FNGC Reviews: Pragmata (ft. Onix of The Gaming Resume)

[00:00:42] What's up everyone and welcome to the Friday Night Gamecast. You're joining us for another FNGC Review where we look at one game and take a deep dive into all its moving parts. This week I'm incredibly excited to introduce a new cast member to the show. He's a YouTuber, streamer, and overall outstanding content creator and a good friend who is also an adamant lover of Capcom, Square Enix, and Sega. And more, potentially. Welcome to the show Onix. Onix, how are you doing today?

[00:01:09] Hey guys, I am doing great. Fantastic. A little tired, but ready for the long weekend for those people that work corporate. How are you guys? Oh, fantastic as well. We're also joined today by the one and only, maybe not only anymore, but the one true Cap God himself, Plasmama G, aka Will. How are you doing, Will? I'm doing great. Listen, if there was anybody I could share the Cap God moniker with, it would have to be Onix. He knows his stuff, he's in the Discord, he's dropping knowledge.

[00:01:38] So I will gladly at least share this crown today as two Cap fiends on the pod. Yes. Nick, you got your hands full. Beautiful. I'm honored. I'm honored. We're recording this on the eve of July the 3rd, which for anybody who works corporate jobs, they're giving us the honorary July 4th off on the Friday. So I think we all have off. We're very excited to be here. Very excited to talk about Pragmata.

[00:02:03] But before we get into that, Onix, I wanted to give you, since you're a new time cast member to the show, you're a newcomer here, I wanted to give you a chance to talk about your body of work, everything you've done on YouTube or streaming, if you want to give us a rundown of that. Of course, of course. So I've been doing the gaming resume since 2017. It was a joint venture between four friends originally. And just as time went on, it became a solo venture for me.

[00:02:31] Since the beginning, we kind of started doing, we did some podcasting, we did some discussion content and reaction content. We actually blew up at one point because of reaction content. And we kind of stuck with that for a while. And then we kind of moved over to streaming. It's kind of been this weird evolution where we kind of followed YouTube where it went. Because at that point, there wasn't really streaming on YouTube. And then that became a thing. So nowadays, I focus primarily on big reactions for the big shows.

[00:02:58] I try to do breakdowns here and there or give like informative shorts, informative videos of things. If I'm able to do a review, I'll do the review. And you know, the weekly streams are a constant thing. Every Monday, I stream games. Awesome. That's exciting. That's exciting. And we'll get into where we can find all of that at the end of the show here. But again, thank you for joining us. Of course, of course. It's a pleasure.

[00:03:21] Today, we are going to review the latest, I think, latest video game from Capcom as of 2026. We're talking about Pragmata today. This was developed and published by Capcom, of course. It has a co-directorial credits for Cho Yong-hee and Yasuhiro Ampo. It was released on April 17th, 2026 on all platforms. It was released on Nintendo Switch 2 and all of the main console platforms on the same day on April 17th.

[00:03:50] So everybody was able to enjoy Pragmata at the same time. What we always do is we talk about our history with Capcom and its various franchises. Since it has many storied franchises, we most recently talked about Resident Evil when we reviewed Resident Evil 8 as well as Resident Evil 9 slash Requiem earlier this year. But Onix, as a newcomer to the show, can you give us a rundown of what your history with Capcom is and what your relationship is with them today? Of course, of course. Yeah.

[00:04:19] So funnily enough, with Capcom, I didn't realize this until maybe a year or so ago that I was just kind of thinking of my love for the company and the publisher. And it came to the conclusion that, wait, I've been playing Capcom games for a very long time. Like, I genuinely didn't realize it. Like, I was playing those licensed Capcom games from when I was a kid, right? You think of the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, obviously the Mega Mans, right?

[00:04:44] It just, I somehow was allured by their IP. It was something that just naturally happened. So as I was looking through my collection of games that I've had throughout the years, I just, it was just surprising. It was surprising that I've loved the company and the games they've made for so long. So I naturally like, I don't know.

[00:05:07] Nowadays, to give you a quick rundown, when I think of content creation and what I want to do, if I were to only cover one or two, you know, say developers or publishers, Capcom would be one of those, right? That's how aligned I am with their game design and philosophies. They just, I like pretty much everything they put out, you know? So it's that, yeah.

[00:05:32] And on the content creation side as well, I've been very, very fortunate to be able to, you know, make these connections with some of their PR and actually have gotten review codes. Like Pragmata, I was able to play that before the game released on stream, which was a heck of a, I mean, it still blows my mind. That's awesome. You know, so I'm very, very, very grateful that I'm able to, in a way, work with a company that has inspired me since I was a very young person. So that's, in a nutshell, my history with Capcom.

[00:06:02] Nice. Fantastic. Will, we've done it before. We're here again. Why don't you talk about, you know, what our relationship is with Capcom? So I don't want to rehash too, too much. Because like you said, one, if you're listening to this, you should go listen to that Resident Evil 9 episode because it was fantastic, if I do say so myself. And you'll hear all about that Capcom talk in there too.

[00:06:23] But just to reiterate without going over it too much, just like Onix said, I mean, Capcom, it's the kind of team where if you played video games for any significant length of time, 10 years or more, I would say, the odds of you not playing a Capcom game are like slim to none in Slim Left Town, right? Like you tripped onto a Capcom game at some point, even if you didn't know it. If you play fighting games, you probably played some Marvel versus Capcom or any kind of the subsidiaries that Capcom was involved in. Yeah.

[00:06:50] I mean, if you like just, oh, slice of life and, you know, not actually pressy buttons, boom, you probably played Ace Attorney. I know you have. Don't lie to yourself. If you're like, oh, no, I'm just an action sicko where I want to do nothing but combos and I don't care how goofy the story is. Because that's half their series, to be honest. But you know you play Playboy and Cry. Don't lie to me. It's one of those, even if you're like, oh, well, I want to play like a medieval game where I'm running around and I'm attacking trolls and I have a group of people. Okay, Dragon's Dogma, I see you.

[00:07:18] So realistically, you've played a Capcom game and it's just the amount of time they've been in. And I would say, you know, you probably think back, all right, kind of NES days going forward, especially the PlayStation days where they were really, really big before taking a bit of a dormancy. And now they're on this rapid comeback of, you know, Capcom just putting out eight out of tens, nine out of tens at a consistent clip. You know, they've been around forever. You played Dead Rising. You played Lost Planet. You played Mega Man, obviously. Street Fighter, Monster Hunter.

[00:07:47] The list goes on and on. If you want to name the top 20 greatest franchises in all of video games, Capcom has like 10 of them. So realistically, it's just a company that just the gift that keeps on giving. And we continue with something like Pragmata, which is just such a great new IP. You think a company that has so many staples and, you know, people want them to bring back Beautiful Joe. It's me. I'm people.

[00:08:14] That being said, this company that still goes out and takes swings, they take risks. They're like, hey, let's put out a game, characters you've never met before, gameplay that you've really never interacted with and played with before. And let's see if it sticks after a nice long kind of gestation. And then they do very well here. So I'm excited to see what they continue with with this series now. And of course, talking about this game that not to bury the lead, I've had a great time with for sure. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself. Well, I was just going to add to it.

[00:08:44] I was like, you're really going to look me in the eyes and say you didn't play Lost Planet in 2006. Live with the rest of us. Like, come on, get out of here. Correct. Get out of here. I think it was so good. I think it was so fun. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to go ahead and get into talking all about Pragmata. And as Will said, this is a really fun game. It's a really interesting game. There's a lot of components to talk to and break down with the both of you gentlemen about this. So let's dive right in. So the question is, you know, what is Pragmata?

[00:09:12] So the story set up for where we are and what we're doing Pragmata is that it takes place in the quote unquote near future. I don't know how near we're talking about here, but near future. This is pulled off their wiki. The Delphi Corporation has created a revolutionary invention using what's known as a limb replicator, which harnesses a special ore called Luna filament found on the moon that can 3D print anything that the user slash operator wants.

[00:09:39] In order to source the Luna filament, they basically established this mining outpost on the moon called the cradle. And with this cradle is overseen by an AI administrator called EDIS or the Intelligent Direction Unification System. So naturally, as all things with AI, things go really fucking bad really quickly when you automate everything with AI. Hint, hint.

[00:10:05] So essentially, EDIS takes over all the systems, all of the humans slash scientists slash engineers who were on the cradle at one point. They just get wiped out, right? Like they get completely eliminated, supposedly, right? Like or at least everything that we as the player character come in contact with, they're eliminated. And so there's a catastrophe. Earth gets notified about the catastrophe. And so they deploy a rescue ship. On this rescue ship is systems engineer Hugh Williams.

[00:10:32] So he and his support team are sent to find out why the comms have gone dark. And when they arrive at the cradle and they initiate their investigation, a moonquake hits. Hugh's team members are quickly wiped out. And Hugh meets an android girl who quickly goes by the name or is dubbed by the name Diana. And starts assisting Hugh. And I'm saying Will because it's just in my mind. I'm thinking about Will the entire game. As you should.

[00:10:59] He assists Hugh in fending off rogue enemy robots who are sent to eliminate him by EDIS as a threat to the system. Hugh and Diana team up to investigate the facility, fight back against EDIS, and ultimately find a way to resolve the situation before it gets further out of control. So that's essentially the start of Pragmata. This is what you're doing. So now that we're here, we're very quickly into the episode. But let's go ahead and take a quick music break and listen to this awesome score from Pragmata.

[00:12:02] So gentlemen, we're going to talk about one of the coolest things about this game. And what is my opinion, one of the absolute highlights of this experience with Pragmata. And that's essentially just the gameplay mechanics. What it feels like to play the game, what you're doing in the game. So obviously, we're moving through this facility and we're fighting robots. But Capcom has a really, in my opinion, fascinating way of creating systems that actually differentiate the feeling of a Capcom game

[00:12:32] and what it means to play a Capcom game versus if you're going to play a Naughty Dog game or a Sony Santa Monica game or a, God forbid, 343 game. You know what I mean? Oh, no. Sorry, sorry. No shots fired. So, but I think genuinely, like, starting this game and playing it, I think it's really, like, and this is just one of my thoughts when I'm, like, going through this experience and playing it. Pragmata is generally a pretty quick game. Shame on me for not finishing it sooner.

[00:13:01] But it's a generally very quick game. But I do think, like, it's an excellent example of why Capcom is so different from so many other developers and publishers in the modern landscape right now. And in my opinion, that's, it's because of how seamless they were able to integrate, like, this shooting, the shooting as Hugh with the hacking mechanic as Diana. It's a delicate balance. It's a juggling act that you're doing. You're moving around an environment. You're shooting and you're hacking all at the same time.

[00:13:31] And all of it feels good. All of it feels solid and intuitive. Do both of you agree with that? I would say the greatest thing Capcom did was release the demo, that scribble demo. Yeah. Was effectively, to the consumer, a, like, proof of concept in my eyes of, like, hey, I know you guys are kind of wary. New IP. You see the hacking. You see the shooting. You think it's going to be slow, whatever, whatever. I was like, here, try it for yourself. You know, lost are the days of, you know, those good old demo discs and being able to play every game as a demo before doing it.

[00:14:00] But Capcom's still there, still living in the early 2000s, late 90s, where they're like, try this out before you spend your, you know, 69.99. And I think that put a lot of issues that people had or at least had in their minds to rest. Was like, okay, no, this is going to be a great game where you can both hack using the face buttons if you're using a controller. I didn't play it on PC, so I don't know if it's just like WASD or what the use is. Is it just like the arrows maybe? Is it arrows when you're doing it on PC? I don't know if either of y'all played it on PC. I didn't play PC. I played it on PC.

[00:14:31] I tried it with mouse and keyboard because I do prefer those for shooters. However, it didn't feel very intuitive. I can't even tell you what buttons you actually use for hacking. It felt so odd immediately that I switched back to controller. Yeah, I genuinely believe this game is better played on a controller. I'm sure somebody will argue otherwise, but just the way that it's designed, it just makes sense to use a controller. Yeah, because on my end, I played it on the PlayStation. Yeah, it felt great on the DualSense.

[00:15:00] So it was, you know, the bumpers for boosting around, using the face buttons to do the hacking while you're still moving the stick. Fair warning, this is not baby's first video game. So I don't know how many of you have like friends that you're introducing to games or something. Don't let the cute aesthetic between Hugh and Diana fool you. This is not the game you like get your SO if they don't play video games. Oh, try this out. This is your first shooter, right? Sarah, it's time to play Pragmata. Yeah, it's not going to work.

[00:15:29] I've unfortunately seen too many people where they're like playing Halo and they can't move the camera and move the moving stick at the same time. So imagine trying to get them to do that and use the face buttons to hack. Like even me at a level of, you know, quote unquote gamer, right? Capital G gamer. Yeah, you'd be later on to the levels and you have three different types of bots all attacking you with different speeds and different movements at the same time.

[00:15:55] And you're sitting there having to go around hacking nodes and then you have to jump over lasers and also hack with the face buttons. And I'm like, oh, this is requiring a lot more brain power than I initially assumed. Yes, it is. And that's why when we spoke a little bit about lunatic mode, I'm like, I don't have it in me right now because when I tried it, I had just, you know. You're juggling a lot in life. Yeah. Yeah. And also the game itself, right? Like it has a fantastic, talking about game design, right?

