Pragmata Review – Worth the Wait
The time has finally arrived. After years’ worth of delays, Capcom is finally releasing the hotly anticipated Pragmata. We spent some time ahead of its April 17, 2026, release date with a review build of the game.
Was the wait worth it? I might as well spoil that for you right away and say absolutely! Read our Pragmata review to see why you’ll want to give this unique action game a shot.
Stuck on the Moon
Without revealing too much about the story, in Pragmata you play as Hugh Williams, who is sent with his crew to a lunar base, ostensibly to repair something. It starts as just another day in the far-off future, where this mysterious material called Lunafilament, created by Lunam Ore found on the moon, can be used in massive 3D printers to create, well, just about anything on the moon. Entire biomes have been re-created there, from the sprawling metropolis of New York, to a jungle, and other locations that feel like they were ripped straight from Earth, except for the whole murderous rogue AI that greets the crew upon their arrival.
Enter Diana. Well, her identity before she met Hugh, who gave her that name, is D-I-0336-7. She is a state-of-the-art Pragmata android, who was inexplicably created to have the likeness of a seven-year-old girl, rosy cheeks, large, curious eyes, platinum waist-length hair, and an adorable demeanor included. After saving Hugh from certain death, she quickly becomes a key reason you start to survive the ordeal, as she has special hacking abilities.
Real-time Hacking Is Ace
Diana’s hacking abilities must be used in real-time. Whether hacking a door, activating a beacon, or attacking enemies in this manner, it all must be performed in real-time. This might sound daunting at first, but hacking is done on a simple grid. You simply hold L2 to aim at an enemy, then move a cursor from the upper-left portion of the grid using the face buttons, one square at a time. Navigate the cursor to a square with a power button icon, and the hack is complete. Diana can equip special hacks, such as Decode, which if your path to the power square includes, will bring down the enemy’s defenses once the hack is complete. In any case, performing a successful hack will mark that enemy as OPEN, and certain spots on their body will physically open up. Hugh’s projectile-based weapons can then deal quite a bit more damage. A good example of this is in large, humanoid-shaped AIs which, when OPENed, show large power packs as a weak point. It feels stressful solving a simple maze-like puzzle while also dodging enemies and managing your shots the first couple of times, but it’s easy enough that most people will get the hang of it after just a few fights. Hacking an incoming missile to send it right back is always so damn satisfying.
Combat is ultimately a varied and fun experience. You start out with a single handgun-like tool, sort of in the same vein as Dead Space. But rather than have a multi-tool that transforms into other weapons as needed, that is just one of up to four weapons you can have equipped. Two offensive weapons and one defensive tool slot round out the d-pad’s uses, and while the main gun (called a Grip gun, which acts like a pistol) has unlimited ammo that recharges automatically over time, the other slots are limited in use, with replacements found in the field. There is a shotgun, sniper, decoys, shields, and more options to discover. Gunplay is decent enough, even if Hugh’s suit is bulky and a bit slow.
Familiar Mechanics
Pragmata includes a jump ability, and there are several sections of the game which incorporate platforming. Hugh’s suit sports a fancy set of jet thrusters, which can help him sprint at a decent speed, but also enable him to jump and hover for a short time. Just like his arsenal of guns and mods, he can level up and stay in the air longer, to the point where you can take on multiple enemies in one jump. This even includes airborne hacking for the especially talented multi-taskers out there.
The game revolves around Hugh attempting to contact Earth to let them know what has transpired on the base. There is a sophisticated tram system, which serves as a way to fast travel around the station. Roaming around the seemingly deserted station are rogue AI machines. Since we’re on the moon, almost everything, even seemingly living beings, are created from Lunafilament. Many of the enemies can kill you in just a few hits, and dodging becomes key to avoiding getting swiped. Hugh can only heal using special pods, which have to be recharged back at the shelter, so avoiding damage becomes a high priority early on. As you find checkpoints, you’ll have the option to return to your shelter via the tram system, at which point enemies in the area will be reset, a mechanic made popular by the Soulslike genre.
