Tokyo Game Show 2025 Previews #1: Pragmata, Resident Evil, Onimusha, and Yakuza

We attended Tokyo Game Show 2025 and tried out some exciting new games! In this article, Brando shares his impressions of Pragmata, Resident Evil Requiem, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and Yakuza Kiwami 3, four of the biggest TGS titles he tried out on the show floor. More previews are posted here (#2) and here (#3). All release dates and platforms are current as of October 5, 2025.

Pragmata

A new Science-Fiction Action-Adventure game from Capcom with a unique combat system that mixes hacking and shooting.

Releases in 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam).
Official site: https://www.capcom-games.com/pragmata/en-us/

First revealed back in 2020 at a Playstation showcase, Pragmata is finally playable! The TGS demo starts at the opening of the game. Protagonist Hugh Williams wakes up in a space station and meets a mysterious young girl (android?) with the ability to hack nearby electronics named D-I-0336-7, who he decides to call Diana. The two of them work their way through the space station, hacking doors and fighting their way through a bunch of robots to reach a bigger, badder boss robot. They beat it, it explodes, they declare victory, and Hugh teaches Diana what a high five is.

At first, the demo feels like standard AAA action-adventure fare: running around hallways flipping switches and shooting enemies, occasionally broken up by rudimentary puzzles to solve, like pressing button prompts to open a door. Hugh starts with a handgun with 6 shots that automatically recharges ammo. He can find other weapons with limited ammo as pickups scattered around a level. He also has a jet pack that allows him to hover to a limited degree and jet boost laterally to dodge.

The combat is where things get interesting — it’s a real-time mix of hacking minigame and third-person shooting. Hugh’s basic handgun doesn’t do much damage by default. However, Diana can hack nearby robots, prompting a small grid to pop up on screen where you use the d-pad and face buttons to navigate a cursor around a grid to a target location, connecting icons along the way. The icons you pass over have different effects, like increasing the amount of damage done to robots after hacking. After reaching the target icon and completing the hacking minigame, the target robot will be weakened for a while, so then it’s Hugh’s turn to fire away in standard third-person shooter style to do big damage.

On paper neither of these elements sound that interesting, but the way they combine in real time makes for some tense encounters. While you’re hacking, enemies are still lumbering toward you to attack, and you can still move, shoot, and dodge their attacks. This forces you to balance your attention between what’s happening on the hacking grid and what’s happening in front of Hugh. This interplay seems to have a lot of room for depth, as you upgrade Hugh and Diana’s abilities and the two systems interact with each other. For example, Hugh’s basic weapons do little damage to unhacked robots, so at first it seems like you’ll always want to go for the hack first, then start shooting. But later, Hugh finds a weapon that will slow enemies caught in its area of impact, giving you more time to hack them, so maybe you want to use that first, if you have ammo to spare. The demo ends with a frenetic boss fight, putting all of these dodging and hacking and shooting skills to the test. Hugh and Diana have a cute dynamic, and this demo was a good hook that showed off the unique combat mechanics Capcom has been cooking up for the past several years.

Resident Evil Requiem

Resident Evil Requiem is the ninth title in the mainline Resident Evil series. Prepare to escape death in a heart-stopping experience that will chill you to your core. A new era of survival horror begins in 2026.

Releases February 27, 2026 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam).
Official site: https://www.residentevil.com/requiem/en-us/

Next on the list of AAA games Capcom brought to TGS releasing in 2026 starring a young blonde girl who needs to solve puzzles to unlock doors is Resident Evil Requiem. The demo opens with protagonist Grace Ashcroft strapped upside-down to a vertical surgical table soaked with blood and sweat, and it doesn’t get any less terrifying from there. The game gives you the option of playing in first person or third person, so I opted for third person since I ~~was scared~~ wanted to appreciate the character animations Capcom’s designers worked so hard on.

