Pragmata is a special game. It's been a long time since I played something so new and yet so rooted in the PS2/PS3 era of video games. It pairs that new coat of paint and the ways of the past together perfectly. The old and the new. Much like the game's protagonists, Hugh and Diana. I just love the very concept of Pragmata so much, and its execution was nearly flawless which only made me love it more.

The gameplay is really interesting, with its unique style that utilizes Diana's hacking capabilities to create openings for Hugh to deal more damage. Enemies have different strategies you need to approach them with, which gets really interesting when the game throws a bunch of you all at once. I didn't ever struggle too much on Standard difficulty, and I felt like it was right in that perfect area to keep the pace of the story going. The exploration is great too, which does have some light elements of needing to come back after getting upgrades to explore places you missed. I really felt compelled to find everything, because the rewards of said upgrades/cosmetics/extra story is really awesome. There are even extra missions in the main game and post game to take on and they were all pretty fun, some of them actually being decently challenging.

The story and characters were just fantastic as well. The voice acting really stands out as being some of the most natural I've heard in a video game, and that helps sell the characters. Hugh and Diana make a fantastic team, and that shows through how they are intrinsically tied in combat as well as their daddy-daughter styled relationship. It's absolutely adorable seeing the two of them interact. Whoever made all of Diana's animations must have had so much fun doing it.

A huge part of the story is Diana wanting to go to Earth, and Hugh promising to take her there. In the meantime, there are these 3D-printed replicas from things on Earth that you can find throughout the levels and take them back to the hub area for Diana to play with. I spent a not insignificant amount of time just watching her going down a slide, or playing with balloons, or crawling around in a tent. The developers all did a great job in making her come to life, which is really funny considering she's a robot. That's kind of the whole point, though, so they nailed that on the head.

As I'm sure is the case for many people, this game brought strong emotions out of me. It's a game about how far men will go to save their kid, and that's a very pure and raw thing. I won't deny I teared up more than a few times. The story really resonated with me, from the small things like learning about Hugh's past to the big ones like learning why Diana was created in the first place.

The music was pretty nice as well, it really added to the atmosphere and the frenetic gun fights in a good way. It could get a little bit samey at times, especially in combat, but not enough for it to be a true complaint.

I would highly recommend this game to just about anyone. It really is so fantastic. The only real problem I have with it is that, as much as I love Diana, she talks way too much in regular gameplay. She's always making some comment about where something is, what you just picked up, when you need to dodge or jump in combat, etc. Sometimes they are really nice to hear because she'll have unique lines for the specific mod you picked up, but the more generic items and combat maneuvers have lines repeated over and over again and way too often. I can somewhat understand doing something like this in a game meant for kids, but this game isn't quite in the same realm as, for instance, Ratchet & Clank.

On the technical side, the game also has really awful denoising in the ray tracing which is unfortunate to see. I believe there is a mod to fix that but I didn't end up using it. There are only a few scenes I REALLY noticed it in, but it would have been nice to not have it there at all. I'd recommend using that mod, using path tracing, or just turning off the ray tracing altogether because all those options look great still. Other than that though, I'm very happy with its visual presentation and it runs very well too.

Also by the way, Capcom is absolutely fucking killing it this year. RE9 and Pragmata steal the show for me, but I heard MH Stories 3 was pretty dang good too. Then we've got a new Onimusha coming out this year and a Mega Man next year. All we need now is a new Devil May Cry dude.

#beardgamereview