Pragmata review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch 2

While Capcom has already had one hit game under their belt in 2026 with the release of Resident Evil: Requiem, they’re about to have another with the soon to be released Pragmata, launching April 17th on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Switch 2. Having had time to play through the game for review, I’ve come away feeling very impressed by this unique third-person shooter, and if the demo of Pragmata caught your attention, I think you’ll be very pleased by the final results.

This sci-fi shooter is set across various regions of the moon, as players take control of Hugh, a bulky space guy that was originally sent to investigate a research station that stopped communicating with Earth. It quickly becomes clear that things have gone very wrong on the moon, as robots start to attack the humans sent to investigate, leaving Hugh as the sole survivor of his team. Hugh then uncovers a small girl android, which he nicknames Diana, who in turn begins to team-up with Hugh and provides him with one of the major combat functions in the game.

Diana rides shotgun on Hugh’s back throughout his adventure, and when you encounter a robot enemy and hold down the left trigger to aim at it, Diana will bring up a small grid-based hacking mini-game on the right side of the screen. While aiming and dodging, you can move the cursor on this grid across various nodes, aiming for the final green node which will cause slight damage to the enemy and often expose various weak points that Hugh can then shoot at in order to cause massive damage. This hacking function expands as you play through the game, with additional unique nodes that can cause increased damage, spread to other targets, or can even cause an enemy to become confused and start attacking its comrades. Likewise, Hugh’s arsenal of weapons will quickly expand, with both offensive and defensive functions, like the ability to cause a stasis field temporarily freezing enemies, or a function that throws out a decoy distracting foes in order to allow you sufficient time to hack.

At first the combat system feels busy and overwhelming, but I was surprised by how quickly I found myself acclimating to it. It certainly makes the combat feel engaging in every counter, forcing you to really divide your attention in a way that even small fights against one or two robots can get out of hand if you’re not aware of your environment and find yourself backed into a corner. The hacking functionality can also get complex, especially against the large bosses Hugh and Diana encounter throughout Pragmata, leading to some very tense moments where you’re barely pulling off a successful hack before an enemy lands a devastating attack. The additional movement functionality that Hugh has thanks to his thrusters, which act as a dodge button when fighting, certainly helps mitigate some of the danger, but even those have limited charges that take time to recover.

Exploration in Pragmata is also a lot of fun, with a fair amount of leeway in each map that allows you to jump around and uncover little secret rooms or areas that often lead to upgrades for Hugh, or Earth Memories that you can take back to your home base for Diana to enjoy. There’s a decent amount of collectibles to uncover in each area, and the game does the smart thing where it tells you how many are left to find without explicitly revealing their locations or how to get to them, giving you reasons to revisit areas you’ve cleared later in the game. Diana does gain a scan function that can be upgraded to help highlight nearby items, but again part of the challenge is in just figuring out how to get to these items, which I really enjoyed puzzling out.

As far as complaints go, I don’t have many. I did find it difficult to open up the hacking mini-game on enemies I wanted to target when the fight involved 3 or more enemies. They can often get bunched together in a room, and if you’re trying to target a specific foe, it’s a little tough to tell if you’ve got them highlighted while also managing your movement and incoming enemy attacks. You can change your lock on target by pressing in the left stick while aiming, but considering you’re also using the left stick to move around, it’s a little tough to pull off, and sometimes I’d find myself accidentally triggering the target switching without realizing it.

Also, while Hugh and Diana do have a lot of freedom to explore various maps in the game, you’ll still butt up against the occasional invisible wall or waist high object that you can’t climb on or jump over, even if it looks like you should be able to. This is less of an issue in the more angular, lab like environments, as opposed to the sections of the game where there’s foliage or more natural, nature focused locations. Trying to figure out whether you can climb up a bit of an extended tree branch, or on top of rocky outcroppings can result in some frustrating trial and error moments, but after a while you’ll get better at recognizing where the game is going to allow you to go.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Pragmata. It does a great job of breathing fresh air into the third-person shooter genre, while offering up an interesting story, great lead characters, and some fantastic looking designs throughout. I certainly hope to see more from the Pragmata universe in the future, as it seems like there’d be plenty of room for a sequel down the road, and I think players will really have a great time with this one when it launches at the end of the week. Definitely check it out, you won’t be disappointed.

Note: Capcom provided us with a Pragmata PC code for review purposes.

Click Here to buy Pragmata on Amazon