At the shelter, you can upgrade Hugh’s suit, his Grip gun, and Diana’s base hacking stats. You’ll earn four different currencies to upgrade your other weapons and tools, equip mods which change various aspects such as how much damage you take when your HP dips, or how quickly charging certain weapons takes, and even aspects of Diana’s hacking such as an offensive mode, where she deals more damage if you manage to hit an enemy with Hugh’s weapons while the hacking panel is open. An always-chummy robot named Cabin provides an interface to upgrade the shelter, by spending special (and relatively rare) Cabin coins via a stamp book. There are some purely cosmetic upgrades available, but also a bingo mechanic where if you stamp a full row or column of the book, you’ll earn more powerful upgrades. There’s also a challenge pod where you can run training missions to both hone your skills and earn more coins and other currency.
Rare Earth Collectibles
There are also items called Read Earth Memories, or REMs. These are blueprints for built-in replicators within the shelter, of seemingly random items from the Earth, such as a “working” CRT TV, giant dice, a globe of the Earth, and even a slide with a ladder. You have the option to gift these to Diana, who will excitedly accept them, and even play with them at her leisure once they are installed. Diana acts just like the seven-year-old she appears to be, too. She talks a lot, especially with questions for Hugh about life on Earth, because she has only known life aboard the lunar base. Hugh tepidly gets along with her at the start of the game out of necessity, but does rather quickly become endeared to Diana. If you choose to give Diana the REMs, she also has some gifts of her own, which at first seem sort of corny, but warmed my own heart. I won’t spoil them here, but Capcom nailed Diana’s character as a cute, curious, funny little “kid” without making it too cringeworthy.
While Pragmata draws inspiration from the Soulslike genre, one area in which It eschews genre tropes is its difficulty. There are only two difficulty levels available at the start: Story, and Standard. On Standard, most enemies can kill you in a few hits, as is tradition, but their hit animations are obvious, and dodging windows are generous. You can unlock a more difficult setting after first clearing the campaign, which will probably satiate those looking for a harder challenge, but at least on the first go, Standard shouldn’t provide much of a hassle for average Soulslike or action game players. Bosses do present multi-phased challenges, and you’ll probably need to try some more than a few times, but it’s also easy to grind out a couple of upgrades by taking out lesser enemies in the area before triggering the boss fight, then heading back to the shelter, and repeating until you’re upgraded enough to take the boss on again.
Impressive All Around
Capcom’s RE Engine is doing some seriously impressive work these days. Pragmata is a beautiful game that takes advantage of all the latest rendering tech. On Steam, ray-traced global illumination and path tracing enable incredible lighting effects and smooth, realistic-looking reflections. The sci-fi world on the moon is crisp, and basically all in-game assets look incredible both up close and at a distance. While my RTX 4070 with 8 GB of VRAM needed DLSS on to achieve a frame rate of around 50 at my laptop’s native 1440p resolution, the slight drop in overall frame rate was more than made up for with presentation. When I first made it to each new biome, I would always spend a few minutes simply walking around slowly and looking in awe at the new, amazing sights in front of me. The attention to hair rendering seen in Resident Evil Requiem also makes an appearance in Pragmata, and the effect on Diana’s hair is pronounced. It feels like a natural animation, but the effect isn’t cheap, so your mileage may vary depending on the hardware you’re using. The RE Engine displayed consistent performance on my system, especially whenever the action picked up, and I was fighting handfuls of enemies at a time. Performance shouldn’t be an issue if you have a decent system.
Pragmata is one of the strongest releases of the year. It melds mechanics that are rarely combined and does so expertly. When you are able to smoothly hack enemies while also navigating a dynamic battlefield in real-time, it can make you feel like a multi-tasking genius. The entertainingly bizarre story also has heart-warming moments, while the gorgeous visuals of the beautiful Lunar sci-fi world, Capcom keeps you guessing with what new, incredible biome you’re going to be exploring next as you defeat a section’s boss. Soulslike veterans, or even just action game players in general, will probably find the Standard difficulty mode a bit too easy, but when the core game loop is this fun, I don’t think it really matters. Capcom is on a roll in 2026, and the trend has continued with Pragmata unabated.
Pros
- RE Engine looks and performs incredibly
- Diana is a cute, helpful character
- Environments are very detailed, and quite varied
- Combat plus hacking puzzles combine for a fun time
- Soulslike mechanics aren't heavy-handed or shoehorned in
Cons
- Standard mode will be too easy for some
- Diana may annoy some heartless gamers
Pragmata review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.
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