2026-4 - Pragmata - ★★★★☆

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3357650/PRAGMATA/

★★★★☆
Playtime: 22 hours

Just a good fun time. They don't make 'em like this anymore folks!

As has been observed by others, this feels like a more polished version or perhaps remake of some hypothetical Capcom game that came out in, say, 2008, sandwiched between Dead Rising and Lost Planet. That imagined version of Pragmata doesn't blow the house down, gets 7s or 8s in reviews, and is probably fondly remembered whilst obscure enough to avoid too much scrutiny.

(Aside: In my opinion, there is a fuzzy yet crucial distinction between something being "7 or 8 out of 10" and a game being "★★★★☆", particularly when imagining the state of game reviews in 2009.)

The 2026 version of Pragmata, meanwhile, gets to enjoy throwback status. Street Fighter 6 and Exoprimal have battle passes, while Dragon's Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds bit off more than they could chew. The state of AAA games is so very different now in scope and scale that something this relatively simplistic stands out for its perceived elegance and honesty. I felt similarly about Kunitsu-Gami, though that felt like a throwback to an even earlier era of game.

Pragmata's gameplay revolves around the hacking minigame, which I feel gets just enough variation to avoid feeling boring or tiresome until the last hour or two. There are only so many ways to spice up "move the cursor to the end while hitting or avoiding certain squares", you know? I ended up with a build based around building enemies' Heat bar (functionally a stagger meter) and going for big AoE deathblows. This meant doing a lot of hacking that wasn't doing that much damage, so I also packed weapons like the Sticky Bombs or Code Generator that specifically make the minigame easier.

Really, nothing here is breaking the mold. The story is predictable but charming, its scant handful of twists obvious from orbit. You are trickled new weapons and upgrades and hacks all the way up to the post-game. There are VR Challenge Missions. It is A Video Game. That feeling novel these days perhaps says more about the state of the industry than about Pragmata itself.