Pragmata is good on Switch 2

I’ve been playing Pragmata on Nintendo Switch 2 and thoroughly enjoying it. It’s a slick, stylistically innovative, characterful action game, the exact kind Capcom has been excelling at for decades. It’s unashamedly videogamey. It’s got a unique mechanic, but understands its scope and does the basics well — and it’s playful and imaginative within its carefully maintained guardrails.

I’m playing it on Switch 2 because that’s the spare review copy we had, and because it’s often easier for me to fit in gaming time on a handheld than at my desk or on the big TV. Pragmata is a major new multiplatform release, if not exactly a AAA game (though it’s been in development long enough to have cost Capcom a AAA budget). It’s not often games like this come out day-and-date on Nintendo platforms due to their relatively modest tech specs. But I don’t feel like I’m missing much at all — if anything.

On Switch 2, Pragmata is just Pragmata. Barring some minor visual compromises, it is exactly as you find it on other platforms, and perfectly at home. It looks and runs like a shiny, big-budget modern video game should.

I have not played Pragmata on any other platforms, I am not a tech expert, and I lack the equipment and expertise to measure internal resolution or frame-rate. I am not Digital Foundry (though I look forward to their assessment, as always). I am a layman who likes my video games to look good and play well, and Pragmata on Switch 2 satisfies me almost completely.

There’s one unsurprising issue. As we noted when testing Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Resident Evil Requiem, the Switch 2 has a hair problem. (FF7 Remake director director Naoki Hamaguchi has explained this is due to a clash between the way hair rendering typically works, and the way Nvidia’s DLSS upscaler, which the Switch 2 uses, cleans up a low-resolution image.) Sure enough, in Pragmata, android child Diana’s long, thick mane of blond hair looks both fizzy and stiff — a weird combination.

Played in TV mode, though, Pragmata has a beautifully clean presentation that handles the detailed hard surfaces of the art style really well and, to my untrained eye, runs at a smooth 60 frames per second. Pretty great! In handheld, the game appears to downshift to 30 frames per second and the presentation is slightly muddy; it has that clean-but-hazy look of a game running at low internal resolution that’s been upscaled. But it still looks good! It looks like Pragmata.

There are no performance or quality modes. Capcom, being Capcom, has clearly focused on performance, and has ensured the frame rate is stable and the controls responsive in both handheld and docked modes. Good choice.

Image: Capcom via Polygon

Given Requiem‘s decent performance on the Switch 2, it seems the RE Engine adapts well to Nintendo’s hardware. But so do others, like CD Projekt’s RED Engine (Cyberpunk 2077) and Ubisoft’s Anvil and Snowdrop engines (Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws). Pragmata is also a tight action game with relatively contained levels — but those other three games I just mentioned are much larger-scale, and have also transferred well to the Switch 2.

I’m not going to pretend Pragmata on Switch 2 looks as sharp or as well-lit as it does on PlayStation 5. It doesn’t. You’d probably say it was a good-looking PS4 game. And here’s the thing — that’s fine. The current-generation consoles represent a meaningful and valuable upgrade over the previous generation, but it’s far from a night-and-day difference, and the fact is that the vast majority of contemporary games could sit quite happily on either.

Pragmata on Switch 2 is further proof that the video game medium is moving beyond the kind of generational technical leaps that could leave lower-powered consoles behind. A great many modern games will run on Switch 2 — or a mid-range PC handheld, say — with zero compromise to their artistic vision and surprisingly little compromise to the technical experience. I’d liken it to watching a film on Blu-ray versus on a 4K disc with HDR; one definitely looks better, but the movie is just as good on both. Pragmata gives away next to nothing on Switch 2. It’s just a great video game.