• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Pragmata |OT| Tactical Hacking Action

Giallo Corsa said:
Jangs, trust me, i get it man, thing is, I'm not talking about maso-core® games like First Berserker Kazan, Nioh, Moonscars, Cuphead, Sekiro, Lies of P or what have you, besides, I too have my limits and I hate "hard for the sake of being hard" games myself, I'm talking about a proper, specific difficulty which isn't "push buttons for awesome while getting half asleep by doing so" by default.
There's a BIG difference between, say, the difficulty of something like the nameless puppet boss fight in Lies of P or the final, double fight in Sekiro where it can get to hair-pulling levels of frustration Vs something that almost plays on auto-pilot like the Uncharted games (on normal) or something like Death Stranding 2 where it's almost literally impossible to die for crying out loud...
Click to expand...
I agree there are degrees to difficulty but the definition of difficulty is an industry-wide problem. Most devs and gamers think of only combat when they think of difficulty. Which means difficulty comes down to numbers - health & damage output of the player and of the NPCs. Most devs dont bother with anything apart from tuning these numbers up and down for the various difficulty levels. Easy means enemies die in a few hits, while you take less damage. Hard means enemies become bullet sponges and bosses can two-shot-kill the player. Difficulty really needs to evolve to go beyond this. I know some games with good combat introduce a lot of different moves & combos for the player to learn, and make the bosses have recognizable patterns which you can anticipate, but most games do not do that. Which is why i don't bother with higher difficulty for most games.

Difficulty can come from other mechanics such as exploration (making something hard to find) or stealth (forcing you to be careful and think about pathing) or puzzles (remove obvious hints and yellow paint). I dont mind that kind of difficulty, but most games dont have that anymore.

Giallo Corsa said:
A game with ZERO challenge is not the reason why people play games since at that point, you might as well just sit down and watch a movie.
Click to expand...
Disagree. Like i said above, if combat is the only type of challenge a game can give me, then i would rather have zero challenge. I'm old, so reflexes are slowing down, and i never had good hand eye co-ordination to begin with. Nor do i want to simply memorize 15 different complex moves to use once per boss fight. In that case, hell yeah, give me an interactive movie. I would love to explore the game world, discover new things, solve puzzles, interact with NPCs, experience a good story; all while breezing through easy combat. That's a perfect game for busy dads right there.
 
Last edited:
I played through the first boss last night. It is pretty easy on standard difficulty, but I'm not in the mood for a hard game right now. My first thoughts are GREAT art design, very satisfying combat and movement, hacking is legit original (and how often do we get something original nowadays), and they're pulling every trick in the book to get you to like the little robot girl. She's not annoying in the slightest - far cry from Atreus for example.
 
Busy with Voidwrought(it's pretty good). But my copy of Pragmata arrived early this morning, and I have a "one game at a time until I complete it" rule. But I'm going to break that rule and start Pragmata and come back to Voidwrought once I'm done.
 
You catch that cut off explanation at the beginning about Diana . . .

she said she's built for life support systems and . . . then Hugh cuts her off and never lets her explain herself again . . . Might just be hacking but I think not!
 
Signalis said:
Busy with Voidwrought(it's pretty good). But my copy of Pragmata arrived early this morning, and I have a "one game at a time until I complete it" rule. But I'm going to break that rule and start Pragmata and come back to Voidwrought once I'm done.
Click to expand...
black and white batman GIF
 
diffusionx said:
I played through the first boss last night. It is pretty easy on standard difficulty, but I'm not in the mood for a hard game right now. My first thoughts are GREAT art design, very satisfying combat and movement, hacking is legit original (and how often do we get something original nowadays), and they're pulling every trick in the book to get you to like the little robot girl. She's not annoying in the slightest - far cry from Atreus for example.
Click to expand...

Agreed. This is how you make a npc following you in a game. She is great
 
@Heimdall_Xtreme is banned temporarily. But I bet he must be crying tears of joy that it released.

P.S. Since he is banned temporarily, and he can't let us know as he always does. Please do not forget that he lives in Mexico and is indeed a Mexican. In case some of you forgot that he is from Mexico
 
Signalis said:
@Heimdall_Xtreme is banned temporarily. But I bet he must be crying tears of joy that it released.

P.S. Since he is banned temporarily, and he can't let us know as he always does. Please do not forget that he lives in Mexico and is indeed a Mexican. In case some of you forgot that he is from Mexico
Click to expand...
Does that make him Mexican then?
 
Signalis said:
@Heimdall_Xtreme is banned temporarily. But I bet he must be crying tears of joy that it released.

