In all fairness, I have dismissed PRAGMATA up until literally two months ago, when the latest trailer debuted during the Keighley’s. I knew the game had a very long announcement and development time, revealed to be in development for the PlayStation 5 and releasing in 2022. That obviously took a lot longer than expected, but now PRAGMATA is real and releasing later this year on all platforms. While the demo had been out for a few months, it now being available on Nintendo Switch 2 as well finally got me to try it out. Capcom has been doing great work the last several years on their well-known franchises, but with PRAGMATA I feel like they are really cooking.

The demo isn’t that extensive, it took me about 15 minutes on the first try, but it is great at setting the scene. As a stranded space marine, you control Hugh Williams, who is assisted by a little android girl named Diana. As the duo gets besieged by robots, Diana is able to use her hacking abilities to open up the robotic armor, giving Hugh an opening to destroy their opponents. The demo has a pretty clear goal. Reaching the main power supply and restoring power to the space station. Along the way you’ll need to access and open gates as well as fighting different types of enemies.

What I especially like about the gameplay loop of PRAGMATA so far is that at all times you are essentially controlling two characters. This isn’t a situation like The Last of Us or other games where you have access to multiple characters and switch back and forth between them. Diana’s abilities are strictly linked to the face buttons and left shoulder buttons, while Hugh’s primary actions are controlled with the Joysticks, D-pad and right shoulder buttons. I’ll admit that it takes a little to get adjusted to. Because each time you encounter an enemy or obstacle, a little grid pops up for Diana’s hacking. With the face-buttons corresponding to a specific direction, you need to get from the starting block to the green node. This quickly becomes time sensitive as gameplay does not halt or stop during these segments. Dodging with Hugh becomes key as you are dividing your attention between the hacking and the combat. Using his (limited) thrusters to dodge and jump, as well as supplemental weapons that can slow down the advancing robots, you always feel like you’re multitasking on the spot.

This mechanic is something that strangely enough reminded me of 2012’s ZombiU on the Wii U. Here, each time you had to go into your inventory, you’d need to look down to the Wii U gamepad’s screen and could be jumped by enemies. This interactive play between the player’s attention to the hacking as well as the robots is fundamental here. I think that Pragmata’s use of this mechanic is such a clever twist on this idea. In the age of second screen media, it is almost baffling to me that this hasn’t been explored before. It all comes down to a thrilling boss battle that combines continued hacking, with specific nodes that need to be avoided, and dodging out of the way of a targeted rocket system in time to deal massive damage to specific parts of the enemy.

If I have any concern it is more so with the overall structure of the game. The demo hints at a dedicated hideout, where you can upgrade weapons and abilities, as well as a way to use all the energy you collect from downed enemies. While I don’t expect this system to be as clever as the combat on display here, the painfully slow way in which your basic gun recharges had me wishing I could upgrade it right away. It also could be this specific set piece, but the space station really felt straightforward. Going off the main path did reward me with an extra repair capsule and there’s boxes to break aplenty, but the log entries weren’t that engaging to dive deeper into the world the game presents. I can only hope that the final game has more open areas that can accommodate larger enemies that require different methods to defeat.

What I am not disappointed with is the performance on Nintendo Switch 2. Before I booted up the demo I played the demo on the PlayStation 5 in fidelity mode, to get a sense of how it runs on ‘beefy’ hardware. But in all honesty, the Switch 2 version to my eyes runs on par with the PlayStation 5 demo. It remains to be seen if that can be kept up with in the full game, but I was shocked at how well the game handled on Nintendo’s handheld. Especially given that this game has not been designed from scratch for the Switch 2. The only downside is the lack of a performance mode that can bump the framerate from 30 to 60, but I really wasn’t bothered by the presentation. Textures look a bit worse for wear and the hair on Diana isn’t fantastic, but those are details I can happily brush aside if it means I can comfortably play this on my commute. But of course, I couldn’t pass this opportunity to let John loose on the footage and see if he could spot any difference. Shoutouts to John for providing us with a bit more in-depth technical analysis:

"PRAGMATA on Switch 2 demonstrates some interesting yet clearly very intentional choices from Capcom. On Playstation 5 PRAGMATA runs at 60 frames-per-second in its fidelity mode and only reaches a resolution of 1080p, a 50% scale of full 2160p. Not bad by any means but not especially high for a PS5 game. An alternate performance mode pushes the frame rate even higher. It seems like the developers have favored fluidity over image quality and that decision has been maintained on Switch 2. The Switch 2 version only has one graphics mode but just like PS5 it is targeting 60 frames-per-second. To accomplish this the internal resolution when playing docked has been dropped all the way down to 540p. We're obviously very limited by a relatively short demo but after counting four different shots I saw no indication of dynamic resolution. And in modern games the internal resolution of a render doesn't tell the whole story when paired with scaling solutions like DLSS. The game certainly has a soft appearance but manages to look fairly good for 540p. I should note that the HUD including the hacking screen is rendering at 1080p on Switch 2. So if we assume the Switch 2 is running, more or less, a 1080p version of the game VS the PS5's 4k version, then the relative resolution scaling is actually the same for both as 540p represents 50% of a full 1080p. I'd love to see Capcom try out a 30fps cap on the Switch 2 version just to see how high we could see that resolution go but its clear frame rate is the priority here.".

All in all, this demo has rocketed PRAGMATA to one of my more anticipated games of the year. It’s gameplay ideas feel fresh, it comes across as a cool blend of a narrative driven action game with puzzle elements and it seems to be running great on Nintendo Switch 2. If this game doesn’t overstay its welcome and has a few more tricks up its sleeve, we may just be looking at one of the biggest surprise multiplatform games of this generation. Only time will tell, but do yourself a favor and check out this demo.