[00:16:24] It has a fantastic learning curve, right? The difficulty starts off very simple at first. The first hour, I would say, I was actually a tad worried. I thought this is a little too easy, right? And the demo also kind of gave me that impression minus the boss fight in that demo. But as you play through the game, it starts ramping up, right? It starts showing you different enemies, different enemy types that require different tactics.

[00:16:50] And then eventually, like you said, you're dealing with the enemies themselves, the variety of enemies, plus environmental hazards on top of managing your boosts, managing like the overdrives if you're using those. It's very cool. It's honestly traditional Capcom design that works so well with such a fresh idea. You know, it's very – remember when Splatoon came out for Nintendo? I don't know if you guys have played Splatoon. Played a little.

[00:17:20] So Splatoon was like Nintendo's take on the first-person shooter, right? It never had a shooter before. A third person, I should say. And what's their take on it? We're not just going to shoot each other. We're going to shoot the walls. That's how the multiplayer works. You're supposed to splat the zones, and whoever has the most splatted zones wins the matches. Very Nintendo idea. Very, like, different and innovative for them.

[00:17:41] So this gives me that idea of Capcom design where it's like we're taking a shooter and we're doing something different with it by adding those hacking elements and environmental hazards and managing all that at once. Pretty cool. Yeah. It's something that, you know, kind of – it's got three components, three core pillars. And I kind of characterize it as, like, obviously the combat and hacking is, like, the central pillar, right? The core of, like, what makes the design.

[00:18:05] But it's also, like, the way that the game comes together from that, like, the combat experience to the level design. And then on the other side, you have, like, the collectible and the upgrade loop. That core progression loop that you have of, like, going through the level, learning the different enemy encounters and the enemy variety that's, like, in the game. That, as you said, Onix progressively scales in a really intuitive way. Like, we talk about onboarding in games.

[00:18:32] Capcom has never done a better job of, like, onboarding me and doing the experience and being like, okay, I played the demo. I get this. And then I'm ready to jump in and I'm ready to learn, even if I hadn't played the demo. Because they just – they really – they give you the information, what you need to know, when you need to know it in a very, like, natural, intuitive way that feels good for this game, for this experience. And that's something that's, like – again, like, it sounds like I'm being very pedantic. It sounds like I'm being very mundane.

[00:19:00] But I feel like in 2026, not a lot of game developers are doing that. There's not a lot of people out there that, like, know when to give the player what they want. It's, like, either we're going to drop you into the world, figure it out, have fun, which is its own – like, not to criticize that style of, like, development. But, like, it's its own sort – you can find fun in that. But I think that from a linear progression system, you're in corridors and hallways and pragmata.

[00:19:26] Like, this is really the sauce on how you kind of make those systems mesh together. Right. Yeah. It's a very – bringing back Nintendo – I don't know why they're coming up again, but bringing back Nintendo, it's a very Nintendo approach. Because if you think of, like, the Mario design of game design, this Mario school of game design, you – they introduce an obstacle, which is – yeah, you start with Mario Bros. And you see a Goomba. And you got to get over the Goomba. So you jump over the Goomba. Then they'll introduce a block that you have to jump over. And they introduce a Goomba and a block.

[00:19:54] And then eventually, by the end of the level, you're jumping over a Goomba, a block, and a gap in space, like a hole, a pit. So that's what you see in Pragmata. It starts simple and slowly asks more of you and asks more of you and challenges you. And yeah, I think that's just – that's really good. It's really cool, you know? Yeah. Talking about the development for Pragmata, apparently the game took place over – like, the development for the game took place over six years.

[00:20:22] It was originally announced in 2020 as Capcom's first original franchise at that time in eight years. And then, of course, six years later. So quite a while for Capcom to actually put out a new franchise. But shout out to them because they're one of the few, again, that's actually doing it aside from maybe Sega in a lot of instances. So I think it was really cool. My understanding is that Pragmata went through a little bit of development hell where the games core concept was –

[00:20:50] they spent a lot of time testing and refining that central pillar of, like, the hacking with the combat mechanics that are kind of, like, interspersed through it. Specifically just the puzzle elements that are attached to the hacking. Onix, you had shared a little bit of details about that in terms of how that system was looked at internally. What was going on with that at Capcom? It's really interesting. And I'm going to read parts of these articles. This is pulled from Games Reader.

[00:21:20] There was a Pragmata livestream where the devs came on there celebrating their two million copies sold, which is great, although, for a new IP. And they talked about those woes of designs. And pretty much in 2019 – and I'll read this verbatim – the project started in 2019 with Capcom head Jun Takeuchi tasked a team of young developers with making a game on the moon. However, after that trailer of 2020 debuted, the team ran into trouble as test stages were being rejected,

[00:21:49] with the team being told they were unable to make compelling puzzles, unable to make compelling action, and incompetent at-level design. Okay? That's the kind of feedback they got from upper management of Capcom. So that feedback was what actually pushed the team to create the hacking system. At first, the hacking system wasn't implemented well. They actually got a lot more feedback. Things like, this has fundamentally worsened the game. I am deeply disappointed.

[00:22:19] And give me back the two months I lost working alongside the team. Is this where you're trying to entertain your players with? That kind of criticism was hard to listen and hear. But the devs used that to create an even better hacking design. And they eventually pitched it a good year or two later. And that's when it had clicked. And it worked. And the upper management was like, wait, you guys actually did something great. So it was kind of crazy seeing that kind of feedback. That's very harsh.

[00:22:49] That's really harsh. It makes me imagine that the internal culture at Capcom. Now, I don't know who are the people that are saying this giving feedback. I'm imagining it's team leads that are working on whatever teams across the companies. And they come together to review potential new projects. But I imagine that because the people who are giving this feedback are literally some of the best in class in the world.

[00:23:13] That the bar to meet being published and developed by Capcom to get to that point is exceedingly high. So it's one of those things, I guess, you can trust what they put out. And clearly, we have after a course of over the period of time. I mean, Will, you played Kenitsugami. Obviously, we're talking about Capcom now. We loved it. So it's like, you know, if they're going to put something out new, they know that it's because it's going to bring the heat. Correct. Yeah. And that's the big thing, too.

[00:23:40] Like with this and probably I'm sure Kenitsugami went through something similar, especially when you're working, you're taking these swings, right? You're not just saying we're going to slap a two or three on something and call it a day, which luckily Capcom has not really done recently anyways, right? But that being said, you have this new IP, you have this new work that you're doing. You definitely want to come out swinging. And I think that, like you said, harsh but accurate and needed feedback to make sure that you're putting out something great.

[00:24:05] I think a lot of the times in entertainment, whether it be video games or what have you, there's a lot of folks that may say, okay, well, it's a Capcom. We'll do it like a yes man situation. Yeah, this is great. And then it makes its way to the actual gaming testers and they're like, what the hell is this? Right. What are we actually doing here? So it's nice to see that, you know, before they even really get to that point or maybe around that point of kind of introducing it to a player, a real tester. It's going along that lines of, you know, how can we make this better? Is this really good enough? Is this up to our pedigree?

[00:24:34] And not even just saying, oh, as a new game, as a new IP, is this good? But more of as a kind of, you know, standard that we've set as a quality of game that we've set. How are we doing? So, I mean, it's just the kind of thing you want to hear, I would say, out of development. That's pretty much perfectly what I want to hear from a team saying, we want to make something that's good, not just good enough. Yeah. I agree. I agree.

[00:24:56] So one of the things that was interesting, a tidbit that I picked up when kind of researching this game, is that the world building was supervised by Shoji Kawamori, who is known for their work on the Macross series. Are either of you familiar with Macross? So you tell me you haven't seen, you're the mecha guy, you haven't seen Macross before? No, I haven't. I haven't. Enlighten me. Please enlighten me. What's Macross all about? And do you see any Macross in Pragmata?

[00:25:20] I mean, the big thing I would see is probably from there's a mini boss in the game that does not kind of transform because just full reference to everybody. Macross is a mecha anime, not dissimilar from like Gundam. I think they actually came out around the same time, like both late 80s, something like that, or like early 80s, something to that effect.

[00:25:41] But yeah, Macross is a Gundam-ish anime, mecha anime, and the big difference between it is if anybody's, you know, watched old school Gundam, you know it's actually really hardcore and politically charged. Some people say, oh, sweet, I love giant robots. It's like, no, this is Game of Thrones with giant robots. There's a lot of child murder and child death. Yeah, yeah, yeah. War is bad, kids die. Correct.

[00:26:11] There's a lot of singing involved. It's very strange. Like legitimately, there's like pop idols. You're selling me right now. Yeah, there's pop idols. I mean, it is cool. It's worth a watch. And it's funny because I feel like there's probably a lot of people out there that have seen Macross and didn't really know just because I think it was another show. Robotech, dude. Robotech, there you go. Robotech, that was the name. And it was like three different animes that were merged together to make Robotech. Yeah, it was weird. That's really cool. It was some weird thing for the West. I don't know how it happened, but yeah, that's what it was. It was just weird. You know what?

[00:26:38] That's how the West gets, they get anime and then they butcher it sometimes to hilarious degrees. It was probably a ghost story situation where they were just like, all right, let's just, we get freedom to just kind of tweak this and make it our own. So that's what happened with Robotech and then it became its own thing. But yeah, Macross is cool. I'm not going to sit here and be like, I'm a Macross stan. I own every, you know. Blu-ray. Steelbook. I can't say that, but it's just an interesting thing from like your yesteryear of Mecha anime. Gotcha. You know, it's funny.

[00:27:06] I've never watched Macross myself, but I know Shoji Kawamori from other things. Like I'm a big Escaflowne fan and many, I don't know if you guys have heard the name Escaflowne. Yeah. But that was a mid nineties anime. It was a fantasy Mecha. You don't get those. It was set in like. Sounds really cool. Dude, it's so good. It was an isekai. It was like a biomechanical Mecha or something like that. An isekai in 1996. Nick's downloading it right now. A girl, a girl gets taken to another world and they fight with giant mechs, but they're

[00:27:35] powered by like, they get in there and one of them is powered by this guy's like blood. That's the Escaflowne. He has to get like a dragon's heart and put it in there to power it up. Really sick. And he designed those Mecha in that anime. So that's how I knew Shoji Kawamori. Gotcha. So it's very cool that I saw it. I thought that's really cool. Yeah. Because the Mecha in that anime are very fantasy oriented. I can't, I can't see the connection. However, thinking of Macross. Yeah, absolutely. You definitely do see that, that, that connection there. He is very talented.

[00:28:05] So you see the aesthetics that are pulled through from Macross into Kragmata. I think so. Will, you mentioned like a mini boss. Do you remember which mini boss that was? Yes. Later on, there's a plane like. Oh, okay. Yes. Right. And pretty much all of the Macross, if not definitely the main Macross suits. They're, they're like transformer type thing. You know, they can fly as like a, like a star scream. And then they type exactly just straight up star scream. Yep. Yeah. They flip forward and next thing you know, they attack you. Very cool. Very cool. Well, let's go ahead.

[00:28:35] We've talked a lot about like how good this combat is, but let's go ahead and like pick it apart really quick. Let's like really dig deep into what it feels like. So kind of just to paint a picture for our listeners. Um, so you have the two co-protagonists. You have Hugh and Diana. Diana is a little Android child. Looks to be about seven or eight years old, maybe six, seven years old, whatever you want to say. And she rides on the don't, don't, don't, don't. He did it. Yeah, he did it. He did it on purpose. All right.

[00:29:05] Diana rides on Hugh's back. Um, and she acts like his own personal little AI agent, her, his own little autonomous hacking machine. Um, so the player through Diana, as you know, was previously mentioned by both of you before, uh, the player will use the face buttons, um, to move a cursor around a grid, um, that is attached to a given enemy robot. That was, is within Hugh's reticle. Hugh has to be looking at it or somewhat close to it for, in order to trigger the grid.

[00:29:34] And in order for, to create a vulnerability or open up the robot, uh, to expose like, you know, it's vital, you know, weaknesses. You have to hack it to get to the, basically the power button. Um, and you do that with Diana while at the same time you're maneuvering through whatever level that you're in or whatever space that you're in and you're juggling weapons as Hugh. You're, you're picking, which is the best weapon to use the main weapon, the grip shout

[00:30:03] out to control, um, is, is definitely one of my favorites here. Like it just feels really good to shoot that primary weapon. Uh, the moment that they gave me the pulse carbine and I tried it out, I was like, you, this is stinky. And I went immediately back to the grip, uh, did not like it, did not like it at all. Um, so yeah, that's just me. And so, yeah, it's just, it's really interesting. It's like, it's important to note, uh, that as Will had mentioned before, everything in

[00:30:30] the combat scenarios are all simultaneous. Like you are looking at enemy attack patterns. You are hacking the enemies. You are switching weapons. You are boosting and using the shoulder buttons to maneuver as Hugh. Um, you're healing if you need to heal, like everything is in real time. Uh, but it all feels like as long as you're paying close enough attention, it all is like it's doable. It doesn't feel impossible to do. And I feel like it could very, very easily with like people who didn't design the systems

[00:30:59] or the combat as well could get easily out of hand. Yep. And that's exactly what we talked about there a little bit with, um, how they onboard you pretty well and they get the difficulty in as you're playing through that normal, that standard difficulty. It does feel like that. Like you're in a pretty good spot most of the time. Sometimes you got to lock in. You got to be careful to know what enemies have long range attacks, which ones have like medium, surprisingly long range attacks. Shout out to you, samurai robot that I hate. Like with everything in my spirit. Oh my God.

