This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to Promise Mascot Agency on the So Videogames podcast, Episode 436. For the original coverage of the game, please listen to Episode 435.
BRAD: Okay, only one circle back this week, but it’s kind of a big one. This is for Promise Mascot Agency. I went into all of the details in the last episode. I’m not going to repeat all of that, but just in case anybody missed it, this is a third person open world game, although the map is kind of small, and I say that as a good thing. You play a disgraced yakuza who got set up to take the fall for a deal gone bad. You’ve got to go out to this town, out in the hinterlands to kind of make good. You’ve got to run this mascot business in order to make money and support your yakuza family back home. So you’re out in the sticks. And this mascot business is just in the dumps. It’s not making any money. It’s the building they’re in is converted to a, quote unquote love hotel. You can figure that one out for yourselves. And this whole game takes place in a world where mascots are actually what they look like.
So, for example, you know, if you go to a sports game, you might see, like, you know, those guys who are like doing the cheerleading down on the field and they’ve got like a big furry suit on with a giant head. You know, maybe it’s the bear if you’re a Chicago Bears fan or it’s a a Seahawk, if you’re a Seahawks fan or something like that. In this world, whatever mascot is, that is exactly what it actually is. It’s not a guy in a suit or a girl in a suit. It is an actual thing that it looks like. The very first mascot you get is a giant block of tofu. And that’s what he is. He is literally a giant block of tofu. You get one that’s like, um, uh, like an eel, which is like, uh, like the kind of eel you put on sushi, but is his chest is cut open and flayed out to be like the pieces that you put on sushi. It’s horrifying. But that’s what he is. Um, there’s like a cat who is covered in jizz like he is. He’s got. I don’t know what his name is, but I called him bukkake Cat because that is exactly what he looks like. And his pastime is watching adult films and doing adult content videos and stuff like that. So, like, you get these weird mascots, and they are those creatures because this world is, like, tinged with the supernatural or whatever.
So you go around collecting mascots, you recruit them to your agency, and then you send them out on these jobs to make money. So every time a store opens or there’s a big sale, use cars going on sale or something, you send one of your mascots out there to kind of be like the attention getter, and I do like the opening ceremonies and stuff like that. So you’re doing that to earn some money. But the open world is also there. In this game, you are always in your truck. It’s like a little, little one of those little cutie cutie pie, tiny Mitsubishi pickup trucks that I think are just adorable. I would love to have one of those. Um, and you drive around, you never get out of your car, so you’re not doing any running, jumping, fighting or anything like that. You’re just simply navigating from place to place. And I think it works really well in the beginning. You can only drive, but then you can like get some adaptations where your car can go in the water, which is fun. You get turbo boost so you can get from place to place faster and faster. And the favorite one might like the best thing. And this is one of the best things I’ve done all year, is you get a pair of glider wings and with the glider wings combined with the boost, you can basically take off anywhere as long as you’ve got about five feet of flat road in front of you, and that you always do, you can always pull it off.
You can just like land and take off and land and take off and fly across the map. And something about that. Oh my god. So fucking just, like, therapeutic and just so fun. Like half, half the enjoyment. Okay, maybe not half. 25% of the enjoyment of this game was me flying in that fucking Mitsubishi with the wings on it. And just, like, taking off, just like going places and seeing the clouds go by, being over town and then like you come in for a landing, you look for a nice piece, straight, straight piece of road and you just come in and then you pull the wings in and the car kind of plops down on its tires. Good. Safe landing. Fuck. It’s the best. And it’s I don’t know what makes it so good. It’s just like incredibly satisfying. I just I loved the flying. So getting around town in the car is, is quite good. I think it’s very fun. You drive around, you meet people, talk to people. There’s lots of crazy characters in this game. You get lots of wacky stories and weird things happening. You do a bunch of fetch quests for people that kind of force you to cover the map, which is fine. Um, lots of tangible rewards for doing it. Like very often you’ll get something that really means something.
There’s a couple of things that are just kind of fluff, but overall you’ll get things that really help you out, mostly in the mini games that pop up with your mascot. So while you’re driving around town, you will often get a call from one of your mascots who you have dispatched, and they’re like, yo, boss, I’m having some problems. Uh, for example, maybe their suit is or not their suit. Their body is too wide and they can’t get through a door. Or maybe they’re doing a cash register demonstration and they push the wrong button, and money is exploding out of the cash machine. Or maybe, uh, there’s a scary dog who is barking at the mascot, and they need to get away. Like, all these problems are small scale and hilarious. Uh, but what happens is there’s this card system. I’m not gonna get into the weeds here, but there’s a card system where you do quests for villagers. They give you their cards. These cards can assist your mascots when they’re having problems. And it becomes like a little very simplistic, straightforward kind of numbers game where the mascots difficulty will be like, I have a problem that’s 20 big, and then you need to flip through your cards and try to see if you’ve got 20 worth of solution for them. I’m very, very, very drastically simplifying this, but just know that the card game I think is really fun.
I always enjoy doing it. I never skipped one the entire game and once you do that, it gets you some rewards. If you help a mascot out, you get more money, blah blah blah. So the story just kind of goes and goes and goes. I think it’s just really fun. Open world is small and compact. Lots of interesting things to see. I think the mascots are fun. The story is like super wacky and crazy and overall it’s just a really good time. I think my only complaints for the game is I think the fast travel comes a little bit too late in the campaign, although I will say, to be fair to the game, I think it depends on what order you can do things. I found myself doing things in an order that was perhaps not what everybody else did, just for whatever reason. I guess my brain works that way. And so I got fast travel pretty late in the game. Not a big problem because I really just loved flying around in the truck. But every once in a while I would be like, okay, I just want to fast travel here really quickly. Um, and you have to activate each fast travel point. And because I had gotten it so late in the game, I, you know, I didn’t naturally activate these. As I progressed progress through the campaign, I kind of had to go back to the spots that I thought I would need the most and activate those manually, a little bit of a drag that kind of sucked.
