies of our world whose AI capabilities are already being put to use in conflicts across the globe.
More subtle points about the nature of humanity pervade the minds of Delphi's more philosophical employees, who question if offloading creation, thinking and more to AI risks corrupting what makes us fundamentally human.
Considering the clunky exposition Hugh spouts to Diana in the early hours, I was glad to see Pragmata pivot into these deeper themes later in the game.
When it finally learns to show, and not tell, Pragmata's story shifts for the better, with a strong second half peppered with twists that are satisfying, if perhaps a tad trite.
Initially, I thought Hugh and Diana were Pragmata's one big drawback, but by the end of our time together, I could happily say that this is a story that comes together in the end.
View Green Video on the source websiteWhen Pragmata was first announced, I had zero interest in playing it, thinking it to look generic at best.
I am always happy to be proven wrong about a game, and Pragmata may turn out to be the biggest surprise of the year for me, and certainly the most welcome one.
It's short and it's sweet, and while I still have some slight reservations about the way it handles its story, its electrifying combat had me truly locked in in a way few other combat systems ever have.
It doesn't overstay its welcome, and I am already itching to jump into a new game for another round.
I do still think Diana is a bit annoying, though.
Pragmata releases on 17 April 2026 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.
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