[00:31:27] Um, but the big thing, and then you have those, the, the giant baby, the executors that will like, you know, jump at you or do sprints, things like that. So kind of as you play through the game and frankly, you get hit, you learn the enemy attacks, you learn what their setups are. And then that kind of dictates how you move around. So just like Nick said, um, as far as with that grid too, you got to make sure like you're using the aim buttons, like that left trigger, if you're on the console and that's what like pops the grid up for you. And there was a while there where, like you were saying, I was like looking at somebody and I'm like, why isn't the grid popping?

[00:31:56] But you can shoot from the hip at any time. But yeah, it's like all about aiming that kind of triggers Diana to put her, you know, hand out and start to hack those bots. But it's just, it's really important to make sure that as you're running through and you're, you're doing these sections, you got your different bots going, you got your flow going. Also paying attention to that beautiful stamina meter. You know, we couldn't make it too easy for you. Uh, you can thrust around, you got little butt thrusters like Titanfall two, but they are limited via your stamina. You could upgrade it later on.

[00:32:24] But I think when you start, you have maybe three, potentially two. Yeah. So it's like, you have just enough to kind of like get out of jail, but not so much that you're completely free to do it. Now, later you level up yourself 10 times and you have seven thrust. And I felt like I was playing a completely different game by the end of it, but it does do a really good job of kind of slowly getting you up to speed. Now, if you want to talk a little bit about higher difficulties, uh, that's when it starts

[00:32:53] to get like, Oh, even these first few fights are horribly brutal and no enemies. They pick up their attack speed. They obviously do more damage. You're probably getting one hit by walkers, like which is those standard enemies for like the first two levels of the game. And then when you fight your first boss, he's definitely one slapping anytime he touches you and it feels like he's shooting out like four times as many missiles as he did on the standard difficulty. So you get one shot by any bosses. Pretty much any boss so far.

[00:33:19] Like I just leveled up my defense a lot in lunatic mode and I'm getting out of the third zone now about to fight the third zone boss. And yeah, they, you refight the first zone boss as a mini boss later on in that third zone. And, um, he like to tap me, he did like a little dash move and he hit. Hit me once. And I was like, all right, that's cool. I got half health. And then he hit me again, sent me back to the shelter. So does the, does the platinum require lunatic mode completion? Yep.

[00:33:49] If you want to get the platinum, you do have to beat lunatic mode. That's the last trophy I got. That's the last one you got on your list. Okay. So yeah, I got to get that one and then I'm done. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Onyx, are you an achievement hunter at all? I used to be. You used to? Okay. A very, a very long time ago. I used to be really crazy about trophies, specifically trophies because achievements on Xbox were cool. Yeah. Um, but I never really hunted, hunted them down like that. The trophies. The trophies are cooler. Get the platinum. You know, when they introduced that system. There's nothing like the platinum. Yeah. When they introduced that platinum system, it was like, oh wait, this, this gives me

[00:34:19] a goal. But, um, I mean, back then I got burned out on it. I didn't even get that. I don't have that many plats. Yeah. They were just so difficult to do that. Those, those first couple of years that I tried to, I got kind of burned out on it. And eventually I just stopped caring. But there are some games that I look at that list and I'm like, I kind of want to do all that. I can do it. Yeah. It gives me more incentive to play the game. It's doing what it's supposed to do, you know? Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you both, of course, you know, I talked about my love for the grip

[00:34:48] will chastise me for my disparagement of the pulse carbine. Uh, what were your loadouts respectively? What were the guns that you brought with you into every scenario? I need to hear from a professional Onyx. What did, what did you bring out? What were you packing? Uh, I actually, uh, I used the grip until they gave me the pulse carbine. And when I used the pulse carbine, I liked the feel of it. It felt very punchy. A man of culture. Not in the same way as the grip, because the grip obviously has a very heavy punch. I think it even has a, uh, what is it called?

[00:35:17] Uh, oh my God. What's the name? It has the upgraded like DS version. Yeah. No, but what there, there is a terminology for this animation thing where when you, it's a hit, not hits done. Oh my gosh. It's, it's evading around. You're talking about the stagger, are you? Or. You know, when you, when you, when you, when in games, when you, uh, when you hit an enemy with something and it gives you like a one frame of animation where it freezes and then it continues on to show you the impact of that. I forget the name, but it does, it does, it does that. It like, it's very punchy. Okay. Yeah.

[00:35:47] Um, cannot term, it's an animation technique, but point is it has very good feedback and the pulse carbine is different in the sense that it's obviously shooting faster and stuff. But when you start breaking the enemies down and you see their parts falling apart as you're shooting them with pulse carbine, it gives a very different sense of feedback to me anyway. So I stuck to that. Um, I think the secondary, oh, what the heck? Okay. Hold on. So pulse, pulse carbon is your main. And then you have the, like the red weapons, which I forget if they have a term.

[00:36:17] They're the attack units. Yep. There you go. Attack units. What are the green ones? Yeah. So the green ones are tactical units and then you have the blue ones, which are defense units. Okay. Okay. So I'll break it down real quick. So my defensive was the drones. Loved the drones. Oh yeah. They keep the stagger going on too. So it was very helpful. Um, the tacticals I had the, is it the, the grenade launcher. I forget, I'm really bad with terms sometimes. I think, I think the riot blaster. Yep. That's right. Yeah.

[00:36:44] So I had the riot blaster and then I had the, the one that I think it was a something mines where it attaches and like decreases the hacking grid. Yeah. Those were the, those were the sticky bombs. Sticky bombs. And then on the attack side, I had the shotgun. Shotgun was good. Um, so good. And the, oh God, the, the, the, the laser. Oh, the photon laser. Yeah. That thing, man. And any weapon that you hold. Dude, exactly.

[00:37:11] I love that when you kind of hold the, the, the, the, the, the trigger and it just slowly builds up and gets a meteor and meteor and meteor. I love that. Love that kind of. I feel like I was playing Zarya again from Overwatch. I'm like, here we go. Oh yes. Zarya. Great example. Great example. But yeah, that, that was my overall loadout. Yeah. Nice. How about you, Will? Listen, so one, you got to do the pulse carbine just because now Nick, I understand. You know, the pistol's punchy. It feels good. And to be fair, you get more damage per shot. You do.

[00:37:39] But one, daddy needs more bullets than like the maximum of seven that you get. I was like, I can't do seven shots. And he gets up to like eight or nine when you're with upgrades. You know what I mean? I think when, and I want to talk about this, I don't want to like be too much of the lunatic mode guy, but especially on like the harder difficulties or when you're dealing with. Oh, do they decrease it? Well, no, it's not the bullets, but I just mean the pulse carbine in general. There's a couple builds you can do.

[00:38:08] We, I don't know if we're probably getting to it, I imagine, but aside from your guns as well and your loadouts, you also have modifications that you can add to hue. Yes. That can kind of tweak around your play style things like, oh, you take less damage when you're aiming your gun or you're hacking nodes stay open 15% longer. You got a great one that I love where if you do the stun animation, like the finisher move to a robot, it'll do 30% of that damage to any robot that's like within a 20 yard radius. So I love doing that one. That's sick. That's a good one.

[00:38:37] To kind of go along with that, one of the best builds that people have and that I found, especially towards the end of the game is building heat on the robots. And that's that little yellow stagger meter underneath. And there is nothing better at building heat in the game than the pulse carbine. It's really just about as many bullets downrange as possible. So when you lock onto an enemy's like, you know, their sensitive area, once you've opened them up and you just light them up with the pulse carbine, you can pretty much take them from nothing to full stun in like one clip.

[00:39:05] And then you hit them with that animation, which is probably my only like downside of the game or one of my only downsides, because you see that animation, that's the same for everything. It's the same animation to everything. The only difference is when you're fighting the executors and then you put the bullet to their head, which I love that one. I love stunning the big baby robots. And I'm just like, yeah, that was pretty cool. But yeah, the stagger, it really comes down to like saving your life and pushing you back, giving you some iframes whenever you're doing that animation.

[00:39:34] So I just felt like that pulse carbine was just invaluable on that end. As far as the attack units, love the shotgun. Really like the charge piercer, especially once you level enough enough and you got that third charge. It's like they stole everything from control. Like they stole all of their thieves. It's like they literally just like, we love this game. We're just going to put it all in here because it's literally the same gun. Am I right? Listen, Capcom, me too. Am I right? Capcom, me as well. If you're going to steal from anything, steal from control. They were putting in some work.

[00:40:04] They really were. Remedy killed it with that one. Yeah. Shout out to Control Resonant. It's going to take a significant amount of my life away later on this year. I'm excited for that one. Yeah. But another thing too, a game or rather attack unit that you get a little bit later on, but I just completely loved, especially during the time in that kind of postgame content that I played, but the jackhammer. The jackhammer was super fun. So sick. So sick. It's a melee based attack unit, which you really don't have any other melee attacks in this game at all. So this is your only real one.

[00:40:33] And it's pretty much says, you don't have to hack if you don't want to. Just hit robot very hard. I'm like, you are speaking my language. Jackhammer go bonk. And it's funny too. It's one of those things where similar to control that we were talking about it. I got maybe one and a half levels into Pragmata. And then I realized how pretty the game was. Yeah.

[00:40:59] So I nerfed myself by turning off the HUD because I was like, I want to play this game like a postcard. So I spent the rest of the game just not seeing my health or like not seeing enemy health bars, things like that. Because I was just like, this looks really cool. It looks fun. So I got a lot of good screenshots that way. He's lost in the sauce. It's so good though. No, the game is gorgeous, man. So that's... I was like, this game is too pretty for a heads up display. So I just turned it all off. So it was really fun like doing all the moves and doing all the attacks.

[00:41:29] And then now that I'm back on Lunatic mode and I'm like, I need to see my health because it's almost non-existent. Seeing the amount of damage the jackhammer does to an enemy when you hit them is ridiculous. I'm just like, oh, 4,000 damage. Okay. And that's before I do the R2 secondary charge to fully stun someone. I like this. This is very nice. That's awesome. So attack units are great. Attack units, same deal. I like the Riot Blaster and the Sticky Bomb. Those are my two. Yeah. Those were my main two. I really didn't mess with the other ones.

[00:41:57] The code generator looks interesting, but also more of like a let's fuck around and play. Yeah. Code generator was fine, especially for like bosses. I think maybe it's good because they have a lot of those error nodes and it completely wipes the error nodes. Yeah. Which is sweet. But the Sticky Bomb, shout out to them too, because that was the only way I ever got those little loot goblins. Like little robots. I never got one. I tried like a couple of times, but I never got one. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're, you know, they're not carbine. What do they call the thing? The matrix.

[00:42:24] Their hacking matrix is always, you know, 10 by 10. And then it has a bunch of little nodes that you can't get into. Like not the error ones, but like the, you cannot proceed nodes. Yeah. You hit them with sticky, like two or three sticky bombs and then it makes it a four by four. So then it's super easy to hack. And then once you hack it, it just instantly blows up, which is nice. It does give you like a ton of like. Yeah. It gives you like 2000 limb. Limb. Okay. Gotcha. So, I mean, that was definitely worth it whenever we got a chance to see them.

[00:42:49] And then for the defense, drone hive was once again, my, my go-to just puts on crazy stun, really does a lot of damage to enemies. So it's really nice. Yep. The heat was really good for it, but surprising enough too, especially in this lunatic mode side, decoy generator has been very helpful. Really? Because I'm getting like mugged or they're getting too close. And I just like, I Kobe my, my decoy, like across the room. I'm like, Oh, go, go over there. Yep. And then I get to run away and like charge blast three of them before they turn around

[00:43:19] and start attacking me again. So. Sick. Lots of good stuff in this game. That's very cool. Yeah. I mean, I was the same way. I mean, well, not to take too long, but yeah, I just ran with the grip. I alternated between the shockwave gun, the charge piercer, depending on the situation that I felt like it was in. I picked up the, towards the later of the game, I really liked the homing missiles, although they were less, like I wanted a little bit different haptic feedback for those. They were a little less punchy than I wanted, but I kept them nonetheless because they were pretty effective against bosses. Tack units.

[00:43:48] Of course, I stuck with sticky bombs and riot blasters. I was like, I did not like the stasis net as much at all, really, just because I could always, I felt like I was playing on standard the whole game. So I felt like I could always maneuver around the enemies in the given context that I was in. And then, yeah, as soon as I unlocked the drone hive, I, I really, I picked up the decoy generator impact barrier when they were like prompted or if I ran out of the drone hive because they do run out very quickly. But yeah, I ran with the drone hive like 90% of the time and upgraded it all the way.

