Promise Mascot Agency is an open world sandbox game where your character is a yakuza who made a big big mistake and is sent to a crumbling town out in the countryside and tasked with re-opening the local mascot agency to try and make as much money as possible. To do that you have to recruit mascots, fix up the agency (but don't bother hiding the fact it was previously a love hotel ...), and revitalize the town in order to attract tourists. Along the way you'll snuff out major government corruption and solve the mysteries of the town - mainly the belief that there is a curse that eventually kills any male yakuza members that enter the area.
Mascots are the core of the game but in this world they aren't just sweaty guys in costumes and are actually real living creatures themselves. They aren't all sweet and saccharine and cutesy, either. This is a yakuza-ish game, after all, so the mascots are mostly foul-mouthed and perverted and not afraid to get a little red on them, if you know what I mean. There are more than 20 different mascots all with unique designs and personalities. It's ridiculously charming and extremely funny.
The story is pretty solid overall, but my one complaint is that, holy crap, there is a ton of dialogue. Everyone is so damned chatty. Just talk talk talk talk talk. It's all text, too, since this game is basically half visual novel, and by the latter half I have to admit I started just skipping through most of it. I still perfectly understood the story, though, which just shows how pointless probably 80% of the word salad they throw at you is.
The actual gameplay is split into two parts - a business management sim and open world exploration. First, exploration. You don't walk around. Or fight anyone. And there aren't any action sequences. Instead you drive everywhere and do everything in your little iconic Japanese Kei Truck. As you make progress the truck gets upgraded to be amphibious and even gets glider wings to let you fly around so you truly can go anywhere and explore every inch of the island.
And you need to go everywhere to meet new mascots to recruit, form relationships with businesses for your mascots to perform at, and find collectibles that people in town ask you to find. Almost everything just shows up as a dot on your minimap, but it's still really satisfying. I've said before that I genuinely love checklist-style games that just give you a list of stuff to do and Promise Mascot Agency definitely fits that description. It took me about 15-hours to do all of the stuff and get all of the achievements and it was enjoyable all the way through.
The other half of the gameplay is managing the mascot business. A lot of it is automated, so you just send mascots out on jobs or send merchandise to stores and collect the money at the end of the day. Sometimes an incident happens at a mascot job, though, such as a swarm of bees or evil spirits or a door that's too narrow for your mascot to get through, so you then have to help them out via a simple card game interface.
Townspeople you make friends with as well as other characters all have cards, each with unique attack numbers or action points or other stuff that you have to play to defeat whatever is preventing your mascot from performing. I don't know that I like it or not, to be honest. It's really, really easy most of the time. Especially at the end of the game when your cards as well as the mascots themselves are all upgraded and pumped up. It just feels kinda pointless and was mostly just an excuse to add more collectibles to pad out the game.
Leveling up your mascots is enjoyable, at least. Like I said they all have unique personalities and digging into their stories to make them happy is where the charm and humor of the game really shines through.
That's really the main selling point of Promise Mascot Agency - the humor and charm and just uniqueness of the whole weird world you're playing in. Having an open world game where you never leave your vehicle sounds weird, right? Or a game with no combat or action or anything "exciting" happening sounds boring, right? But that's why it works. You care about the town and your mascots and you want to solve the mysteries and it all comes together in a very unique, very fun, extremely humorous, genuinely fantastic overall experience. It's also absolutely perfectly priced at $25. I highly, highly recommend it.
Comments
Post a Comment