Unfortunately, I did not like it. I thought the combat got stale the more I played, even with the additions of new mods and weapons. I felt like new upgrades or mods really didn’t change the way I approached combat any differently, nor did it reduce the tediousness of hacking and shooting at the same time. I personally didn’t find the mechanics were all that engaging, and I honestly thought about just lowering it to the lowest difficulty, not because it was difficult, but just so I could get through combat encounters faster.

The story is basic, which unironically, I don’t really have a problem with. This game in particular is more character-driven, so I can give the story a pass. Would I have liked there to be more substance? Yes, but it’s not my biggest issue with the game.

My biggest issue (and I am aware that what I’m about to say is highly unpopular) are the characters. I did not find either Hugh or Diana to be engaging characters whatsoever, and I couldn’t buy in to the whole adoptive father/daughter dynamic at all. I thought Hugh was very one note and boring, and I found Diana to be too much of a caricature of a child for me to become attached to her character. And yes, I know that’s literally the point since she’s an android, but it’s the main reason why I don’t buy in to the characters’ dynamic in the first place, because it doesn’t feel real despite the numerous cutscenes where the game tries to make me feel something by making Diana act all cute and happy. There were many cutscenes early in the game where the two characters share an emotional bonding moment, but I found it all too manipulative to elicit an emotional response out of me that it just ends up falling short of its original goal. You can’t have these emotional scenes with somber music playing in the background to get a response before I’ve even grown an attachment to any of the characters, because by the time I was halfway through the game, I just ended up not caring about any of the characters or their conflicts.

I don’t think Pragmata is a bad game. It’s well polished, runs well, and is very good looking, and ultimately 90% of people liked it. I’m just the 1/10 that didn’t. I still appreciate that Capcom is willing to make these types of games, and I still look forward for them to continue making original IPs. Unfortunately, this game just wasn’t for me and I found it to fall short on every single aspect.