[00:44:16] And it was super effective against like really heavy, tougher enemies, especially kind of towards the end when they start throwing enemy variants at you and you, not to spoil anything, but like you kind of, it gets a little hairy there and you have to kind of like manage your systems and you manage your space very effectively. So those were good for that. Yep. Talking about Diana, you can upgrade her system as well. She actually gets her own hacking upgrade tree right next to Hugh. When you're ever you're in the main, I guess they call it like the cabin shelter, the shelter. Yes.

[00:44:46] Thank you. The shelter cabin is the robot that helps you. Goat. Cabin is my dog. We talk about, so we talk about the systems and like the, the interactivity of this game and all of the collectibles which are present in most Capcom games. Resident Evil is famous for the Mr. Raccoons that you'll find throughout any of the various, you know, the Mr. Raccoon variants or whatever that you'll find in their games. And they have the, the mini cabins that are in this game. And there's always just a fun, you hear that ha ha ha or something like that.

[00:45:15] They're making a little noise and off in the distance and you're looking around with the camera. Always a fun time to, to catch those. But yeah. So Diana specifically, you know, you are working alongside upgrading Hugh's loadout alongside, you know, what she has. And you can apply and pick up in the various level, different hacking modules that will allow you to work. Obviously you had mentioned this earlier with like the hit to heat module that's attached to when you, when you do that.

[00:45:42] Heat is a function that builds up on robots, but there's a specific hacking module that will also serve to increase that. So I'm sure that was probably a compounding effect that you used with your robot and your loadout with what you had there. But there's a bunch of different ones. The ones that I felt were, there were some, I think are more effective or more impactful than others. The ones that I found most effective for my play style were multi-hack, confuse and drain. Confuse was really good. It was like, kind of like, it's like a free decoy generator, right?

[00:46:10] You just like, you know, you shoot it or you use that while you're hacking different enemies and then they'll attack other robots that are in the vicinity there for a limited period of time. And drain also is good, like a free heal, right? You know, when you hit a drain on the enemy and you kind of just, you get a boost to your health and health is pretty, you know, scarce to come by. I'm sure even scarcer whenever you're in lunatic mode, or at least the impact of like your healing packs when you're in lunatic mode are less, I guess.

[00:46:39] Because you're not a heal, you're not upgrading that, that little health component that you get. Yeah, gotcha. You're not upgrading it to give you more health because you got to put your upgrades towards everything else. So yeah, I'm sitting around like 300 health every time I upgrade. I'm like, well, that doesn't matter because that's like a third of my life. Yeah. And Diana has multiple hacking modes in this game. This is like another layer of complexities, the actual gameplay style. She has offense, strike, hybrid, et cetera. There's multiple of them out there.

[00:47:09] I felt like these weren't super noticeable. Did you notice a difference between the two of you? Yeah. Okay. You did. Absolutely. Yeah. I actually ended up moving over to the strike node. Okay. I use that a lot too. That one was great because it's like once you hack and you have them opened up in that window, you pump up the damage to shoot them a whole bunch because that multiplier will stack and stack and stack. And depending on the, on the hacking mode nodes that you have on there as well, you can, you can do like six, seven, 8,000 damage.

[00:47:39] You know, you can really stack it. That, that to me, I, that almost changed the way I was playing the game because before I got that node, I was just kind of doing the basic hacking, doing damage, but then kind of getting ready to, you know, hack them again. But now all of a sudden I'm, I'm trying to maximize that window. It's almost like when you play like a, I don't know, like an MMORPG where you have like burst windows of damage where for the next 30 seconds, I got to pump in everything. Cause like you're staggered or like even final fantasy games are staggering enemy.

[00:48:07] So it kind of felt like that where I'm, I'm now focused on blowing up that damage and doing the most within that 30 seconds to a minute. I liked it a lot. Those modes are the thing that really makes it. So like, how do you want to play this game? Right. Do you want to play it like a shooter because you open up the enemies with Diane and no matter what, but at that point you can really let Hugh deal on the damage or just like Onyx was saying, you know, you turn on strike mode, you effectively use Hugh to just boost up the hack damage. And then you let Diana, you know, cause 6,000 damage to an enemy to finish them off.

[00:48:37] So at that point, you're really doing more hacking damage than actual shooting damage. And it just kind of depends on how you want to play and what kind of enemies you're coming across. But I also agree with you a hundred percent about the hacking nodes though, Nick, there was definitely some better than others. Like that multi-hack I felt like was just necessary towards the back half of the game. So good. And one thing I really ended up liking a lot that I didn't initially really get, but once I kind of made it click, I almost exclusively used it was exposed because that was a combination

[00:49:05] of the decode because it did extra damage to them and left them more vulnerable, but it also stunned enemies. So it gave me like a mini freeze because it knocked them on their ass for like five seconds to pour on more damage. That's right. So it was pretty nice. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely good. You talked about this earlier, Will, when it came to the thruster systems that Hugh applies. It's like ECG or something like that. They have an acronym for it in the game, which is pretty cool.

[00:49:31] But like when we talk about like the hacking and the traversal and like what it feels to move around these arenas, I will say, man, once you unlock those like evasive maneuvers as Hugh, that's when this game started getting like, okay, this is fucking sick. This is like peak Capcom gameplay combat here. I obviously, you know, you get hit semi-frequently in this game and it knocks you back and being able to have that quick recover there.

[00:49:56] Not only is it cool, I had the upgrades that allowed you to like slow time and deal extra damage as well. Whenever you're using those like, you know, evasive maneuvering systems as Hugh and you're doing that, you know, you're doing the, like the loop back in and kind of repositioning yourself. I thought that was very cool. Did either of you use that or kind of like attribute that to your loadouts at all? I didn't really do that as much.

[00:50:22] And the only reason I didn't is because my philosophy, especially playing on the harder ones was like, if I get hit, I'm kind of borked. So I'm like, okay. I felt like Chael Sonnen. I was like, I can't let you get close. So I just have to like run across the room anytime somebody gets near me, use my like five or six boosts. But I do like a lot of the stuff I saw there. I like the one you mentioned there too. You do the extra damage, but there's also, I don't know if it's, I think it's a mod.

[00:50:51] I don't think it's an upgrade where you do the fast moves where you, you know, it's effectively like a, not a parry, but it's like a perfect dodge slows down time. And then if you're aiming and hitting the stick button or whatever the button is, the auto hack. Heck yes. Oh, I love that. I loved hitting that. That was, that was definitely a good one. It just, they, they really found a way because like, of course it, like it feels very mundane at first, but when you get deeper into that upgrade tree, you really just like unlock those

[00:51:19] really cool perks that build this out to feel very much like an action game, feel like a fun action oriented experience, which is always very good. No. Yeah, I agree. And there's, it's interesting because this is very much a shooter and I was having this conversation with Rob from the gaming duo, shout out to them. And where he was telling me that he actually felt a little let down by the shooting. He, he, he kind of wanted to shoot more than the game let.

[00:51:47] And as I kind of was discussing this with him, it's like the, that's not what the game is about. The game is very much a, I got to debuff the enemy before putting on the damage. You can't just, it's not just about the shooting. The shooting is good, but there's like two main weapons. And then you have those, those side weapons, right? Those other units. So it's very much, it's, it's the deep, it's debuff the game. The hacking is such a vital part of the, of the game that the shooting will not feel as

[00:52:16] good unless you're, you're having to focus on the hacking. So that was one of his complaints that he felt that there was too much of the hacking. And I think that maybe having that, that mindset of, well, I gotta do the debuff first might change your perspective, but long story short, I'm just trying to say, yeah, I agree with what you guys both were saying that the evasive maneuvers, all these systems kind of put on top of each other really gave us a heck of a, heck of a system altogether. Yeah. Listen, you gotta understand how these gamer minds work sometime.

[00:52:45] I was like, you keep saying this, you're like, oh, well you got a heck. Like I guarantee you within the next week, we're going to see somebody's like beat pragmata on lunatic mode. No hack. No hack. No hack. How? I left Diana at the shelter. I just shot the robots over and over and over again. A single boss will take like an hour. Exactly. Listen, people, people beat Elden Ring with their feet. Like I, true, true. Gamers are meant to suffer. It's, it's our nature. We don't deserve anything good.

[00:53:15] Um, so we talk about like the different systems that are involved in this game. Uh, one of the things that I talked about earlier, of course, that I thought was a real standout feat, um, was the level design and the level design definitely pairs with what Will was talking about with how pretty this game is. The level design is simple, but it also like, I'm going to go out on a limb here. Please, both of you just feel free to reject this if you don't agree at all.

[00:53:40] But the level design feels very from soft in like it feels very in a way where some of like, not necessarily where like all of the different areas loop back and connect to each other, but it's very much where you're going through a level and like they have the hidden doors and like there are secrets off to the side of an area that you can kind of see a little damage on a railway. And you're like, Oh, I wonder what's going on over there. And then you look, you go over the edge and you see this whole path that's laid out and

[00:54:08] you press the scan button and you realize it's a path to like some type of upgrade system, like perfect limb or whatever the case may be. Um, I felt like that there was definitely secrets within secrets that were nestled inside of a lot of the different areas that you were in. And some of them are more straightforward. And another one stands out like kind of like the New York city recreation area, like the time square clone that you have a pretty early on in the game.

[00:54:33] There were so many like little tiny nooks and crannies that were fun to kind of just run around and explore. And I love that area so much that I went back multiple times to a hundred percent it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I get what you're saying. Uh, cause from, from software, at least like dark souls and on, um, they took a lot of inspiration from like the Metroids and the Castlevanias, the Egovanias. Right. Right. Right. So it's very much taken from that search action sub genre and, and the whole, uh,

[00:55:02] progression gates, uh, based on abilities, right? The ability, what is it called? You don't talk about like, like where you can't go to a different area until you have that ability. Let's you. Metroidvania progressions. Exactly. Yeah. So it, it has that in there. And I think this game has a two, to a much lesser extent, of course, because it is still very much, you have this one big area and you have small areas within that one big area and then you kind of jump back to the shelter to travel to the next large area.

[00:55:29] Um, but once you're in those areas, yeah, there's just a lot to see, a lot to, to, to, um, check out. Like you said, all those nooks and crannies in that second level of the New York recreation. I loved it as well. I, I, I fell in love with that segment. I actually 100% of that before I even beat the story just naturally because I wanted to explore it as much as possible, which is really cool. It's very interesting. Nick, I want to put you onto a little game, little, little, not, not super well-known, but it's a little niche. It's a little indie called Mega Man. All right.

[00:55:59] Wait, wait, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. You mean the prequel to Pragmata? Is that what you mean? Check that out. Well, check that out. Oh, I see you, my boy. Look at him. Look at him. Look at him. Listeners. Yeah, yeah. Onyx is wearing a Mega Man stripe shirt. This guy knows ball. But I mean, what you were saying there too is like, and I can understand once again, just like Onyx said, I get where you're going to there, Nick, but I feel like this is definitely more of a natural progression of like that Mega Man system, that kind of world building system they did. Okay.

[00:56:25] You can like go into your different Mega Man levels in a short, very short, because this is not a Mega Man review, but you go in, there's specific levels, there's specific bosses at the end of those levels, you beat the boss, you get their item. Now, we don't really do that in Pragmata, but I would say that level setup of having a hub, going to a different specific level, going, doing things, not having them fully interconnected in that way, this felt like a nice kind of, hey, this is a future look of what like a Mega Man could look like.

[00:56:52] All that to say too, a lot of people were thinking this is going to be like a Mega Man prequel, you know, Mega Man sequel, something in that same vein. And it didn't help that Cabin has a little Mega Man Easter egg on him. I love that. I love that so much. Everyone's like, oh my God, I can't wait to see more Mega Man stuff. And no, it wasn't really, but it was just like a cute little call from Capcom. Yeah. Like if they want to do Mega Man Legends 3, Capcom. Don't play with my heart, Will.

[00:57:21] Do not, do not, do not. Imagine Mega Man Legends 3 like Pragmata. Will, Will, Will, Will, Will, Will. I bought the 3DS on day one in 2011 because Mega Man Legends 3 was slated for that console, okay? That was my only reason to get that. The Nintendo games were just cherry on top. Yep. So, yeah. You didn't buy it for Fire Emblem Fates, Birthright, and Conquest? That wasn't even out.

[00:57:48] See, everyone, this is why, like I said at the top of the show, Onyx, the Cap God. Listen. Dude, listen. I wanted to show you guys this. Again, sorry for the listeners. This is great. This is great. Look at this thing, man. I have Camon Spike. Oh, snap. Old Dreamcast game. On the Dreamcast. Holy shit. That's gorgeous. Power Stone 2. Oh, stop, please. My heart. He loves this. He loves Power Stone. And then, Nick, I showed this. You guys might have seen this when I posted the picture. Oh, baby. The original Colt Veronica. Oh, my God.

[00:58:18] Like, dude, it's just Capcom, man. They're the goat. Nothing like it. So, we talked about the level design. Totally understand where you're coming from. I imagine that it's much more attributable to Mega Man of Yore in the past. But kind of just a fresh take on that progression system. Everything is everything, right? Like, all of these games are informed by what's come before. And I love the stamps. I love getting the stamps so much. I was just going to get to that.

