Capcom’s sci-fi shooter Pragmata was announced several years ago but has been scarcely seen in the time since. Thankfully, Summer Game Fest 2025 was finally the time for people to not only see it again with a stylish new trailer but also get their hands on it for the first time. Pragmata is a real game, indeed, and not mere vapourware; it ended up being one of my biggest surprises at the show.
I got to play over 20 minutes of the game’s opening mission, and I’m relieved that Pragmata is not only a unique and unconventional action game with some unusual hooks, but it’s also an exciting and visually stunning game to dive into. The short demo I played gave me a glimpse of its sci-fi setting, and a slick blend of third-person shooting combat and real-time hacking gameplay. I’m already eager to see more of the game.
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Fly me to the moon
Pragmata focuses on the bond between a human astronaut and a mysterious android trapped on a lunar base. Waking up after a gruelling encounter, Hugh Williams finds himself trapped aboard a lunar base that’s taken over by a rogue AI and its legion of machines. After meeting a young girl nicknamed Diana (who turns out to be an android), they team up to survive the hostile machines by balancing their capabilities for combat and hacking robots under pressure.
The main hook with Pragmata is that you control two characters at once. Hugh is the primary character who can fight and traverse the environment. With his spacesuit, he can evade enemy strikes and glide using his jetpacks. The really fascinating twist with Pragmata is with Diana, who piggybacks onto Hugh and is able to hack enemies at a distance remotely. To eliminate enemies, Diana will need to hack them in real-time via a grid-based mini-game to expose their defences. Once that’s done, Hugh will be able to target the machine’s weak spot to destroy them.
It initially felt overwhelming, in the way you pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time, but Pragmata’s pacing and approach to action really made it work. By pressing the face buttons on the controller, Diana guides a blip on the grid (located on the right side of the screen) to the goal mark to execute the hack – all the while, Hugh will have to maintain distance and use gadgets to slow down enemies or dodge strikes. In practice it works well, and once the hack was complete, unloading into enemies with shotguns and a special stasis gun that slowed down enemies was very satisfying.
Pragmata is a throwback to 2000s-era action games
What I dug most about Pragmata was that it felt like a souped-up version of a 2000s-era action game in the vein of Capcom’s PN-03, which starred a dancing bounty hunter who fought off machines with her weapons and dance skills. I have a particular fondness for this era of gaming, which leveraged new technologies to elevate kitschy concepts in games. Seeing Pragmata in action brought back those feelings of playing these oddball games, but this time, it was powered by the same impressive technology that Monster Hunter: World, Resident Evil: Revelations, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword utilise.
I wish I had had the opportunity to play more of Pragmata, and I was disappointed that the brief demo ended on such an awkward note, right before the boss fought with the large robot. However, the game offers fun and alluring energy in its take on a sci-fi adventure through a facility gone awry. Toward the end of the demo, I got a closer look at the lunar surface, which got me very excited about what was ahead. I’m happy this game wasn’t cancelled or fell into development hell, because Capcom might have a cool action game on their hands with this one.
