Promise Mascot Agency Review – Review
Kaizen Game Works first dropped on my radar with Paradise Killer–A narrative game from 2020 that was almost as much fun to explore as to read its intoxicating prose while learning more about its world and vibrant characters. At first, it seems that their latest game, Promise Mascot Agency, shares little of its DNA with Paradise Killer. However, after spending almost twenty hours in its lovely world, it’s clear that Kaizen Game Works is a studio that shouldn’t be judged by its cover. While Promise Mascot Agency may reject any label applied to it, I would heartily recommend it to anyone looking for something wildly out of the ordinary and those who just love good games.
You play as Michi, better known by his yakuza title, The Janitor, who after failing a job miserably, is declared dead by his mobster family and sent away to a town that is said to have a curse that will kill any male yakuza visiting the place. This rural town in the Japanese province of Kyushu, Kaso-Machi, is home to a failing mascot agency that Michi is tasked with rejuvenating so that he can pay off his massive debt to the family. Now, you may wonder, what is a mascot agency? Well, you know how mascots are living breathing beings that come in all shapes and sizes? Yes, well they need employment too to promote events and bring attention to whatever the employer needs. It’s your job, alongside your assistant Pinky–a mascot resembling a cut-off pinky finger–to make the Promise Mascot Agency the greatest mascot agency in Japan. All the while you need to deal with the many secrets and stories of the citizens of Kaso-Machi.
Usually this is the part where I tend to draw comparisons between the game I’m reviewing and other notable titles that you may be aware of. But Promise Mascot Agency almost defies being compared to anything else. In a sense, it can be seen as a narrative adventure game, where you explore a compact open world and perform tasks for the community to recruit new mascots, upgrade the town of Kaso-Machi and assist the mascots in fulfilling their dreams. The predominant gameplay sees you driving around town in a beat-up truck to get to know the citizens of this little village. There’s no getting out of your vehicle, but you’ll never need to worry about fall damage or crashing into anything. Upgrading the truck helps you get around as you will be jumping, boosting and driving yourself off of hills or into the water. It is all part of the experience as you get to know Kaso-Machi better. The game doesn’t just lean into its absurdity but drenches itself in it, which ends up making the characters feel more relatable than I was expecting. From mascots like Trororo, who’s covered in yam and has a singular dream, namely promoting the enjoyment of Adult Videos (yes, really), or even the humans like the exchange teacher Miss. Wambui, who was assigned to this small rural town teaching English and can’t leave because of her love for the students and the countryside of Japan. The writing is excellent across the board and compliments the creative design of all the mascots, who become memorable in their own rights. It’s kind of ingenious that as progress with the agency, you’re asked to sell merchandise of your mascots to create additional revenue sources, because I now want nothing more than merchandise for To-Fu, Neko Roll and Koke-Maru.
Whenever you send out mascots on jobs, there is a chance that things will go wrong, which is where the game transitions into a minigame card-battler and you’ll need to use the citizens of Kaso-Machi as Support Heroes, who are able to deal with the problems. Problems range from badly placed boxes, to faulty vending machines and even obsessed fans that ruin the event that the mascot is promoting. You’ll get 60 seconds to decrease the health bar of the faulty object by strategically playing cards with specific stats and actions. You only get two action-points per battle, but as you chain together cards you can increase your actions to play more expensive cards or draw new cards in your hand. At first these problems can be quite a hassle, but you can upgrade your Support Heroes by helping them with their problems through town quests or chatting with them regularly. As you progress through the game, you start to understand how the systems interlink with one another. It’s not just your profits that begin to soar as you expand and upgrade the Promise Mascot Agency, but the town as well. Your connection to the town becomes central to the experience. The game may come off visually as dark and brooding, but I found the experience to turn incredibly wholesome. Exploration felt just great as I learned how to best navigate the town and understand its routes and locations.
It’s especially the small details that Promise Mascot Agency does right. While not the majority of the text is voice-acted, all the cutscenes are fully voiced, as well as the introductions to mascots, giving so much character to everyone you meet along the way. I especially love that whenever you get to make a choice as Michi, you’re not told the line that Michi will respond with, but rather the emotion or intent behind the dialogue. It is something I desperately want to see in other narrative driven games, as I’ve come across games so often where I wanted to respond positively, but the opposing character would react in unexpected ways. Here whatever Michi will say I know he’ll be either [supportive], [reassuring] or [direct]. It leaves the player with freedom of choice as well as giving the writers the freedom as to how to portray Michi and whomever he is talking to. As I was playing Promise Mascot Agency it started to give me the same feelings as Paradise Killer, which is probably the highest compliment I can give it. Kaizen Game Works has embraced its identity, and I think that Promise Mascot Agency is even better than their previous title. And my god, its soundtrack is especially fantastic. Utilizing the artist Alpha Crome Yayo who has this fantastic blend of lo-fi, Japanese City Pop and this ‘90s arcade feel that fits the atmosphere of Kaso-Machi perfectly at every turn. It’s the cherry on top of this extremely fun sundae.
The biggest downer here is that the Nintendo Switch version can be an absolute mess at times. An inconsistent framerate, a delay in rendering of either 2D or 3D assets, loading times and in particular pop-in when driving around the open world make it a rough sell for anyone who can only be playing this game on the Nintendo Switch. While I think it still suffices and doesn’t detract from the experience, if you happen to have another platform available to you, I’d recommend going with that. Just because the game feels like an homage to a different era of games doesn’t mean you should necessarily want the game to look like that. Two software crashes occurred for me while playing and the final act of the game in particular suffered a lot more from stuttering framerates and small bugs and glitches.
Finally, while I enjoy that the game lets you free to tackle the chapters and main quests whenever you want, I did find myself having so much fun driving around and completing all the side objectives early that I blazed through the last three chapters once the agency was running at maximum efficiency. Promise Mascot Agency doesn’t necessarily gate progression, but for anyone out there who is interested in playing this game, don’t leave the main quest hanging and aim to interact with your mascots whenever they have a ‘life satisfaction review’. I did all of these in a row (for all mascots) near the end of the game, and that’s something I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to the majority of players. Technically this is a little bit due to an abundance of systems that can be overwhelming to keep track of in the beginning. So take your time, talk to Pinky often when driving around the overworld and chat with persons of interest you come across on your adventure as soon as you can.
Promise Mascot Agency feels like a cult-game that was released in the PS2 and GameCube era. I say this with nothing but love, as you can tell that so much heart went into conveying a fun story, with lovable characters and a wonderfully designed explorable world. It’s rare to come across games these days that dare to be different: games that don’t default to comparing themselves to other games or studios. In an industry that is becoming more and more risk-averse, I was shocked by how refreshing Promise Mascot Agency feels. But above all that, Promise Mascot Agency is confident: confident in its ability to commit to its bizarre world and gameplay that defies norms with a story that is all about one fulfilling their own dreams. While playing I could feel the joy the creators had in making this world and shaping its characters. Promise Mascot Agency is unlike anything you’ve played before, but if you let it into your heart (and choose another platform if possible) it’s an experience that will stay with you for a while to come.