[00:58:47] The REM, the random earth memories. Yes. The REM cycle. Was it random? Or was it residual? I can't remember what the R stood for. Random. I think it's random. Yeah. But it was like those earth memories. And I was like, oh, that's so sweet. Obviously, having that fun Hugh-Diana dynamic with like, this is a CRT. And I was just like, here we go. You sit in front of this one and watch cartoons all day. She's like, oh, this is great. Or it's like, here's the water gun. And then every time you come into the shelter after she gets it, she's just pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.

[00:59:17] That was awesome. That was great. That was so cool. Honestly, I think my Diana might have had a bug because she never played with any of the other shit but the RC car. Really? Every single time I was in there, she went to nothing but the RC car. That's the nature of the eye, dude. That thing is out again. So, yeah. It was the RC car and the pictures that she would color for her and Hugh. Well, the thing they realized is the game actually reads your memory off of your console.

[00:59:44] And it shows like whatever games you play the most, that's what she plays with. So, if it's like racing games majority, she's with the cars. If it's a shooter game, she uses the water gun. That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a whole ass lie, dude. I was waiting for it. Stop lying for a few years. I'm like, when is it going? He's so deadpan with it. Like, I know I didn't play that much Screamer yet. We're going back full Konami. Right, right. Yeah, I can read your memory card. You play a lot of ape escape. You're like Castlevania. Yeah.

[01:00:14] But you talked about the stamps and collecting the stamps. And that feeds back into this character that we had mentioned earlier, Cabin, who's this little robot that helps maintain the shelter. And the shelter is the little hub that Hugh and Diana return to either during their missions or in between every mission that they go on. And he's a really cool guy. He's just like your homie. He hangs out and he's like, we have new training simulations up and ready for you to go. And there's also, he provides you like a bingo card.

[01:00:44] And so when you're going through the levels, you collect these stamps. And the more stamps you do, you put on the bingo cards for each progressive system or each card you open up. You can get varieties of reveals like kind of like lore dumps where they like gives you exposition on this like, what would they call it? Like this corporate actor who's like the spy who infiltrated the cradle. That was really cool. Which was a cool little storyline.

[01:01:10] And then there's also like new suits and weapons that you unlock as you unlock the different cards. You can unlock more red room keys. Red rooms are these difficulty rooms where if like you're going through a level and you're like, shit, this shit's too easy. And then let me open this up and see like what they really got. And so they have a lot of really cool moments there where you can kind of jump in and challenge yourself. Uh, so, but specifically what I wanted to ask about was the training simulator training.

[01:01:37] So we're going back to 2008, 2006, 2008 video games. Nobody's making it like Capcom. Did both of you do a lot of these training simulations? I did them all. Will? I did them all. I know you're on the platform. I did them all too. I just, I think the last couple of ones I didn't go for the crown because my God, they're hard. There was like five. Perfect. And I was like, I gotcha. Yeah. But I, I, I chased almost all the perfects. Those crowns do, they feel good when you get it. It's like boom. Yeah. Damn. Yeah.

[01:02:07] I rock that. For a minute there. I was like, Oh, if you do all three, you get the crown. So like I did two for like a, no, for the most part I did like the three for the first couple. And then I did like two for one and I was like, Oh yeah, let me just do the third thing and then I'll get the crown. And they were like, no, you got to do them all at the same time. And I'm like, Oh yes. Yep. I don't know if I can do the perfect right now. Cause it's so long. Now I want to know, cause I didn't look back on the date for it, but do you happen to know Onyx?

[01:02:35] Did you do the, the last one, the 30? Did you do that before they like nerfed it? Cause I think I read online that they nerfed it. Oh shoot. I don't know. I, I beat the game like a couple of weeks after it came out. I think I beat it at first week of May or something like that. You probably ended up doing it before because, uh, if you remember, yeah, that last one was kind of ridiculous. Yeah. The two enemies you fight at the same time at the end. Yeah. One was like buffed up and one was normal, which even the normal one is really hard. Yeah.

[01:03:05] So yeah, that was a. That got nerfed? Yeah. That one got nerfed. I think. Oh, I didn't know that. I don't know if maybe they had two Mark 2s. He beat it pre-nerfed on. I hate it. I hate when I like, I get a game a little bit later or I start playing a little bit later and they're like, Oh, we lowered this difficulty because people are complaining. I'm like, no. And you're like, no, let me play the hard version. You're a sick man. You're a sick man. That happened with me in Silksong. And listen, Silksong was, that's a hard game. Plenty hard. Oh my God. I almost wanted to play it after the nerf, dude.

[01:03:34] That game took me like 60 hours to finish and it was like just brutal from beginning to end. So. That's crazy. Yeah. We talk about brutality. We talk about, um, hard games being hard. Um, bosses in this game were really fun to me. They were fun. Like I didn't really find a lot of like, I mean, there were some challenging aspects when figuring them out. Like I found like some of the mini bosses like that, the flyer, the star screen boss that you fight at a specific point in the game. That was a little bit tough. And there were some other bosses.

[01:04:03] Of course, you know, we're going to avoid spoilers as much as we can, but there were some bosses that were kind of affected, uh, by the environment that were a little tough, um, that were, but like genuinely, generally, as I was going through this game, I was like, I really like these boss fights and I wish I had more. Did I review? And of course, will we talked about, uh, you know, the unknown signal, which is the DLC that's at the end of this game, the free DLC that's, uh, uh, packed in now.

[01:04:31] Like it's just going to be an automatic, you know, update to your game, uh, where it sounds like they're going to give you a boss rush. And it sounds like also with the training simulations, you get a boss rush. So I'm guessing you didn't feel as much of the lack of bosses as I did since I didn't really explore those two as deeply. Yeah. I didn't really feel the lack of bosses. Each main area had a boss. And then I would say the last three had many bosses in the middle. So like they were pretty well spaced out.

[01:04:57] And then there are some bots that are so strong or at least strong enough to where it's like, okay, this is definitely like a, maybe like a quarter boss. Like a, let me try and think of the ones. It's like the big orb one that shoots the bombs at you that has like the three little, four little orbs above his head. He's like a quarter boss. Cause he just, you know, just super tanky. Anytime you fight like the Mark II crushers, they just have so much health. I'm just like, Jesus Christ, I'm going to be here for 30 years blasting away this thing.

[01:05:24] Um, and there's another one that shoots off like something similar, but yeah, they got a good standard. We talked about it before the amount of enemies and the type of enemies. It's very well spread out, very well done. Um, so I think they did a good job as far as the bosses. And then just like you mentioned there too, you get your, um, post game content and then it's effectively another boss rush because they say, all right, go back and fight all those bosses and they're upgraded and they do twice as much damage and they have three times as much health. Have fun. I'm just like, all right.

[01:05:54] Yay. But I'm like, more game. Woohoo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I think the boss fights were actually exceptionally well designed. Um, because they, they, like you said, they weren't super duper difficult. Um, but they challenged you enough. They kept you on your toes. It didn't feel like there was friction there and that I don't, I don't necessarily need a game to beat my ass the entire time. I like it when there's friction and I feel like I'm actually doing something against what

[01:06:23] the game is throwing at me instead of just coasting by. And I felt that the bosses in this game definitely had just enough friction to feel like, okay, if, if I wasn't paying attention or I wasn't trying, I actually would lose a lot. So that, that was a plus. And on top of that, they were also well done in a sense of a spectacle. Correct. They looked cool. They were huge. They like their, their arenas were very unique for each individual one. And they all had very cool cinematic, like QTE moments or, or, or, uh, for example, like

[01:06:52] in the second boss that you have to like climb the big skyscrapers that come up to avoid that big AOE. Yeah, it was awesome. Like that, that is so, that's just, it's take, I don't, it's almost a little monster hunter-y because in monster hunter, there's certain monsters that you have to avoid those AOE attacks that will one shot you no matter what by meeting certain criteria, whether it's just getting out of the way or doing a certain damage or elemental damage and stuff. So as I was playing that, I'm like, Hey, this, this is giving me a little modern monster hunter vibe.

[01:07:22] It was pretty cool. Um, so I, I'm a big fan of the bosses overall, especially, which we won't talk in detail now, but especially that final one, I actually really, really loved it. The final, the look of the final one was really cool. The final boss was really sick. I was like, this is so different from everything that we fought before up until now. Like it was a little jarring, but at the same time, I thought it was, it was absolutely a treat. So that was very exciting.

[01:07:46] I wanted to pivot a little bit and get away from some of the, the gameplay mechanics to talk a little bit of just about the feeling of the game, uh, starting with the music. Uh, I felt the music was pretty serviceable. It was nice. It was emotive. It like, it was there. It didn't really, it didn't feel like a final fantasy rebirth game or like a, you know, unicorn overlord game or even a fire emblem game. Right.

[01:08:15] It's like, so it, it wasn't something that like really punched me in the face. Even I would say even devil may cry might have a little bit more, uh, I guess. But the music, the music style, a lot more identity. So did, did either of you agree with me on that? Did you, were you a little bit higher on like the score for Pragmatum? I'm going to just, cause I know Onyx has got some, some feelings on it. Cause I, I can, I can see, I can see the music. So I will say, you know what, Nick, here's the thing. You're not totally wrong. You're not totally wrong.

[01:08:43] I will say the music. I, did I enjoy the music? Yes. Did I go back and listen to it because Capcom sound team is always goaded? Of course I did. I have it on my Spotify. I pulled it up. I listened. Um, yeah. Shout out to. I'm a sucker for moody piano. Don't get me wrong. I like the moody piano. Shout out to the, um, ending song, like the, the credit song. Oh yeah. That's a good, that's a good song for multiple reasons. Capcom's knocking it out the park. They did the same thing. The resident evil nine ending song. Oh, the vocal, right? Yeah. Slapping. So good.

[01:09:13] Slapping. But as far as like, really for me, the combat music I thought was really good. And then the actual really like poignant scenes, like, oh, Hugh and Diane are like sharing a moment. That music was really good. And those are my two main ones. Like the ambient music. I, I, not that it was bad or anything, but I was just kind of like there. I was there. I love the shelter music. The shelter music was great. Every time I pop back into the shelter, I'm like, yeah. So that was always fun. But like the running around levels music, it was perfectly fine. It worked for what it was.

[01:09:42] It didn't stick out in a bad way. So I did enjoy that. But for me, it was all about like getting into the combat. Started getting to go to go to don't. I was like, all right, we're in here. Like we're locked in. It was perfect. And then those, those Diana Hugh moments was like very nice. Like you said, that muted piano, that little bit of like a ding, ding. It was like, so that was really, really nice. But it was not blowing me away. Right. I would not buy the soundtrack on vinyl. The vinyl. I would not buy the vinyl. The vinyl, yeah. Actually, I'm, I actually am, I'm kind of with you, Will.

[01:10:11] It's because, yeah, the ambient music is, is very much that. It's just ambience. It's, it's not, it doesn't have any of those melodies that kind of stick with you. Like, like Nick said, like Final Fantasy Rebirth, which to be fair, it's not a good comparison. It's not a fair comparison. Like Rebirth is like arrangements of like masterpieces of game OSTs, you know? Yeah. So, but regardless of that. It's no, it's no cyberpunk. I'll say that. Yeah.

[01:10:41] You know, you say that I can't even tell you, I can't even, I can't think of any cyberpunk. Anybody listening to Wizzy, not a single person out here bumping Wizzy Lizzy. Listen, I don't want to, I don't want to hear you talk shit about cyberpunk. You haven't even played the DLC. All right. You haven't even played Phantom Liberty. All right. So shut your mouth. But I haven't either. God, I haven't either. Don't hate me. I haven't either. No, you're fine. You're, you're golden onyx. That's crazy. That's insane. You get the pass onyx. But no, no, but I, I, again, I agree. Battle music was really good.

[01:11:09] Actually, the first time I played a demo, I made a short on it and I, I paused the game in the very first section of the demo where you're like in that room. And I let my, it just recorded to get the song. Cause there was no like YouTube video with it or anything. And I was like, damn, this is, this is actually really good ass music. So I liked the battle music a lot. And I think that's why when you said serviceable, I'm like, oh, I liked the battle music. But now when Will breaks it down, yeah, everything else is kind of okay. It is serviceable.

[01:11:38] It's just that those standout songs are so good to me that I kind of forgot about the, the ambient stuff. Like I think of Metroid Dread, a game that Metroid as a series has always has fantastic music and Dread comes out and the, and the same composer from the beginning of Metroid essentially did something very different. He wanted to do a very ambient soundtrack and it, to me failed. It fell flat. Oh, really? It's awful. So you didn't like, you didn't like. Oh, I hated it. Honestly.

