The Impression Session 9/05/26 – Pragmata, Esoteric Ebb, Bad Star Wars Brainrot Clone

 
This is going to be a new recurring feature (or as recurring as anything here) of just general impressions of stuff I’m playing, new or old, full playthroughs or light touches. All the games I’ve played over the last few weeks will get a little bit of that writing goodness here.

Pragmata

The type of game Pragmata is doesn’t come around as often as I would like. A game of singular focus with no extra stuff around it. No tacked-on multiplayer, no post-game grind, no asynchronous online features. It is a full, complete video game. The fact that it is a new IP too is even more confounding. Pragmata feels like it fell out of a 2010 Xbox 360. From its storyline, to its characters, and especially the aesthetics, the game just screams to me “late 2000s”. What a state the industry must be in for “complete, functional video game” to come off as fresh and exciting.

One of the things I love about Pragmata is that it is lean. There is nothing throwaway about Pragmata unless you engage with it. Whether it’s the lore tidbits that litter the levels, the challenge rooms, the collectables— all of it is there for you to interact with, but none of it is necessary. You could just go in a straight line and beat Pragmata, or you can delve further into its lore or the mechanics through the challenge rooms and have as much of a fulfilling experience. I did quite a bit of the extra stuff, but not all of it, and at no point did I feel like I needed to do it. A lot of games have all this extra crud on the side which, while technically optional, feels anything but. Whether you need to level up your spaceman to pass the next challenge or sometimes quite literally gatekeeping you from progressing unless you get the five MacGuffins. Resident Evil Requiem had that problem, where I felt like I was ready to get the ending but still had hours of game left to go.

Pragmata gets in, gets out, but still satisfies. If rental stores still existed, Pragmata would be the perfect game. If you want a concise game with a cool gimmick, Pragmata is a great choice.

Grand Theft Auto III

In preparation for the biggestly game of all time ever, Grand Theft Auto VI, I decided to play through all the GTA games—and by “all” I mean starting at GTA III because, let’s be honest, no one cares about 1 or 2, and I’m a guy who played those games when they came out! Also, because I have a weird sickness where I sometimes need to play the worst version of a game, I decided to play the Definitive Edition on my Switch 2, and holy Jesus, that game has aged terribly. Yes, the Definitive Edition graphics are still completely fucked up and, on Switch, look even worse, but that was not the most offensive thing about GTA III.

The mission design is absolute ass in that game. I counted five separate occasions where I thought to myself, “Oh God, this has to be the worst mission in the game,” only to be presented with something even worse. This pattern happened all the way up to the last mission of the game, which I can definitively say is the worst mission in the game. I don’t understand how you can have a mission that takes all your weapons away, starts you off immediately getting shot, requires you to drive one of the more wonky cars in the game, and dodge helicopter barrages—all while on a goddamn timer.

Grand Theft Auto III is one of the most important video games ever made. I cannot overstate how revolutionary and monumental the game is, but it has aged so poorly. It is probably the biggest fall between when it was released and now. I cannot think of a game that has aged worse.

Dark Souls III

I’ve been on record saying that FromSoftware’s formula of “ball-busting third-person melee action games” is getting stale and boring. Yes, Elden Ring was an incredible game, but it was the same incredible game that FromSoftware has been making for 15 years. I’ve been begging for a new type of game from the studio, and while I sort of got that with Armored Core VI, it wasn’t as drastic of a change as I wanted, and it appears they are going back to that poison swamp well with The Duskbloods.

With all that said, I was in the mood for a Soulslike, and since I only own Dark Souls III on Steam, it was the game I chose. It’s fine. It’s Dark Souls, and that’s fine. Some of the audio occasionally bugs out, and the game still makes the computer fullscreen like it’s 2005, but it’s fun. I’ll probably keep playing it in bits and pieces until the seven million games I want to play release in a few weeks.

Esoteric Ebb

Disco Elysium is one of my favourite games of all time. I absolutely adore that game and have yet to find anything that scratched that itch. So when Esoteric Ebb released and was touted as “Disco Elysium but with Dungeons and Dragons,” I was interested. When it went on its first sale, I picked it up. It’s like 90% of the way there but fumbles in a few key areas. My core problem with Esoteric Ebb is that the way it maps the player character’s internal monologue to D&D’s stats - it just does not work.

In Disco Elysium, the player had very clear attributes like Inland Empire, Electrochemistry, Authority, Logic, Empathy, etc. All of these attributes had specific characterisations that made them feel like actual characters despite being abstract concepts. Encyclopedia was a giant nerd, Half Light just wanted to start fights, Volition wanted to help you out. Every single one of the attributes in Disco Elysium was, in itself, its own character, and the way they interacted with the world, the player, and each other was the secret sauce that made Disco Elysium so good that ZA/UM and its several different spinoffs are trying to recapture it.

Esoteric Ebb tries to repeat that formula with the D&D ruleset, and it almost gets there but does miss the mark. Stats like Strength and Wisdom don’t have a specific personality outside of the most basic and obvious. Intelligence has a lot to say about lore, and Charisma is certain you can talk your way out of every situation. They tried to make a Disco Elysium from a system it just cannot work well with. I like the game otherwise. It looks great, has an overall interesting story, great characters (<3 Snell), and actually has one of the best endings to a game I have played in years. It didn’t reach Disco Elysium’s lofty bar, but it fucking tried.

Fortnite – Star Wars Droid Tycoon

I have a massive problem with the Star Wars-themed “Steal a Brainrot” clone that was just released in Fortnite: I can’t stop playing it. It is the most basic, paper-thin gameplay loop you will ever see in your life, and I cannot stop playing it.

It just hits that corruptible part of your brain that likes it when the number goes up and Call of Duty killstreak precision-strikes it. It’s not even a good Brainrot clone because you can’t actually steal any droids from other players. The only time you can even do anything like that is the small gap between when the player buys the droid at the Sandcrawler and when they get to their base, which is about five seconds.

I fucking hate this stupid bullshit, and as soon as this is posted, I’m going to play some more. If you ever see me in real life, please punch me in the kidney for playing this shit.