Pragmata has a Lunatic difficulty setting, but is it actually worth your time?

Most story-led games have difficulty settings, allowing you to tweak the experience to your liking.

You might want a chilled session exploring stellar writing instead of constantly being under the cosh from enemies left, right, and center, where one hit can mean starting a chapter over again.

Pragmata follows the usual difficulty setting trend, but instead of the Easy, Normal, and Hard trope, it has one named Lunatic, which, as you might have expected, comes with increased pushback.

Is it worth playing Pragmata on Lunatic difficulty?

Lunatic is the highest difficulty setting in Pragmata, and if you’re an avid gamer, you might automatically want to check it off. However, first off, you actually have to unlock Lunatic as an option.

To do this, you have to already complete a playthrough of the game, so you will be very familiar with the core mechanics, but it is a little frustrating that you can’t jump straight into the challenge.

The bigger issue, however, is that Lunatic mode doesn’t really shake up the experience in any meaningful way. The map layout stays the same, enemy placement is unchanged, and you won’t suddenly run into new encounters or reworked combat scenarios that force you to really rethink your approach.

Instead, Lunatic mostly just leans on the oldest trick in the difficulty book. Enemies have more health, they hit harder, and that’s pretty much the long and short of it. For some of you out there who just want more Pragmata, that will be enough, but if you were hoping for something a bit more inventive, the difficulty setting may leave you just a bit sad.

There are no major surprises, no fresh twists on enemy waves, and no added systems that make the mode feel especially distinct from a standard replay. That’s a shame, because Lunatic could have been a great opportunity to remix enemy types, introduce stronger variants earlier, or make resource management more demanding.

As it stands, the main reason to play Pragmata on Lunatic is to unlock the Lunar Supremacy trophy/achievement. So, if you’re aiming to fully 100% the game, then yes, it’s absolutely worth doing. If not, you’re essentially signing up for a tougher version of the same adventure rather than an expanded one.

Basically, what we’re saying is that for most of you out there, a single playthrough on one of the standard settings will probably be enough. But for completionists and those who enjoy squeezing every last challenge out of a game, Lunatic still has a purpose, even if it feels a little more barebones than it should.