Review – Pragmata – Gamerview

Since its release, The Last of Us has been a source of inspiration for several parenthood-themed games. followed in its wake as a great successor to the formula, where we saw Sam and BB crossing America. Not wanting to be left out, Capcom brought , a game that, since its initial trailer, had been leaving players curious about what the story would be told.

Some ideas were reworked in relation to the first trailer released, but the central idea remained the same. This is the first work as interim director for Yonghee Cho, who is already known for other excellent appearances as art director or model designer in titles such as Nier: Automata, Bayonetta 2, Resident Evil 3 Remake and one of my favorites, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Has Pragmata stolen the spotlight from Cho in his previous works?

Loneliness is always accompanied

Pragmata opens with the arrival of Hugh, James, Nicholas and Ken at the Delphi lunar base, the company responsible for one of humanity’s most important technological advances: Lunafilament, or LNA. This revolutionary technology, discovered after years of studying the mineral called Lunum, found on the Moon, allowed humanity to make a great technological leap.

Hugh and his team are sent to the Moon to find out why the place stopped communicating with Earth, carry out necessary repairs and report any and all supposed changes to the place to the company. However, the site is apparently abandoned and extremely damaged. With the help of a bot instantly created in a Lunafilament replicator, they ask to be carried forward, past the rubble.

As the bot makes its way, a seismic shock hits the place and throws everyone underground, where they are separated from each other. Hugh is about to die due to damage to his spacesuit, but a little girl appears and saves him. The mysterious young woman manages to manipulate the LNA and repairs Hugh’s suit, but he is not safe, after all the bot that was with them is soon manipulated by the lunar station’s main AI, called IDUS (Intelligent Unified Direction System).

Lunum’s outer shell proves resistant to Hugh’s bullets, but the young woman can easily hack the machine, exposing its muscles and systems, allowing Hugh to quickly get rid of the obstacle. Their partners scream through the communicator before they are all killed. Hugh is alone, after all there are apparently no other humans in the place, but at his side is a marvel of technology: a Pragmata.

The first steps of childhood

Our young companion’s name is DI-0336-7, however, as it is a very long and complicated name to repeat, Hugh calls her Diana. Alongside her, Hugh will discover what happened at the lunar station, as well as learning more about himself and some of the secrets of life he never thought about experiencing. Diana will also learn a lot from her new friend and guardian, whether it’s about what it’s like to be human, what it’s like to be a child and, most importantly, what it’s like to be truly alive.

Hugh’s first step is to reach the place called the Cradle. Here, he and Diana can rest and upgrade their equipment by spending Lunum filaments and upgrade resources. With Lunafilaments, Hugh can create weapons and modules for young Pragmata’s hacking, as well as improving her suit and sensors. However, over time, in addition to the Lunafilaments, he will need pure Lunum cores. Upgrade features improve Diana’s outfit, hit points, main weapon, and damage and hacking speed.

Initially the Cradle is very empty, but as the story progresses, Hugh and Diana find the LNMs, which are fragments of Earth locations and furniture, created to make people on the Moon feel closer to home. With these LNMs, young Pragmata slowly begins to understand and act more and more like a child of Earth, experiencing things like toys, camping and even what would be her biggest dream: the ocean.

The Cradle becomes more advanced as the game progresses when Cabin, a company mascot, appears. He introduces Hugh to a training booth that, in addition to making him more skilled, allows him to earn bingo chips, which can be exchanged for costumes, information, hack modules, upgrade nodes and secret documents that tell the story through a third party in Pragmata.

Becoming a war machine

Humanoid bots are the first enemies we face on our lunar adventure, but they are far from the only ones. It wasn’t just the erratic movements of the zombies from the Resident Evil series that served as inspiration; bots are real weapons that use the humanoid body as a base, but transform it into a true show of evolution and horrors.

The gameplay mechanics combine this uncanny valley horror factor with a system that demands focus, attention and performance from the player. In Pragmata, just aiming and shooting won’t save you; the player needs to be reasonably close to the enemy, which will open a hacking screen. In it, the player must move the cursor through symbols that look like doors until activating the command. This will cause the bots’ exoskeleton to open, dealing much more damage to them.

The player, in Berço, can create different hack nodes, which appear throughout the countless and winding hacking labyrinths, each one causing a different effect, be it electrocuting enemies, confusing them (making them fight each other), further reducing defense or overheating. The latter is represented by a bar below the bots’ health; when full, they fall and allow Hugh to execute a critical shot, a closer and more powerful shot, capable of destroying even strong bots in a single shot.

