Pragmata – which arrives for Xbox Series X|S tomorrow, April 17 – is a wildly satisfying throwback to the third-person shooters of old, combining familiar, chunky combat with a unique hacking minigame woven into every encounter. It’s a mixture of old and new, meaning everything will feel familiar, but with enough nuance to keep things fresh.

That also means that, when you start the game off, you might be missing some of the little details to help you succeed – and that’s where I come in. Having played a huge chunk of the game, I’m here to offer some of the little tips I wish I’d known early on to help make Hugh and Diana’s journey across a robot-blasted Moon that little bit smoother.

Don’t Be Afraid to Seek Shelter

The Shelter is your evolving hub area throughout the game. Here you can buy upgrades, equip new outfits, have a little chat with Diana, save the game, and more. And it’s not just accessible before and after missions – you’ll regularly find unlockable ladders during missions that take you right back here, and I’d recommend you use them.

You’ll pick up upgrade materials and unlocks constantly during levels, and travelling back to the Shelter means you can effectively power up mid-mission. It’s not just a way of healing and restoring your repair packs, but a meaningful way of making the entire rest of the level that little bit easier.

Prioritize Your Main Weapon

In the early game, you’ll begin vacuuming up precious upgrade components pretty quickly, which can be spent on upgrading your armor, hacking ability, or primary weapon – and I’d very much recommend focusing on the last of those as you start out.

With secondary weapons limited on ammo, and before you’ve collected up mods and other additions, you’ll be relying on your Grip Gun pistol to take down a lot of threats, so ensuring it’s powerful enough to make quick work of them is essential to forging an easy path.

Look Off the Beaten Path (But Don’t Get Too Distracted)

Pragmata hides a lot of useful things around its levels – from new mods, to currencies, to seemingly cosmetic upgrades that offer bonuses back at the Shelter. Often you’ll find them around unassuming corners, at the end of mini platforming puzzles, or behind mysteriously locked doors that require some poking around.

I’d highly recommend gathering anything you can get to – not least because they can be used or equipped mid-level – but don’t get fixated on something you simply can’t find a way into, as there’s a little bit of gear-gating going on. Some hidden items will only become accessible later in the game, meaning you’ll want to come back to early levels and clear them out some more – a task eased once you unlock Diana’s item ping system a few hours into the game.

Learn Your Enemies’ Weak Points

You’ll quickly get into the rhythm of Pragmata’s unique mix of hacking and combat – hacking an enemy to open it up, before pummelling it with ammunition. But there’s an added element here – every enemy also has particular weak points, which you’ll know when they flash red when being hit. They’re usually fairly self-evident – exposed heads, jutting fuel tanks and the like.

Hitting these weak points not only results in more damage, but adds to a stagger gauge (you can see it under the enemy’s health bar) – when filled, they’ll fall down, and you can press RT to deliver a Critical Shot, which is an instant kill against most foes.

Don’t Ignore Your Defense Gadgets

Your weapon loadout is sorted into four categories – Primary, Attack, Tactical, and Defense. The first two speak for themselves, and your Tactical weapons make their combat-changing value clear very early on, but Defense gadgets might initially not make clear quite how powerful they are.

The first one you unlock, Decoy Generator, can send literally every robot currently chasing you in the wrong direction, and even works on bosses – meaning you’ll want to save them for a special occasion. Subsequent unlocks can be equally life-saving, so make sure to use them all and make the hardest fights that little bit safer.

Play Some Bingo

Fairly early on, a robot named Cabin will pop up in your Shelter – aside from bringing the general vibe of the place up, he’ll begin offering you stamp cards to fill out using a new currency, Cabin Coin. While many of the rewards on offer tend towards the cosmetic, there are some genuinely major upgrades in here, including new hacking nodes and mods that can change you approach combat. Some of these are tied to completing bingo-style lines across the stamp card, so building them up sensibly is key.

Put Your Trainers On

Cabin isn’t just hanging around to collect its namesake coins; early on, the friendly bot provides access to a series of Training Simulations offering big payouts. A few minutes successfully running training gauntlets in between stages can yield enough materials to upgrade your weapons, mods, and abilities. New challenges unlock as Hugh and Diana progress through the game, so it’s worth checking back regularly to max out your upgrades.

PRAGMATA

CAPCOM CO., LTD.

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

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Capcom’s newest IP—PRAGMATA. It is the near future, and protagonists Hugh and his android companion Diana, must work together as they make their way through the cold lunar research station.

*Ray tracing is not supported on Xbox Series S.
*The license for this product is also available as part of a set. Please be careful of duplicate purchases.

©CAPCOM
PRAGMATA is a trademark and/or registered trademark of CAPCOM CO., LTD. and/or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries.