“Promise Mascot Agency is a positively zany yakuza adventure that’s an unpredictable delight.”
Pros
Zany vitality
Hysterical writing
So many eccentric mascots to fulfill
Always unpredictable gameplay
Cons
Thin card recreation system
Open-world will get monotonous
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Running a enterprise
Open-world work
When I first arrive in Kaso-Machi, it seems like I’ve stepped right into a ghost city. The Japanese island on the middle of Promise Mascot Agency, the newest recreation from Paradise Killer studio Kaizen Game Works, is awash in a brown haze. It’s eerily quiet, with no our bodies strolling by means of its streets. I assume it’s absolutely deserted, however that’s not the case. It’s merely been run into poverty by a mayor who couldn’t care much less concerning the well-being of his constituents. For the following 15 hours, I make it my private mission to proper that unsuitable, bringing life again to a spot choked by political corruption. It’s a journey that underscores the significance of group, a pressure that’s extra highly effective than any king.
Also, my finest associates are a block of tofu that may’t cease crying and a porn-addicted cat. This, to me, is what video video games are all about.
Promise Mascot Agency fuses weighty sociopolitical commentary with playful absurdity to ship an open-world recreation that’s directly insightful and so off-the-rails that it’ll sound such as you’re making it up whenever you attempt to describe it to associates. It’s a playable anime, a stat-heavy enterprise simulator, a card gathering recreation, and Forza Horizon multi function.
Does that hodgepodge of concepts absolutely work? Can its indie spirit overcome the monotony inherent within the open-world style? Man, simply shut up and get within the truck. We’ve acquired to put in dial-up web within the intercourse lodge.
Running a enterprise
Taking some clear cues from the Like a Dragon collection, Promise Mascot Agency tells a dense story of Yakuza in-fighting and political deception amid online game silliness. After a clan has its cash stolen by rivals, Michi, a feared cleaner for the operation extensively referred to as “The Janitor,” is distributed to Kaso-Machi to recoup the cash by taking up one of many clan’s fronts, a mascot company. It’s a demise sentence for Michi, because the city locations a curse on males that slowly kills them. Before I can end processing that legal intrigue, I’m dropped off at an empty intercourse lodge being run by Pinky, a sentient finger, who appears actually pissed off on a regular basis.
If that description already has you doing a double take, then buckle up, ding dong. We’re simply getting began.
Kaizen Game Works
Promise Mascot Agency is an anime odyssey that makes as sturdy and loud of an impression as it could actually in its first act. I quickly be taught that my goal is to recruit costumed mascots round city and mortgage them out to native companies in want. A brand new plastic mannequin store simply opened? Sounds like gig for my inexperienced surfer pal. An grownup video retailer is working a promotion? I’ve acquired the right pervert for the job. It all flows by means of a streamlined job administration menu that has me assigning mascots to gigs primarily based on their character, motivation meter, and stamina. The higher they do, and the more difficult a job they full, the extra cash I rake in to improve the city and my company.
Easy sufficient, proper? Wrong, bucko. The joyful absurdity comes from simply how critically Kaizen Game Works takes a foolish premise. Every time I recruit a brand new mascot, I’ve to barter a contract with them that determines how a lot of a lower they get on jobs, whether or not or not they’re eligible for a bonus, and if they’ll have trip time that makes them inaccessible after each few jobs. I’m always balancing my very own earnings with an unpredictable solid of cartoon egos who received’t work without spending a dime. I can select to take advantage of them, in fact, however that’s going to do a quantity on their motivation stat. It’s a enterprise administration sim turned anime satire.
Oh, and it’s additionally a deck-building recreation the place I have to defeat small doorways and swarms of bees with help heroes I gather. I virtually forgot that half, huh? Sometimes my mascots totally beef it on the job and have their focus derailed by obstacles, from indignant spirits to unstable towers of packing containers that they knock over with their huge cat butts. When that occurs, I’ve one minute to take down that impediment’s well being bar by enjoying from a hand of collectible hero playing cards which have their very own value and harm stats. It’s a reasonably skinny card recreation hook that by no means actually scales up sufficient to really feel strategic, however it makes for a very ridiculous visible that provides to the comedic sensory overload of the mission.
it all the time retains gamers guessing as to what’s coming subsequent.
Wait, I forgot to say one different factor. I would like to make use of these funds so as to add extra facilities to my intercourse lodge base of operations and construct up companies on the town, bringing in additional gig alternatives and retaining my workers hydrated. Oh, and one other factor: I would like to finish social hyperlinks with my mascots to be taught extra about them. Crap, there’s the claw machine too. Right, so, each mascot has merch I can gather, which then goes into large claw machine video games round city, and I’ve to fish them out and promote them to different places to make extra earnings. That’s about everyth– Subcontractors! Sorry, that slipped my thoughts! I can finally rent subcontractor mascots and put them in jobs outdoors of city to get a constant passive earnings. Also, there’s a superhero who loves security and retains placing cease indicators in all places. Hey, the place are you going!?
Promise Mascot Agency’s power comes from the best way it all the time retains gamers guessing as to what’s coming subsequent. It layers on new gameplay methods, extra eccentric mascots, and political intrigue because it goes. The wackier it will get, the extra severe it turns into too. By the tip, I used to be now not a shady yakuza member doing the naked minimal to maintain the cash flowing. I deeply cared about my workers and was chopping them greater checks to reward their efforts. It all flows again in direction of the story’s final thesis about group. A gaggle of ragtag misfits can do extra to maintain their city than the crooked politicians working it into the bottom, as long as all of them band collectively for a typical good.
Also, organized crime is cool. I feel that’s the opposite takeaway.
Open-world work
Believe it or not, that also doesn’t absolutely describe Promise Mascot Agency’s entire deal. It’s not so dissimilar to Paradise Killer in that it’s a story journey with an expanded scope. When I’m not managing my enterprise or pumping cash into city restoration, I’m having conversations with the townies and my mascot crew. That’s the place I get to dig deeper into Kaso-Machi and its troubled historical past. It’s very a lot much like a Like a Dragon recreation in the way it spins dry native politics into one thing engrossing – although it’s additionally much like Like a Dragon in that all of it builds to a long-winded conclusion that’s heavy on exposition. Between all that, my canine pal tells me all about his porno ambitions. That potential to bounce between dense native politics and screwball humor so effortlessly makes it really feel like The Wire meets Smiling Friends. I’d argue that it even makes this yr’s Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii appear boring by comparability.
On high of every thing I’ve already outlined, it’s an open-world recreation that feels most much like Forza Horizon (or perhaps The Simpsons: Hit and Run) in design. I promise that I’m not making stuff up at this level. I get why you might be in all probability suspicious of that.
Kaizen Game Works
While jobs play out in menus as a day marches on, Michi and Pinky journey round Kaso-Machi in a pick-up truck. There’s a number of collectibles to find, together with new hero playing cards that may help me in office accidents, and NPCs to fulfill who every have a quest for me to finish. For occasion, the mayor’s scorned right-hand man actually loves pop music and needs me to trace down uncommon idol merch from merchandising machines. It quantities to numerous fetch quests and firing Pinky out of a cannon to explode photos of the mayor strewn round city. (Man, I hate that outdated dork.)
Out of all of Promise Mascot Agency’s numerous components, that routine is its most mundane thought — and maybe its most useful, too. Modern open-world video games are work, man. They give gamers an unlimited guidelines of issues to do, junk to gather, and other people to fulfill. Something like Assassin’s Creed Shadows might be as exhausting as it’s enjoyable as unlocking each tower turns right into a factor that you just really feel like you must do, fairly than need to. Promise Mascot Agency offers with that pressure straight, as a result of every thing you’re doing actually is a job. I’m cleansing up luggage of trash to maintain the city tidy as a completion proportion. I’m sprucing dozens of shrines. I imply, I’m actually The Janitor for Christ’s sake! It ain’t glamorous work, however somebody has to care sufficient about this city to do it!
Even if it’s a thematically sound pairing for an open-world format, Promise Mascot Agency nonetheless has all the identical weak factors of the video games that impressed it. It accommodates a guidelines of world actions that change into repetitive after some time. The city turns into much less enjoyable to discover the extra the map markers disappear. It’s the one space the place the gameplay feels at odds with the story, as Kaso-Machi is meant to really feel extra full of life as Michi rejuvenates it. Instead, it’s a bit emptier every day.
Head all the way down to your native mayor’s workplace and knock that sucker the hell out.
Even as that occurs, there’s simply a lot chaotic vitality overflowing all through Promise Mascot Agency that helps fill within the cracks. It’s a positively zany journey from begin to end powered by jazzy tunes, hysterical writing, and unleaded gasoline. Though what’s so outstanding about Kaizen Game Works is its potential to invent probably the most weird world it could actually consider and deftly acclimate gamers to its logic inside just a few hours. That power is what made Paradise Killer so memorable and it carries over right here. By the tip of my journey, I felt at residence in a world that originally felt absurd. I used to be effectively working a enterprise with my friends. I used to be having fun with my each day scenic drives by means of the countryside with my rocket-boosted truck. I used to be antagonizing the mayor regularly, as a result of, critically, f*** that man.
Somewhere in all that anime silliness is a utopian imaginative and prescient; a world the place misfits can overcome something and reside comfortably in a house that they look after collectively. It doesn’t must be a online game fever dream. Band collectively together with your group and uncover the enjoyment of mutual help at this time. And after you do this, head all the way down to your native mayor’s workplace and knock that sucker the hell out.
Promise Mascot Agency was examined on PC and Steam Deck OLED.