[01:12:05] Like I don't, I don't like to say hate, but I genuinely hated it because it's, it's just Metroid has such good compositions and melodical like melodies, you know? Yeah. So I don't know. It's, it's, they went, they have that around and you're, I agree. It's long story short, it's serviceable in that aspect, but the ones that hit, hit really strong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I played fusion a couple of years back, man. That's the, that's good music. That's good music in there. Um, but talking about Pragmata, uh, moving over to more of the art style of this game

[01:12:35] and the experience of, of kind of just like moving through the level. Will, you talked about it. Very beautiful game. Very photorealistic. I played obviously on my beefy PC, you know, pretty, pretty newer components. Uh, it looked very beautiful. I did not experience any issues whatsoever. Uh, technically with this game, I feel like there were no bugs at all really. Um, and it's a tired experience of very refined, very polished experience. Uh, what I will say is that just, you know, from an art style perspective and you know,

[01:13:03] how the game hit me, I loved how over-designed everything is. Um, there's a lot of like kind of, and I know I come back to this a lot because it's like one of my favorite, you know, sci-fi franchises, but there's a lot of dead space identity in this game in terms of how a lot of the robots are designed or some of like the interior environments are designed as well as specifically Hugh's suit. Hugh's suit gives a lot of like the soldier armor upgrade for Isaac in dead space, uh, one and two for that matter.

[01:13:31] Uh, it's so, so there's a lot of really cool stuff there while having its own kind of unique Capcom thing. Hugh, he was obviously very beefy, very big guy. He looks like a gears of war character. He looks like a, like a cog soldier. He's so sick. I ran with a samurai armor pretty much the whole game. I tried out some of the different armor sets here or there, tried it on. I was like, nothing's as cool as this pre-order samurai armor. Yeah. So I just, I just ran through that and, uh, uh, randomly occasionally just like switched on, uh, Diana's different outfits and stuff there.

[01:13:59] But I think, uh, one of the things that was really interesting, we talked about like art style, obviously very like photo realistic while having its own. If you know what a Capcom RE engine game looks like, you know what I'm talking about. Uh, but it's obviously very grand, very photo realistic, but something of note that might be interesting to listeners is that, uh, Capcom specifically used the RE engine hair strand part like particulate like generator that they have inside of their engine.

[01:14:27] Uh, and they put, took that from resident evil and they put it inside of, uh, Pragmata in order to get Diana's hair specifically to look very photo realistic. So, um, I thought it was, they did a great job. I didn't have any issues with her design or anything like that. So I thought that was really well done. Yeah, I agree. I think the game looks fantastic. I was thinking like, I also played it on PC. My PC is not as beefy as yours. I'm running a 40, 70 super. So, you know, not, not a 5,000 series, but, or a 50 series, but yeah, it, it, it ran flawlessly.

[01:14:56] Honestly, very, very polished game. Yeah. Um, and I think resident evil or first deal, sorry, the RE engine, the reach, reach the, reach to the moon, reach the moon engine. Yeah. Um, that engine is definitely much better for smaller levels. Like contain experiences. Like Muncher Hunter Wild, Dragon Dogma. It just, it doesn't run as well. Not, you know, they've gotten better at it. I'm not gonna lie. We gotta, we gotta get a new, we gotta get them on UE5 or something. Absolutely not.

[01:15:25] No, no, no, dude. They're, they're, they're working on, on their next, uh, version of the RE engine. It's called the REX, REX engine. I love it. They've been working on it for a few years now, so hopefully in the next couple of years we'll see it, but it's been like five years already since they've been, said they're working on that, so it's been a while. It's gonna take them a while. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Did you have any thoughts on that, Will, in terms of the, the characters, design, the looks, the environments? The design was great. Didn't have any bugs, so no, we were flawless there. I did like my, my dad's space look, so he was definitely doing that. Yeah, that's fair.

[01:15:55] I don't know if it's quite necessarily about like the looks of the character, but one thing I'll also shout out that I think Capcom was fairly brave in doing so, uh, was not like pulling a Marvel where Hugh takes his helmet off every cut scene. Oh yeah. I think Hugh legitimately in game. He kept it on most of the game. I was like, I think there's maybe three to four cut scenes in the entire game where Hugh actually like, you know, has his helmet up and it doesn't even like, oh, it's a magical nano helmet that it goes around and he has, you know, his hair and everything out.

[01:16:24] Like it just pulls the visor up. You see his face still kind of through a screen and then he pops it back down, like no, to get to work. He'll, he'll talk to Diana 90% of the game with his visor up, which is like down, like still on, which is, I thought that was pretty brave considering, you know, that connection. Funny about, funny thing about that too. It's, that's probably a cost cutting or cost saving. I would think so. Yeah. Because they didn't have to animate the face and lip syncing and all that too. So they're smart about it. Doubly smart. What are the, is to the point where I was like, oh no, is doing this like

[01:16:54] DLC armor? Like, did I pick the wrong armor in order to see the face and like the facial, like motion capture performances? Like, am I missing out on that? But no, he just legitimately doesn't open up the, uh, the suit that much. To that end too, because I don't think we have anything directly in here. I'm sure we'll talk about it when we get into like the actual Diana and Hugh, you know, relationship more, but, um, shout out to the voice actor for Hugh, both in English and Japanese, because I'm playing through the game in Japanese for Japanese.

[01:17:24] For Lunar Take Mode. I just wanted to hear what it was. And he's doing a good job too. But I will say, especially Hugh in, um, his, his English VA. Yeah. I'm going to try that far. Yeah. Yeah. I know he, he voiced somebody in 16 as well. He's in a lot of stuff. He's in a lot of anime. He's done a lot of games. He voiced 16. Michael something. I think he voiced, no, not Barnabas. I think he voiced Hugo. I think Hugo, what's his face? Not Hugo, Stiglitz. No, no, no. From Final Fantasy?

[01:17:54] The icon, the Titans icon or whatever. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. David Menken, I believe is what I have on here. David Menken. That's him. The fact that, once again, you're not really seeing face, you're not seeing that kind of mocap capture very often, but you're just getting a lot of great, you know, verbal emoting from him. You know, he, they talk a lot throughout the game. I'm not going to spoil it, but him and Diana, obviously, they're the only two people that really talk to each other during the entirety of the game.

[01:18:23] And they have such a strong connection from just the communication you hear between the two. Not as much as far as like visually what they're doing, but just the talks they have. There's a couple of different spots in the game where there's like little circles. Diana will point it out. Oh, look, what is that? And then you and, you know, Hugh and Diana get a chance to kind of have like a little heart to heart talk about certain things. Here's some really cool stuff about Hugh's background. I feel like if people just kind of ran past that, unfortunately, you're getting kind of

[01:18:48] half the story of Hugh, who Hugh is and why he, you know, kind of takes Diana as far as like under his wing and kind of in his protection so quickly, even though 10 seconds into the game, he's like, oh, you never trust a bot. And I'm like, sure. All right. All right. All right. We'll see how long it lasts. Here we go. It's like one chapter in. He's like, you're my robot daughter now. I will. This was no, this was no Joel Miller, you know, progression. He's like, if anything happens to Diana, I'm going to kill everyone in this room and then myself.

[01:19:18] And then myself. But once again, David Menken, fantastic job as Hugh. Yeah. Very, very good work. Yeah. Yeah. He's good. I looked it up. He voiced Barnabas in Final Fantasy 16, which is- The icon, Titan's icon, right? No, no. He was Odin's. The Odin's icon. Yes, you're right. So you called it. He did some crazy voice acting in that game, too. It was talented. It was intense. Yeah, he's- I didn't particularly love that character in that game. Anyway. I guess I got us. Yeah, we can talk about it. This is not a Final Fantasy 16 review.

[01:19:47] We already did that. Go back to that episode. It's funny. It's funny, Onyx. FYI, I had like five people on that review. It was very silly. It was very, it was a whole experience. It was an experience. You know, we were exploring it. You know, it was like jazz over here at FNGC. That's great. But speaking of jazz, let's go ahead and take a quick music break. And when we come back, we're going to get into our spoiler-inclusive narrative thoughts. If you don't want to get spoiled and you've made it with us this far, thank you so much for joining us.

[01:20:17] Go ahead and check out all of Onyx's links in the episode description, and we'll go ahead and send you off there. But for everyone else, we'll be right back.

[01:20:25] And we're back.

[01:21:02] Okay. Okay. So, listen, guys. This is going to be not super structured. And of course, I'm going to let the both of you run away with this, but I just have to get this out of my system right now. I came into this game thinking, playing the first initial levels, being like, what the fuck did I get myself into? What am I playing right now? From a narrative perspective, it was a very fun game mechanically, right? Initially, like, I was sold by the experience, but I was like these characters. At the beginning, I was like, oh, I don't know what this is going to do for me.

[01:21:32] I lacked faith. I lacked faith. It's like that Darth Vader quote, your lack of faith disturbs me. I can see Will in my mind's eye standing over my shoulder just glaring at me. But honestly, by the end of this game, I was so enamored with both of these characters. But whether it was Hugh or Diana, and also, like, the subtle things that they did with the story, the subtle things that they both of these characters kind of do and play off

[01:21:59] of each other while you're moving through the experience, the things that Diana chooses not to tell Will as their, Hugh, as their, you're the same people, you're the same people to be. As a person, you both are girl dads. That's an honor, yes. It is what it is. Yeah, like, it's just, like, the bottom of the line is that Diana really sold the show for me. I started to care about her so much in this game, and I didn't expect it to hit so hard,

[01:22:26] like, at the very end of the game, you know, when he's floating off into space or he's pushing her in that thing up to the platform. I was like, ooh, I'm starting to feel, I'm starting to get a little watery-eyed, a little teary-eyed. Yeah, man, like, the stoic noble sacrifice hits you every time. You know, I, in a, in a, if they didn't take enough time to develop that relationship with

[01:22:52] not just the banter between, you know, sections and whatnot, but also, like, those, those interactions in the shelter, those playing hide-and-seek with Diana and things like that, like, they took their time to build their bond just little by little in that, and not necessarily nuanced or subtle way, but what I mean is, if they didn't do that, I feel like that ending may not have hit as hard. Because in any other game that didn't take their time, it honestly just would have been like, oh, he died, how sad, we move on. Yeah.

[01:23:21] But it hit, dude. I, I, I mean, if you want to see my reaction to that, I, I streamed it, it's on my channel. Yeah. I cried. I, I was just like, oh, oh no, wait, this is a motion that's welling up, but I cannot stop it. Right. So, so it, it, it, it hit a lot harder than I expected. Yeah. And then the vocal song played. And it was like, oh no. It's like, now the tears must flow. Yeah. It is done, so.

[01:23:47] It's funny, as I was playing it, and we get to the part with the, the dead Luna film in, and obviously Diana gets fucked up, and I was like, oh no, like, I, it, I knew she was going to get fixed, right? Like, I just knew in my heart he was going to, she was an android, she's going to be fine, he'll fix her up, he'll repair her. So it wasn't like a gut punch to me. It was the moment where it zooms in on Hugh's face, and he has his visor open, and you see that little patch of dead Luna filament on his face. Yeah. Oh no.

[01:24:14] And he like, doesn't tell her, and closes his visor. I'm like, my boy's cooked. My boy, he's not making it out of this. Like, I knew immediately. Um, but man, it just really, it definitely, um, it hit pretty hard. I want to talk a little bit about, like, 8's reveal. Well, before we hop too far into 8's, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Same deal, like, uh, the big thing there with Hugh and like the dead filament especially too, it's, uh, really pays to have those conversations running around and kind of doing the backtracking

[01:24:43] with the characters so they can have that communication, because at one point, even Hugh, he's like, so, uh, Diana, you know, what do you think of a living person had some dead filament in them? You think he could like fix that? She's like, no, I can't really do that for, for living people. Yes. He's like, oh, well, that's too bad. And I'm just like, Hugh, no! Yeah, I caught that. I caught that too. That's so funny. I thought the same thing. Wait a second. McConaughey, pouncing on glass. Oh, no, Hugh, no! Such a good job of being like, you know, like you said, straight up girl dead.

[01:25:12] He was just like, oh, so, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm dying, but I'm going to tell you this really nice way. Like, can you help? No, you can't? All right, cool. So now you have no idea. Like she, she just completely oblivious, you know, they're working towards the plan and just, you know, shout out to just their relationship as a whole, even like starting at the very Because he was talking about the other scientists that were died, they died from the exposure to the dead filament. And he was like, yeah, can you fix organic, you know, matter that has exposure? He's like, yeah, I can't do this. She's like, no, I can't do that to a living person. They're cooked. And he's like, oh, that's not great.

[01:25:41] Yeah, that's some subtle foreshadowing there. Yeah. Shout out to DI03367. Just goodness gracious. Pulling out all the stops. Okay, but like pause, like we know an unknown signal, the end of the game for, for those who are here and they want to get spoiled and they don't know the end of the game. Hugh gets dead, like infected by the dead lunar filament. They have the final battle with like the dead lunar filament monster that comes out of the, the, or the moon. Which is so sick. Crazy. Which was really cool.