As time passes, Diana also unlocks special nodes that can deal damage, heat and electrocute, in addition to being able to use her Pragmata strength to the maximum when she fills the hacking bar. When this bar is full, she can fire a powerful area attack that immobilizes and opens all enemies’ exoskeletons, allowing Hugh to use his different weapons to quickly defeat them.

Advancing through the known never seen

Throughout his journey alongside Diana, Hugh will see both alien and familiar sights. An example of this is the New York-like city shown in the first Pragmata trailer five years ago. The alien side of things, however, is in the endless wave of bots that IDUS sends to kill Hugh and how out of control the Lunafilament begins to show itself around the lunar base. As the game progresses, it is even possible to see the bizarre variant of the element, called Necrofilament.

This bizarre aspect can infect some bots, requiring Diana to purify them, adding a new layer of protection and challenge for the player. After all, if you try to hack an infected bot, they create purple nodes that delay the process. In addition to bots, Lunafilament and Necrofilament can create barriers that prevent the player from finding secrets, such as resource chests, LNMs spread across the map and Hugh’s armor nodes, which grant small buffs.

While exploring the place with Diana, Hugh meets a second Pragmata who will help them and, as the narrative progresses, he will discover that not everything is what it seems to be on the Moon. Here comes one of Pragmata’s few negative points, which is its somewhat rushed narrative. Certain elements of the story should have had more time to blossom and blossom into deeper and more complex narratives.

Pragmata is divided into five large areas, full of challenges, puzzles and enemies, but which can be overcome quickly. Like its companion, the Resident Evil series, Pragmata is short, so to speak, but not as well-developed in narrative as the reanimated corpse series. This, however, does not mean that the story is bad, but that it is more a story of a father and a daughter getting to know each other than a real plot about A.I. evils and space threats.

Endless enemies?

Hugh, even with his futuristic and resistant armor, is not immortal; That’s why you need to abuse the dash and dodge system, using your thrusters. But be careful, jumping, dodging and floating with the thrusters uses up your fuel and this can leave you vulnerable to attacks. Pragmata’s levels are quite long and there are no common healing items, just units that Hugh carries with him. More cylinders can be found through levels and won in raffle cards, but they are not refilled until we return to the Cradle.

With this, Pragmata offers a staircase at each area transition that leads back to the Cradle and serves as a starting point when the player returns. However, whenever you access the Cradle and return to the level, all previously defeated enemies also return. In other words, it is a good tactic for farming Lunafilaments in times of difficulty.

Pragmata is challenging but reasonably short, but the game rewards the player in three ways after completion. Firstly there is the New Game+, which allows you to return with all the items already improved. There is also a new difficulty, called Lunatic, which makes enemies more resistant and violent, in addition to increasing your number: a real challenge.

The last reward is the extra content called Unknown Signal. This chapter transports Hugh and Diana to a mysterious place called the Hidden Chamber. Here there are ten capsules similar to training ones, being released only after certain conditions are completed, generating a new map from the original game with corrupted versions of enemies and bosses. After unlocking the chambers, you can play their challenges and earn new rewards, such as new clothes and the most powerful weapon in the game.

Beautiful, fast and light

Even though I have a powerful machine, I still don’t have a 50 series card, and I admit that I believed that my 4060 would be sold to Pragmata. The answer, however, was different: the game ran perfectly the entire time. Even in large moments like the streets of New York or arriving at the tower covered in particles, Pragmata didn’t even warm up my computer.

The game features impeccable ray tracing and extremely detailed scenarios. The maps are large and allow for extensive exploration, whether in locations like the greenhouse, with its sunny beach and dense forest, or the claustrophobic underground tunnels of the Lunum mines. It is, without a doubt, a differentiator for the experience to be able to see the reflections of light across the map, whether on lunarium surfaces or in puddles of water.

Pragmata is one of the games I liked the most from start to finish, going head to head with other favorites I have. Over time, we realize that some experiences stop being what they could have been, and Pragmata brings an execution that, if it had been applied to other games in the past, would have made them much better.

It’s a fresh and interesting idea, with great character designs, great worldbuilding, and a unique look. There are many visual references in the character and enemy designs, such as the Mantis boss, which looks very similar to the insects in Starving Anonymous. There are still several other secrets and references to be discovered in the pale glow of the moon that illuminates Pragmata.