Some games in the series are more action-oriented, like Resident Evil 4, but Requiem is firmly on the survival horror side of the spectrum. Once you start exploring the creepy building Grace wakes up in, one of the first items found is an empty bottle, which can be thrown to distract enemies. A little further in, you find a lighter, which has a dedicated d-pad direction assigned to it, so you know it’s going to see a lot of use lighting up dark areas. Shortly after that, you find a grotesque monster that travels through holes in the ceiling to stalk you throughout the building, and which may have bitten me to death a few times during the demo. Grace doesn’t control very gracefully — she’ll stumble and bump into things while running and then mutter panickedly to herself, “Oh shit, oh my god…”, but that all adds to the experience. I played on PS5 and the game looked great, lots of subtle lighting and other effects that really enhanced the atmosphere, but I hear it runs pretty well even on the Switch 2 in handheld mode.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword

Fight through bloodbaths of intense swordplay action. Explore the historic Japanese capital of Edo-era Kyoto, twisted by malevolent clouds of Malice. With every stage cloaked in mystery, danger and intrigue. Battle against monstrosities from the underworld known as Genma in a tale of dark fantasy. Follow the tale of a samurai who wields the Oni Gauntlet, a mystical artifact that grants its bearer the power to slay Genma. Through gritty, blood-soaked brawls, he searches for his reason to fight. What fate awaits at the end of his path?

Releases in 2026 on Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam).
Official site: https://www.capcom-games.com/onimusha/ws/en-us/

Full disclosure: I’ve never played an Onimusha game. From the game’s aesthetic and controls (quick attack, strong attack, dodge, parry), I was expecting it to be similar to the Nioh games or Sekiro, but once I got into the action, it was quite different.

The combat is focused on swordplay, but it’s not as brutally difficult as the Souls-likes (at least this demo wasn’t). It’s not as fast-paced, and there are some fun moves that give it more of a traditional action game feel, like cool finishing blows with plenty of blood and gore. You can parry and dodge, but there’s also disarming, and objects you can interact with in the environment which give you more options. For regular enemies you can mostly just cut your way through, but for bosses you need to be more strategic. They’ve got ample health and stamina, so you’ll need to look for openings to attack and decide which defensive options to use to try and reduce their health or stamina.

Defeated enemies leave behind soul orbs, which you suck up with your gauntlet. There are different colored souls, which charge up different special moves you can unleash later. There are also occasional breaks in the action where you’ll need to use your special vision ability (like Batman’s Detective Vision or Geralt’s Witcher Sense) to find your next clue to move forward. The atmosphere also seems more lighthearted compared to the other games I’ve mentioned. The protagonist Musashi isn’t silent — he’s expressive and entertaining, like in his banter with the spirit in his gauntlet (who doesn’t take kindly to him calling her “Gauntlet Lady”).

Yakuza Kiwami 3

Originally debuting on PlayStation 3 in 2009, Yakuza 3 has been reimagined with cutting-edge visuals and modern technology. This evolved edition brings Okinawa to life, featuring more intense battles, added cutscenes that bring depth to the story, and minigames chock-full of replay value. Kiryu’s back in the brawl, continuing the fight to protect those he holds dear.

Releases February 12, 2026 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam)
Official site: https://ryu-ga-gotoku.com/kiwami3/asia_en/

Following the remakes of the first two Yakuza games (Kiwami and Kiwami 2), Kiwami 3 was announced at Tokyo Game Show along with Dark Ties, a new spin-off title which stars Yoshitaka Mine, Kiryu’s adversary. Technically both are included in the same “Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties” package, but the TGS demo only lets you pick one or the other to play. I’ve only played 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2 so I went with Kiwami 3.

Kiwami 3 opens with protagonist Kiryu trying to leave the Yakuza world behind him (for real this time). He’s living the quiet life in Okinawa, operating an orphanage with his adopted daughter Haruka far away from the Tokyo gang violence of past entries. However, local Okinawan gang tensions escalate, the orphanage becomes in danger, manly men say manly things, and Kiryu gets dragged back into the game in no time at all.

In the TGS demo, you can run around a town in Okinawa and go shopping, do silly side quests, play classic Yakuza minigames like darts, pool, and karaoke, and of course, brawl with local hooligans. Kiryu has apparently been busy mastering the martial arts and weaponry of Okinawa, because in Kiwami 3 he’s got a new Ryukyu fighting style in addition to his traditional brawler style. The colorful island scenery of Okinawa is a nice change of pace from the concrete jungle of Tokyo, but the overall experience feels basically the same as in previous Yakuza games. The game looks good — it’s running on the same Dragon Engine as Kiwami and Kiwami 2, so the visuals are on par with those (and that’s probably also why the game can release on PS4).

I got mixed up in a silly sidequest where I had to bring two ice cream cones to a mother’s kids, walking them carefully down a busy street filled with cars, pedestrians, and practicing sumo wrestlers, on a tight time limit.