P.S. Since he is banned temporarily, and he can't let us know as he always does. Please do not forget that he lives in Mexico and is indeed a Mexican. In case some of you forgot that he is from Mexico
Click to expand...
So he is a second hand Spaniard?

jk
 
Last edited:
Judge Magister said:
He's a Mexican't at the moment but he's playing the game with Mexican Spanish dub!
Click to expand...
I completely forgot that part. Because apparently playing games in Mexican Spanish improves games significantly.

It's a tragedy that this knowledge has been hidden for so long as well.
 
Last edited:
I like the difficulty level here. I play games to chill and this is chill. That said, I do agree that difficulty levels should be selectable from the start. If someone wants more of a challenge, why should it be on their second playthrough? That is a waste of their time. I feel like this is purely to avoid whiny professional reviewers.

As for why games are tuned like this in the first place, I think it is just a change in our times. Most younger people are used to phone games and aren't very skilled with controller. If they have a bad time, there is more stuff vying for their attention than ever. I remember playing brutally hard games on NES growing up but there weren't alternatives for interactive media. I don't blame someone for not suffering when they have other options.

Still, I also agree with what has been said about difficultly not just being about pushing around HP and DMG sliders. Even within combat, which is only one aspect of difficulty, many devs have lost the art of changing movesets, environmental factors, status effects, timing windows, etc. Bullet sponges and 2-hit death are the least interesting form of increased challenge.
 
Just gave it a quick half hour. So relaxing, I'm really liking it.

You know sometimes when a game just clicks with you? This is definitely one of them. Looks great too, even on my old rig. Reckon its a stunner on a 4k capable rig with everything up to the max.
 
Last edited:
Somewhere in Mexico, Heimdall is clutching his Kat body doll and drenching it in tears from missing out on the Day Uno excitement.

How is the soundtrack? Is it orchestrated? A whole mix of stuff?
 
Having a great time but I am disappointed at the difficulty. I haven't died a single time in 3-4 hours of gameplay. I dont understand why Hard mode isn't available from the beginning
 
Great OT!

I look forward to playing the Switch 2 version down the road. I just have too many games to play right now, and by the time I get to it, the game might be on a sale by then.
 
I liked this game so much that asked my wife if we can have a cute blonde daughter.

My wife yelled back at me saying she was asian
 
Last edited:
Once you unlock a jet-stamina upgrade or two it's nice and nippy jetting around. The slowish climbing animation's a bit of a downer in the platformy bits.
 
Gave it a quick try and played the intro bit till you get to the hub area (less than 15 minutes of gameplay). I basically went in as blind as possible, the story and setting feels great and the hacking bit is a pretty clever game mechanic.

Looks and flows like a dream at 220-240fps with FG and it's really giving the GPU a workout. It's been getting soft and pudgy with all those pixel art indies.
 
I really hope this becomes a franchise. The game is solid and fresh and good with solid production values and just unique.

More games like this.
 
Last night I played until after the first boss fight. The only thing that got to me was that Hugh's suit has little metal platforms for her feet . . . he wouldn't have known someone will be on his back. Anyways, fun stuff.
 
Game performs great with frame generation set to auto, first time using this I'm not sure if this is using the dynamic frame gen or not or do I have to enable that in the Nvidia control panel? Needless to say I shouldn't even mention but I probably have the best rig you can get so no sense in getting into spec. Game runs at a pretty locked 120 with everything on.
 
Signalis said:
@Heimdall_Xtreme is banned temporarily. But I bet he must be crying tears of joy that it released.

P.S. Since he is banned temporarily, and he can't let us know as he always does. Please do not forget that he lives in Mexico and is indeed a Mexican. In case some of you forgot that he is from Mexico
Click to expand...
Fuck, and I thought Heimdall was a gal :messenger_crying:
 
Well damn, for a totally unplanned buy, this game feels and plays kinda cool once some action starts.
Looks pretty fucking good too maxed with PT. I guess this one won't go horror, but now I really want a proper badass space horror looking like this!
 
I can already see that this game is made with insane replayability in mind. I already replayed several levels to get everything and because of the level design and gameplay, it feels great. I never replay games, but i will definitely gonna replay this one
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Pragmata - Reviews Thread
3 4 5 6 7
343
2K
Fabieter replied
Pragmata marketing references questionable meme
News  2
89
825
March Climber replied
Pragmata has officially gone GOLD
Hype  2
57
821
saintjules replied
Giving away Pragmata PC (Non-US) (Steam)
39
2K
saintjules replied
  • Featured
Homura Hime |OT| Character Action × Bullet Hell × Anime
|OT| 
35
2K
Roman Empire replied
Top Bottom