The only other complaint I have about this game is kind of a it’s kind of a minor one, I guess. So the writing in this game is really good. I like the characters. I think it’s very funny, but I think there is just too much of it. Um, there’s a bunch of Yakuza info that I found very hard to keep track of and hard to keep straight. Sometimes you’ll talk to somebody and you think you’re going to have this, like short conversation. It ends up being like nine pages of like, nine, nine speech bubbles worth of text or something. And there’s a few times when I was like, okay, this is just like too much info. It’s good, it’s good. The writing is all uniformly good. I think the characters are fun and everything. I don’t have a complaint about that. It’s just like too much sometimes. It’s kind of like, you know, you have a piece of like New York cheesecake. You’re like, damn, this is a shit, I love this, I love New York cheesecake. It’s so good. But you don’t want to eat 15 pieces of it. You want to have like, one, maybe two if you’re having a good day. Uh, but, like, you know, 15 pieces is too many.
It’s still delicious, but it’s too much. Kind of the same thing here where I think the writing is really good, but I think less is more. So that was really my only complaint, because by the end of the game I was like, okay, I get it. I don’t really want to hear more about the Yakuza. I don’t really care that much about, like, who’s screwing what over and which family and the curse on the town and stuff. I mean, I think it was all good. I just needed less. So keep that in mind. It’s not a big deal. You can skip through the text. It’s fine. Fine, fine. But like, overall, I think Promise Mascot Agency has been one of the surprise hits for me this year. I think, um, I don’t know if it’s going to be in my top ten right now. It is, but there’s still like quite a bit of year left to go. I mean, I can imagine a scenario where it might get bumped out of the top ten, but the fact that I’m even considering it for the top ten really kind of tells you how good it is. It’s just really fucking fun to play. And when I would play this game, I had a very hard time stopping playing the game. I would want to do just one more thing. I’m just going to get this one more marker. I’m going to go talk to this one more person.
I’m going to go do this one more mini game. Oh I got to do this. One more mascot drop off. I’m going to do this. One more thing. I just want to fly, you know, like it just kept going and going and going. I found it very, very hard to turn that game off. And when I was playing it, I found it very hard to just, like, stop doing it. So it’s got that special sauce that I think works really well and overall I had a great time with it. This is absolutely a surprise hit for me. I had a wonderful time. I would definitely recommend it to anybody who wants something really quirky, super Japanese, super weird, a little bit of open world stuff in there. I think it really fits a great niche for me. And also, again, big shout out to John over at gaming in the wild. He is the one who convinced me to play this game. I saw the PR for this game and I did not play it because I knew it was coming from the people who made Paradise Killer, and that game did not click with me on any level except for the aesthetic. I love the visuals, didn’t like anything else in that game, and so I skipped it. Uh, speaking of Promise Mascot, I’m like, yeah, I’m not, you know, probably not gonna play this. I didn’t like their last one.
I’m not gonna worry about it. But John, uh, John really convinced me, and I’m glad that he did. So shout out to you, John. Thank you very much for for turning me on to this. I absolutely would not have played it without your influence, and this has been definitely a treat for the year. So overall, finish the game. I did almost everything in the game. I didn’t do every everything because there’s a bunch of little pickups that are just like, whatever. Um, there’s a couple little doodads I kind of skipped. But like all, like all the important stuff I did finished all the side quests that, like, had characters attached to them. I mean, I did like everything major in the game, and plus I rolled credits. Oh, and special shout out. Not going to spoil it here, but the ending of Promise Mascot Agency was fucking awesome. Like, you get a choice of what you want to do at the end. And again, not spoiling it, but like the choice I wanted was there. They let me do it. I wasn’t sure they’re going to let me do it, but they did. And then it resolved in exactly the way that I wanted it to. And I was like, fuck yeah, that’s fucking amazing. I love that you could do this thing, which I’m not going to spoil, but let me just say, it really was the cherry on the cake, so good call, Promise Mascot agency I was very happy with that ending.
So overall I think it’s time for a full so videogames review and for Promise Mascot Agency I’m going to give it a solid 8.0. You can take that to the bank. This is one of the good ones this year.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Buy Promise Mascot Agency – PC – PS – XB – SW
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Kaizen Game Works. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, XBS/X and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 25 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Drug Reference, Language, Suggestive Themes, and Violence. Older teens only, I think. Despite the cheery cartoon appearance, there are loads of sexual innuendoes and violent references. It’s not very graphic except for a few isolated scenes, but the sentiments are thick and there is some salty language.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options, but there are “color correction” options.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled, but text cannot be altered or resized. No audio cues are needed for successful gameplay. This title is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable, though some functions can be altered. There is no control scheme. Menus are navigated with the sticks and face buttons, and when driving in the world, the left stick controls the truck while the right stick controls camera. Acceleration is R2, Brake is L2. The D-pad is used for various options, such as pulling up the map.
Transformers fan. MOTU stan. Black Lives Matter, pro-LGBTQIA. Anti-fascist.
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