Pragmata review: a tightly-designed sci-fi adventure with plenty to say

Pragmata imagines a future that would logically flow from our own. What would happen if 3D printing and AI technology advanced to the point where whole civilisations, and whole sentient beings, could be printed into existence? What would ‘living’ really mean? What could be considered conscious?

These questions are interrogated throughout Pragmata, an adventure that – on the surface – feels like a familiar, tightly-designed sci-fi adventure, buoyed by Capcom’s signature puzzle gameplay.

A world riddled with puzzles

The nearest analogue in Capcom’s catalogue is Devil May Cry 5. Like this game, Pragmata presents a sharp, tightly-designed world to explore, riddled with various environmental puzzles and secrets, where players are rewarded for investing their time.

As the story opens, you meet Hugh, an interplanetary engineer tasked with investigating the sudden silence of a remote lunar research facility with access to an ore that can be used to 3D print nearly anything.

It’s not shocking to learn the AI of this research facility has gained a form of sentience and gone rogue, using 3D printers to create all sorts of chaos, including roaming, human-like monsters, and whole corrupted regions that resemble those of the real world.

Separated from his crew by the sabotage of this AI, Hugh swiftly meets Diana, an android who wanders the facility for mysterious reasons.

Hugh is a blank slate, in a way that feels purposeful. He’s a stand-in for the player, and rarely shows any hint of personality on introduction, giving little reason to care much what happens. Diana becomes his voice of reason, and as his relationship with the android grows stronger, his character begins to strengthen and become warmer.

That’s really the crux of Pragmata, beyond its novel combat system and exploration of future power and intelligence. It’s a game about humanity, and how our relationships make us who we are. It’s about whether humanity can be created or replicated, as well as how misunderstanding humanity can lead to corruption.

Of course, it’s also about blasting lots and lots of robots.

Combat is a major strength of Pragmata

In your adventures through Pragmata‘s many complex, beautiful worlds, you’ll need to contend with the roving forces of the facility’s rogue AI. Given time alone, it’s been attempting to recreate humanity in a multitude of forms, creating loping, large robot bodies as terrifying facsimiles of life.

These lopsided creations litter the halls of Pragmata, and must be defeated to ensure a clear path forward and, eventually, to restore some semblance of order to life on the facility.

This process leans into a novel combat system that plays to the strengths of both Hugh and Diana.

Hugh is a combat veteran with access to various high-powered guns and traps. Diana is a hacker. First, you must use Diana’s skills to ‘unlock’ the armour of each robotic enemy, and then use your prowess, dodging and weaving, to shoot them until they explode into bits.

The hacking mini-game is fun and frantic, adding layers to combat. While you’re focusing on the enemies ahead, anticipating their next moves, you must also be using Diana’s skills to flick down, right, right, left, down until you inflict high damage and unlock enemy armour.

Paying attention, you can eventually unlock an attack mode that allows you to deliver higher-powered blows with Diana’s skills, carving away enemy health until they’re cut down.

It really is a novel system, and one that gels well once you get the hang of it. You’ll need a dual focus to sustain your progress, as any misstep is accompanied by high damage – but the system is relatively forgiving, and easy to strategise around once you’ve spent hours roaming this game’s many halls.

Staggering visuals

When you’re not spending time shattering evil robots to bits, Pragmata allows you wander its many corridors at your own pace, discovering all sorts of hidden secrets, collectables and mini hacking puzzles.

What’s most surprising is just how much beauty there is to find, with every turn seemingly revealing some new, grand and ambitious setting. In one particular region of the game’s space-bound facility, you’ll find a wide, open area that resembles New York’s Times Square, complete with towering ad spaces on giant buildings.

In another, you’ll find a twisted forest, like something out a fairytale.

Pragmata imagines what 3D printing could do, but through the lens of a deluded AI that wants to replicate the ‘real’ world and create spaces that humanity might occupy.

This concept allows for the creation of sweeping and awe-inspiring vistas, made horrifying by their lack of completion and understanding of their soul. Rather than warm spaces filled with people, there are wide, empty corridors, lifeless and terrifying in their stillness.

This is a game that explores the nature of AI and humanity. It also underscores that AI may never understand what makes human spaces feel alive and what makes them places worth visiting, or living in.

With this investigation underscoring Pragmata‘s gameplay, the entire adventure feels far more engaging the further you travel. It does an expert job of painting itself as beige at first, with its by-the-books protagonist and ‘evil AI’ set-up, but it’s much more than first appearances suggest.

As the story unravels, the game dives deeply into the relationship between Hugh and Diana, and what AI may bring to a future world. Pragmata asks how it may change and corrupt, but in Diana, the warmer aspects of technology are also explored, providing at least some hope for a brighter future.

Despite being in development for several years, Pragmata arrives as a tight, prescient and timely adventure with plenty of thoughts to share about what our tech-infused future might bring.

A PC code for Pragmata was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.

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