[01:26:10] It was, you know, it was like, it was like a mini Gundam moment where he straps the fucking limb cannon to it. It's so cool. Great set piece. Yeah. Great set piece moment. And then at the very end, he traps her inside the pod and like pushes her up and she's like, no, don't go. And he's like, you gotta go. You gotta, we gotta keep our promise. And he shoots her off to earth. And in the end of like the theatrical cut, you know, version, you know, the last thing

[01:26:35] that you see, the last thing you see is, um, is her standing on the beach and she's like reaching up towards the moon and she's like, I'm ready. Which is interesting. Like, what does that mean? What are you ready for Diana? So it's like one of those things that I'm ready, maybe ready to explore, maybe ready to be on the beach, do the things that we talked about. But in unknown signal, you go through these different processes and then I think you pick

[01:27:02] up an item that potentially is like the black box. That's like rumored to like purge dead Luna filament. It protects from organic matter or protects from it. It protects from dead. Um, and so the last thing that you hear at the end of like the true, the canon ending or whatever of unknown signal is cabin, uh, saying, welcome back visitor. Like, are you here by yourself? Yeah, he's like, oh, you're by yourself. I was like, my dog cabin, please help me. My boy, help him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:27:31] But like, what if, what if he's just Mega Man? You know what I mean? What if, what, what if he, what if, what if, what if cabin turns into Mega Man and Pragmata 2? It's like, it's like Mega Man Legends 3 subtitle Pragmata 2. You're more likely to be running around as you, but cabin's on your back and cabin's hacking enemies. Cabin, cabin attaches. No, cabin attaches to his arm as the canon because the filament, he had to, he had to amputate the arm.

[01:28:01] And so cabin becomes his new arm and he becomes the canon. You know what I mean? I'm cooking. And eventually through the eons. Capcom, hire us. Okay. Hire us, Capcom. I can see this because what's going to happen is cabin will eventually like fuse with him, right? Because of the filament or something. There you go. And that'll be the, the arm canon. And that's like, almost like Zelda, uh, Skyward Sword where, where Fee is actually in the Master Sword. I see it. I see him. I see the vision, man. You see the vision. You see the vision. And then, and then Pragmata 2 is okay.

[01:28:30] We got to go save, uh, Diana. We got to, we got to, we got to get the band back together again. So it'd be cool. But no, I really like this. So, so, I mean, we talked about like those different moments of like Hugh and Diana will like, is there something that I'm missing from Unknown Signal? Is there like more stuff to unpack from that experience that I don't know about? Yeah. They have more like communication and running around. There's nothing that adds too much more to the story just because you kind of get what you get as far as, uh, getting all of the circle points and, um, all the communications. Yeah.

[01:29:00] And then all the communications in the shelter, which also to make sure you're definitely doing the talking to her and interacting with her with each of the REMs because then you end up getting those cute little pictures. And Hugh puts them up in the shelter and it's so cute. It's like five or so that you end up getting the little hand-drawn crayon pictures. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. But Unknown Signal, honestly, what, what I really liked that it added was just challenges, right? Cause you, you have to, you have to 100% all the areas in the game and you have to beat

[01:29:28] the, uh, the second versions of the bosses. Yeah. I believe those are the two requirements, honestly, um, to unlock the 10 different challenges in there. And then, uh, each of those challenges are very unique and they are very challenging. You know, they're very long. Like they're, you start in one area and they'll push you across multiple like areas, like a training environment. Uh, very cool. There's the combination of the, um, platforming and fighting and hacking, which we didn't really talk too much about the hacking non enemies, like the doors and the things in the non-spoiler

[01:29:56] section, but some of those get a little tough. Like, you know, you have your, your face buttons where you have to flip the little levers in a particular order. Some are really sharply timed to where you get zapped if you don't do it right. And then you have the other where you're like, all right, just press the face buttons, you know, from out going into the circle, which is fine. And then they're like, all right, now do it when there's a spinning ball that you can only do it when it's covering that. I'm just like, oh shit. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Nick, Nick, honestly, those training simulators and then going to the unknown signal challenges,

[01:30:26] they really, they really challenge you in a very different way. Um, because they're, they're, they're levels, if you will, with very specific objectives that you have to do within those five minutes or whatever. So it's, it's, it's almost a different way of looking at pragmata. Right. Um, and I really liked that. I, I really enjoyed unknown signal for what it was, um, uh, very enjoyable stuff. So if you still have, if you still have the, the, the will to play pragmata, uh, you should one right here.

[01:30:55] I got one right here on the call. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely, I definitely recommend it. Check it out. Yeah. We'll have to see, uh, how KCD2 treats me. Um, one thing that I definitely wanted to talk about is like how you both felt about eight. I personally felt like, I mean, perfectly fine characters, kind of like the music, very serviceable to get us from point A to point B. I knew that there was more than just Edis, this like, you know, autonomous, you know, kind of faceless enemy.

[01:31:22] I knew they would have to characterize like an enemy at some point. And I felt like as soon as I saw this other pragmata that didn't quite look like Diana, I was like, okay, so this is going to be our, this is going to be our final boss at the end of it. Did you, did you both kind of feel the same way? Did you expect that coming from eight? Cause my first time coming in, I was not quite picking up between like the cat and eight exactly. And I feel like going back now, especially into kind of paying more attention on the

[01:31:51] lunatic mode and kind of knowing what happens. I'm like, oh, they fleshed it out pretty well. But my first time through when we finally got to eight, like in the tree and I was like, oh, help me Diana. And I was just like, what the fuck is this come from? I was like, hold on a minute. What's going on here? Yeah. And then, you know, the heel turn that happened pretty much like the next level after I was like, oh, this feels a little quick, but I think they did ultimately do it fairly well. Just like you said, Nick, you have to kind of characterize an enemy, right?

[01:32:19] You can't just have Edith be like the true big bad, which it was actually kind of cool finding that out that Edith is like low key, the hero. It's like, I have to stop this pragmata from sending the dead filament to earth and destroying earth. So in order to do so, I have to low key kill everybody on the space station and then create a bunch of robots that would stop it and then trap this robot inside the trees. And I was like, all right, I'm safe.

[01:32:47] And like, you know, all poor Edith knows this one fucking engineer in another pragmata wandering like a lost child into the conversation. It's like, stop trying to destroy the earth, you Williams. Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. That's actually a... Yeah. It's like a deep cut. It's like a very interesting way that they kind of like twisted the story. Yeah. I forgot. Yeah. It's very interesting because like from what I took away is like once eight is like revealed

[01:33:16] to be like the big bad, she's like throwing the dead filament at like Hugh and Diana and stuff. I was like, oh, Edith was just working on her orders the whole time. But no, it was like a more of like a conflicting system. She just gained more access over the systems once she's like kind of released and freed into the cradle, which is pretty interesting. Diana gave her the... Well, she gave Diana, I should say, the like codes. They're like, here's some malware. Go put this malware in Edith so then I can, you know, take over and start to do everything.

[01:33:46] And Diana was just like, sure, why not? I trust you. Whatever could go wrong with malware. I trust you for some reason. Yeah. No, that was really cool. And again, similar. I'm actually... It's funny. We've brought up Joel Miller already in the show, but like I'm playing through The Last of Us Part 1 right now and like the contextual conversations between Diana and Hugh. Again, to kind of reiterate your point, Will, as well as yours, Onyx, it really serves to

[01:34:14] kind of create this foundation of a relationship between the two characters that I think is really, really good as you kind of go through and you learn more about them and you talk to them. I thought that that was really, really well done. And of course, like those moments where he's like teaching her like what a high five means. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's drawing pictures for him. And that's just like, again, I said this to Will offline. I was like, this is just girl dad propaganda. Like, you know, what are we doing here? Like, this is, you know, you're trying to psyop me, Capcom, and I see what you're doing. I see through you.

[01:34:43] But no, that's very interesting. So kind of moving on, I didn't really have too many other pieces that I really wanted to break apart of the narrative. It's very straightforward in terms of the experience. Was there anything that either of you wanted to touch on that we've missed so far? I know we had talked about Hugh, but definitely wanted to touch on Grace Ashcroft. I believe it is. S-A-I-F. I could be pronouncing that wrong. But the one who's creating the walls. The voice of Diana. Oh, okay. Gotcha. The voice of Diana. Sorry. I thought she did an awesome job.

[01:35:13] I was 100% sure that was just like a kid, right? That they had like gotten some, you know, kid to just do really well as far as a voice actress. Yeah, but no, it was a grown woman. She does an excellent job. Fantastic work as Diana. Like I was immediately sold as far as just being, you know, like a, obviously Android, but like a child. I thought it was a kid too. So no, she did awesome job. I thought it was just a really good kid actor. No, no, she did excellent. She was a blast to listen to. So she did really excellent work. And I mean, we talked about the relationship between the two and kind of how that grows

[01:35:43] and how that goes. But my, my big thing too, as far as like the story mode, not just with their relationship, but kind of as it builds, like the beach scene, I guess I want to make sure that I for sure bring up. I was like, I thought that was the really big turning point for them. They were already getting to know each other and like starting to have like a good conversation. But between Hugh kind of explaining, he's like, oh, like, no, I was an orphan and, you know, I just enjoyed spending time with the family.

[01:36:09] And, you know, Diana having those cute Android not knowing, like what you can get full from having conversation is like, no, it's like a different kind of fullness, right? It's like, you know, like, it's like filling your heart type of situation. You know, I'm going to teach this robot how to love. And that was just done so well, especially leading up to that beach scene where it was really solidified those two as far as, you know, all right, I'm going to get this little Android girl to earth so that she can see the water in the sand for the first time. And of course, getting that nice payoff at the very end of the game was awesome.

[01:36:39] So I don't know. I feel like this is the kind of thing story-wise, relationship-wise. I don't know if they could have really hit it any harder. They kind of knocked it out the park when it comes to that. Yeah. I think it was, yeah, I don't even think they needed to do anything more, man. It's like, like you said, I can't imagine. Less is more. Yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way to say it because, like you said, I can't picture any other way that it could have hit any more, you know? It hit perfect. I mean, again, we cried.

[01:37:08] You know, we felt the emotions and, you know, they wouldn't have to. Either of you have a favorite boss during the game as a whole? 100%. The one that looks like one of the... So I'm assuming both of you have watched Pacific Rim, right? So the ones that looked like one of the human mechs that looked kind of like a... Like a metal gear.

[01:37:37] The one that you fought after you fixed Diana? Yes. Yeah, the Sentinel. Yes. The one that's like corrupted. That's probably my favorite boss. It just looks so cool. And it had like that sword slash that I was just like, oh, man. It's like the guys you fight at the very end of the level 30 challenge, Onyx. Really? Okay. Oh, okay. Where they have like the blades. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Shoot them in the chest animation.

[01:38:06] You're used to, in most cases, either killing someone or at least knocking them over. And in that one, they like counterattack you after you do it. They like cut you across the chest with their laser sword. No. Oh, they do, don't they? I remember that. I was like, yo, this is so hype. It's, yeah. Metal Gear Rising Pragmata Revengeance. Especially because that's where you also get that deletion protocol after you finally get fixed up. Yeah. Oh, my God. Deletion protocol? Engage. Zap. You're gone. You're out of here. Nuclear bomb from Brianna.

[01:38:36] You know, talking about that, can I, did you guys use the overdrive a lot? I forgot about it a lot. Towards the end of the game, I used it pretty frequently. I forgot about it quite a bit. Dude, I feel like I used it maybe three or four times throughout the whole game. I genuinely. I just felt like I didn't need it. I felt in control of the situation. And there was only a few instances with the corrupted, the, yeah, get out of jail free card exactly like you said, like, you know, where I was like, fuck, I need to reload. I'm out. I just burned my attack guns. Like, I need space. Let me, let me throw this out there. Okay. Okay. Okay.

[01:39:06] I felt the same. And I thought, am I playing this weird? Like, I never used it. You just go to it. So many little times. I will say, as you know, if you decide to dip back into a lunatic mode, you know, that's the thing where I feel like I would not recommend it to people because obviously it is very hard. Like, it's pretty tough. But if you played through the standard and you were like, hey, I want to use more items and weapons, et cetera. I feel like you can get to the end of the game and like, you're not using your overdrive.

[01:39:34] You know, I have seven health canisters and I'm not really using them except for like the final boss. I have my weapons that I like using and I always have enough ammo on hand. And now playing lunatic mode, I'm, you know, halfway through it roughly. And I'm just like scraping by. I'm like, oh, here's an attack weapon. I have to use all of it immediately. Here's the decoy thing. I have to use all of it immediately. My overdrive is up. I have to use it now. And then hopefully by the end of the fight, I'll have it back again by doing enough hacking.

[01:40:01] It's like every fight is you're throwing the kitchen sink, which feels pretty good as far as that kind of difficulty goes. That's, I love that because it's, funnily enough, in our conversation with Rob, where Devil May Cry, you play Devil May Cry once. You go through a story once, you level up your characters, you unlock as many skills as you can and you beat the game. But you haven't really beat Devil May Cry. You haven't mastered Devil May Cry. You have to go back and either do a hard difficulty, right?

[01:40:31] With all the skills you have and then finish unlocking the entire kit and then learning that entire kit to maximize the combo so you can do well in the hardest difficulty. That's how you get the full experience of Devil May Cry, because honestly, the combat of the game is so deep. And I think that that's essentially what's happening here. Not as deep because it's not a character action game like Devil May Cry. But in Lunatic, you have to use everything. Everything you learned, now you got to use it all. Otherwise, you're not going to survive.

[01:40:59] And I kind of like that, honestly. It really, it lets the players that love the systems benefit the most. Even 7 Remake and 7 Rebirth, when you play the actual hard mode. It's a totally different experience, dude. MP does not regenerate when you rest. You have to use items only. So that change alone changes how you play the entire game. It's awesome. I love that. 100%. So, Onyx, I have this question for you. 2 million units sold.

