There's A Good Game In Here...Somewhere | Pragmata Review.
In an interview the developer of Pragmata said "Our goal from the start was to blend shooting and puzzle elements into one seamless experience. If players could finish a battle using only one of those mechanics, it would undermine the concept we were aiming for." So by the design standard of the director himself... Pragmata has issues. Also I think the "from the start" aspect of this game's design shows how top-down the entire concept of this game is to begin with. I can't help but wonder if at some point in the game's extended development (which the director said was due to trouble with the hacking puzzles) the team ever questioned that the premise of this "two-in-one gameplay" is an artificial combination to begin with? Of course it's possible to brute force design elements together if you keep piling on system after system, but at what cost? What fundamental elements of Pragmata's overall design need to be reduced down as to not overwhelm this awkward combination? By the end of all the compromise how much can the hacking interface even be classified as a "puzzle"? Likewise, what core aspects of 3rd person shooters like the enemy behavior, the difficulty, the bosses, the levels, and the overall balance needed to be simplified? Also even without the hacking system as the sole focus of critique, how well does it cover the basics of combat? It seems these days that as long as you give an action game some clear gimmick as a focus for discussion, the essential elements are able to slip by without being critiqued.
And if the hybrid concept isn't enough design overhead for Capcom, Pragmata also adds in piles of RPG mechanics that compete directly with the stat-based glue that connects together the 3rd person shooting and the puzzles in the first place, resulting in a conflicted design that eats itself alive, especially as you gain access to more systems (including one that outright overrides the entire premise of the game, funny enough).
Also if you notice that as experimental as the concept of Pragmata sounds (which is intriguing as a premise), the end result will feel surprisingly familiar to Resident Evil 9 and all the recent Capcom remakes. That's not a coincidence. A pattern that Pragmata is a part of, that I discuss in the review, is how Capcom seem to have discovered a formula of commercializing what should be skill-based design or "video game az video games" as IGN put it, into something extremely accessible and much more palatable to general audiences than the actual skill-based games that Pragmata is supposed to be drawing inspiration from. Saying Pragmata is a "video game az video game" is like advertising Orange-Flavored Taffy as a great source of Vitamin C.
Amazing thumbnail created by the master @boghogSTG
Boghog Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/Boghogooo
The Electric Underground Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/electricunderground
[$2 tier = Monthly Game Review Vote, Name in Credits, Exclusive Monthly Podcast]
[$5 tier = Double Monthly Game Review Vote, By Name Shout-out, Name in Credits, Exclusive Monthly Podcast]
Website:
https://theelectricundergr.wixsite.com/the-electric-undergr
Electric Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricUnderground/
STG Revision 2020 Discord (Shhmup Community Discord):
https://discord.gg/snRueeH
00:00:00 The Self-Defeating Design of the Puzzle Hacking System
00:12:30 The Hacking System's Possible Natural Function
00:16:34 Overpowered Player Movement (Bringing a Gun to a Knife Fight)
00:23:45 The Criminally Bad Enemy Design
00:39:24 Polite Simplified Bosses - Missing Reading and Overlap
00:54:15 Polite Simplified Bosses - Missing Complex Reactivity
01:02:00 Mid-troidvania is the Worst of Both Worlds
01:09:10 Souls-Lites - All the Progression, None of the Punishment
01:15:06 Action Performance vs RPG Completion
01:19:33 Capcom's Candy Shop & A Glimpse of a Real Game
#pragmata,
#residentevilrequiem,
#vanquish 
Comments (0)