[01:41:30] Pragmata 2. Are you excited for Pragmata 2? Slash, from what you know about Capcom and how they handle their games and properties, do you think there's a pretty good chance we're going to see a return from this franchise? I think so. Okay. I would expect a DLC or an expansion first, however, before we get a 2. Even more than Unknown Signal. Okay, cool. Well, Unknown Signal, it was there for... I don't know if it was at a DLC or not. Maybe it was. But I know that it was from the beginning. It might have just been like the, oh, you've completed the game. It's just true.

[01:42:01] It's just true. Yeah. I wouldn't really consider it. Yeah, yeah. It's a part of the full package. It's part of the full package. Yeah. So, I honestly would not be surprised if they actually do add an expansion. I mean, just look at their history with all the games that they've released in the last couple of years. Almost each one has something added to it. Dragon's Dogma 2, for example, getting Darker Waste almost three years later. Hell yeah. Finally. Yes. I'm excited to check that out. But, yeah, I would expect that.

[01:42:29] First, it's cheaper to make, less risk of failure. They may not sell as many copies as a brand new Pragmata, but still, you're going to sell to potentially two million people that already liked it. Yeah. So, I think that we might see an expansion or DLC before. But, I would prefer a Pragmata 2. I would prefer a full-on sequel because, yeah, the hints are there. They definitely left it open with the true ending, if you will.

[01:42:57] So, and I'm glad. Because when I first beat it, I'm like, how the hell are they going to make a sequel to this, man? There's no way you do a sequel. Unless you get another Pragmata or another character meets up with Diana or something. But, yeah, playing through on the signal changes that entirely. It's like, okay, let's bring Hugh back, baby. I need Hugh to be in Marvel vs. Capcom 5, whenever that happens. Oh, that would be sick. That would be sick. That would be sick. His finisher is just the finisher. Oh, yeah, dude. Just super. Diana hacks everybody and he just... Deletion protocol.

[01:43:28] Activate. Yeah. It kills your whole team. That would be sick. All three characters. Listen, Pragmata 2, I can see it now. All right? It's the end. You know, it starts from the end of the game, whatever. It's a time jump, right? We've got to do 10 years. 10 years? Whoa. Obviously, Diana. Whoa. She's an android. That being said, Luna Filament, she's decided to increase her capacity. She has to increase her RAM, right? She needs more power. She needs more juice. She needs to suck on more jewel pods. Yeah.

[01:43:57] She has to hit more penjamins. So now she is like, oh, I've upgraded my parts. It's like changing out the computer pieces, like changing out your case, et cetera. So now she looks, you know, older version. Teenager. Yeah, there you go. And now you're playing as her and you're hacking and shooting as Diana. What the fuck, dude? And she takes some of the... Yep, yep. That would be sick. And... Wait, what about you? Old man Hugh? He comes in. He comes in at the end of the game to save her from a heroin cutscene. Oh, dude.

[01:44:26] A heroin cutscene. Some two-sex moment. Yeah, exactly. Just shows up. Bam. Wait, Hugh's here. And then you control both of them. Oh, my God. That kept you waiting, huh? Oh, my God. We're cooking right now. I'm telling you, Capcom, reach out to your PR people, Onyx, because we're just cooking too hard right now. Can you imagine if they did tweak it, though? And it was like, if you're playing as Diana, right, then it turns like character action game. It's almost like what they did with Control Resonance. Control Resonance. Now you're playing like DMC as Diana, where you're hacking and shooting at the same... Yeah.

[01:44:56] And you get Ebony and Ivory. That would be insane, man. Yeah. That'd be so cool. That would be a nice pre-order with bonus, right? Listen, I'd act like I wouldn't. I'd be like, take my money, Capcom. Take my DMC money. All right. Well, somebody get us out of the kitchen. We're going to move ourselves into some final thoughts. Onyx, as our guest for the show, I'd like to go ahead and ask you for your final thoughts first.

[01:45:21] You know, overall, when you think about Pragmata, you know, first of all, who would you recommend this to? And, you know, how would you think about this in the greater scheme of what's come out so far in 2026? I would definitely recommend this to people that enjoy Capcom games or people that have played a lot of shooters that want to try a different shooter. This is honestly a unique combination, a unique formula that I mean, unless there's an indie

[01:45:49] out there that does this or did this before, I can't think of any other game that has done it where you kind of hack and shoot at the same time or using those halves of your brain at the same time. So I would recommend it to people that like that, that like shooters and want to try something different. And I think in the grand scheme of this year, we have gotten some really damn good games this year. And we have a lot left to come out.

[01:46:15] So I don't know if it's going to be top 10, maybe top, you know, or sorry, I don't know if it'll be top five for me, maybe top 10, depending on how the end of the year ends up being the second half of the year. But it's a damn good game and a really, really good start for a new IP. And that's kind of where, where I want to, to say kudos to Capcom and I hope more success because I want more new IP. I love when companies take risks.

[01:46:43] And if you remember the 2000s, we had Lost Planet, Dead Rising on top of Devil May Cry and Beautiful Joe and Okami. Like it was like new IP after new IP after new IP after new IP. And that slowed down. Capcom made a lot of mistakes in the 2010s and then turned it around after Resident Evil 7 and Monster Hunter World and Devil May Cry 5. And then it just kind of, then it just kept being, you know, win after win after win. So now I'm good.

[01:47:13] I like my Resident Evil. So I like my Monster Hunters and I like my Street Fighters and everything in between. But get back to it. You did Kunitsugami. I haven't played it yet, but I do want to. And now we have Pragmata and they're bringing back Onimusha, which is a freaking 20-year-old dead franchise that I never thought I was going to see today. So there's hope for new IP. And that's what I want. I want this success to show Capcom that they can take more risks. Obviously, it's a very refined risk as we saw from the developer interview.

[01:47:43] But that's my ultimate final thought. It's like, thank you for this. Do it again. Like, please, please take more risks. Awesome. Now, Will, I'm going to ask you the same questions that I asked Onix. You know, who would you recommend this to? And how do you feel about this game in relation to 2026 as a whole? However, to augment this, I want to hear from both of you on this. How are you rating your big three for this year? Pragmata, Resident Evil Requiem, Onimusha. Onimusha is not even out yet. In what order are you putting them?

[01:48:12] I know, but I want you to predict. I want you to predict. The demo was sick. What are you thinking? What are you thinking? Okay. So first off, I would recommend this to anyone who likes those dad simulator type games. I mean, this hits there right on the head. I mean, Capcom, they're two for two so far with parent simulators. They had Resident Evil 9 where you're just like, all right, here's your blind daughter. And now they're like, all right, here's almost called it Dead Space again. Here's Pragmata where here's your Android daughter. Your dad space. I was like, all we need is Onimusha to pop up.

[01:48:42] And then next thing you know, Musashi is just like, oh, by the way, here's my kid. I'll drag him along with me. And I'm like, we're three for three. But like, it's definitely shooters. I would say anybody who really enjoys that kind of right brain, left brain, kind of fast paced action, something where you're constantly moving, constantly doing something. Obviously, Nick did enjoy this. But if you're like, oh, I really just like my turn base and I like taking my time. You know, this is like chess on crack, right?

[01:49:10] You have to be paying attention, doing four or five steps ahead and moving at the same time. You don't really have time to sit there and breathe and think. It's getting into that flow state is what makes you feel good in this game, especially on higher difficulties. So somebody who enjoys that movement that kind of cracked out back and forth is what's going to really tick that box for you. But getting into the big three for Capcom so far this year, I would say the oh, I would God, it's really hard because I really like Pragmata a lot.

[01:49:38] And I love once again, them taking the big swings with the new IP. But as much as I love the big swings with the new IP, I love me some old IP just doing great. So I probably got to say RE9. I had a blast with that game. So that's my number one, Pragmata, my two. And while I did really enjoy the Onimusha demo, I can't put it higher than Pragmata without seeing how the rest of it goes. But that demo was very, very good. So I highly recommend people to go check that out too. Very defensive game as far as the demo show.

[01:50:08] I have it downloaded right now. You should. You should. You have it downloaded or you will? I have it downloaded on my PC. Very defensive game, but in a good way. Like a lot of people are going to look at it and maybe make Sekiro comparisons as far as not the gameplay itself, but like the defensive options because you're parrying and everything. But in a game like Onimusha that I think it has three or four different types of blocks slash parries. I'm like, they really give you a lot of options when you're fighting enemies or groups of enemies. So it was awesome. Nice.

[01:50:38] And to talk about Onimusha just a tiny little bit. In the demo, they didn't really talk about it. They talked about Eason, which if you've played Onimusha before, you know what Eason is, right? It's in the old games, you either parried and immediately hit the attack button to do an Eason strike, which kills your enemies in one hit and gives you a lot of orbs and healing or orbs and stuff. And in the new game, you activate Eason by dodging. You have to pretty much do a perfect dodge and that you can then in turn combine two attacks.

[01:51:07] You can attack one enemy and then attack a second enemy. That's the highest combo you can do. But those Eason strikes are essentially the offensive way to play because you're dodging and going into an attack. So you can actually beat the bosses without parrying once. It's just much more difficult. That's the ultimate challenge would be essentially Eason striking all the enemies. So that's going to be interesting to see because as we heard, there was a lot of discussion about

[01:51:37] demo being too easy and the devs are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, chill, chill, chill. And I, dude, again, talking about Pragmata and how they showed us already that there's this school of design at Capcom. They know how to give you the challenge and ramp it up progressively. I trust wholeheartedly that Onimusha will do that well. Same. But to give you my top three, you guys slept on Monster Hunter Story 3. Did that come out this year or last year? You're right. I did sleep on that. You're so right. Where's your four? Where's your four at? Will didn't play that.

[01:52:06] He's not going to play it. That's fine. That's fine. So I haven't made it yet. I put like 30 hours into it, but that is an excellent RPG. And I love Monster Hunter as well. So it just kind of works well. That to me, I'll be super honest. That's like number three because I like Pragmata more than it. I haven't beaten Monster Hunter Stories 3, so I have to put Pragmata higher. And Resident Evil Requiem, I really like that game a lot, but I don't even think it's top

[01:52:36] five Resident Evil for me. So I think I would put Requiem like under Pragmata right now. And Onimusha is the big question. Onimusha is like the, I need to see how this goes because again, I fucking love Onimusha. So I can't wait to see the rest of the game because there's a lot going on. It really could. You're at Pragmata, Ari Requiem, Monster Hunter Stories 3, and Onimusha. And Onimusha has a big old question mark. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. I'll go ahead.

[01:53:06] Listen, the both of you covered this so excellently. I can only echo everything you said. I say this like every episode. You know, I always go last. But realistically, you're both right in terms of the people that you recommend this to folks that love shooters but want a little bit of a twist of a challenge. This is the game that you're looking for. I'm very excited to see how this shakes out the end of the year. Resident Evil Requiem is still currently my game of the year. I love that game. It's a great game. I got the platinum. I 100% of that game. Nice. Nice. Nice.

[01:53:35] I'm very, very excited about it. And it really delivered everything that I wanted from a Resident Evil game in the modern way. Like, it just gave me so much of what I'm looking for in those kind of games. While, of course, having its own nuances. But yeah. But for Pragmata, this is a fantastic game. I really... It's an unqualified recommendation unless you're somebody that is in like action games or shooters. Yeah. Realistically, this is definitely worth a shot, especially that the demo is out there. You can just go check it out and see, hey, is this your cup of tea? So definitely just jump in there.

[01:54:05] See how you like it. I'm going to give my ranking, of course. You know, I'll do Resident Evil Requiem at the top. Pragmata in the middle. Onimusha at the bottom for the games that I'm going to touch this year. Of course, shout out to Monster Hunter Stories 3. I would love to play it. It's just like one of those like, you know, Granblue Fantasy Relink. I just don't have time. I don't think for it. Relink is so good too. I know. I know. It's not even that long. I promise. Relink isn't even that long. It can be like 20, 30 hours. Just a quick 70 hours. No big deal.

[01:54:37] But yeah, that is going to be it for tonight, folks. I want to give a big thank you to all of our listeners. If you've enjoyed our content and want to support us further, please feel free to leave us a rating or review on your podcasting platform of choice, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify or GoodPods. We love hearing from our community. Also, join the Discord. I say this almost every episode. Our Discord is open. Onyx is in there. He always leaves fun little memes and stuff. And he usually joins in on Will dunking on me one way or another.

[01:55:05] So if you want to make fun of Nick to join our Discord, it's on our link catcher. So we'll go ahead and do that. Onix, I want to give you a quick plug. Where can people find your content? Yeah, I'm pretty much on YouTube. YouTube.com slash The Gaming Resume or just search up The Gaming Resume on YouTube. I have a TikTok. Don't go there. I used to stream on Twitch. Don't go there either. Just YouTube. Go to YouTube. You can find me on Twitter as well. Onyx Talks is like my main personal account.

[01:55:35] And then I have The Gaming Resume Twitter as well. But if you want to hear my unfiltered thoughts, definitely check out Onyx Talks on Twitter. Fantastic. And with that, everyone, please keep gaming, take it easy, and we'll see you next Friday night. Deuces. Deuces.