Shoddy driver handling, Like A Dragon without the combat, and a yakuza working alongside a severed finger that represents clumsy and often incompetent cuddly characters make Promise Mascot Agency sound daft. It is, and it’s also brilliant.
When a deal goes South, Michi fakes his death, under instructions from his boss, and is assigned to a deadbeat town named Kaso-Machi. Here, he works alongside Pinky* – a severed finger who runs a dilapidated love hotel. The two run a mascot agency, funnelling back the earnings to keep the family afloat and the knives away from the throat of its matriarch.
Unfortunately for Michi, he doesn’t have a roster of mascots at his disposal, so he must befriend and enlist them, then assign them around town to earn the pennies. Adding to his woes, the town is cursed, and any yakuza will suffer a horrible death. A corrupt mayor also runs Kaso-machi, and as Michi is involved in organised crime, Pinky* has to be the legal owner of everything. On the upside, they make a decent partnership.
Promise Mascot Agency Review
Drawing a comparison to the Yakuza games without combat is as loose a description of what Promise Mascot Agency is. It’s a management game mixed with exploration and visual novel elements, though the focus is the exploration as you’ll be exploring the town in Michi’s dinky lil’ farmer truck and not on foot.
Anyone who has been to rural Japan will know these: less than 1000cc, dreadful handling, and a joke. My father-in-law has one for tinkering about on the land but for a hard-as-nails fully-tatted yakuza bad boy hooning about in Kyushu? Not the image you’d expect. Additionally, his nickname is ‘The Janitor’, and unlike Mr Wolf, he cleans in the conventional ways with his trusty mop.
Driving around town in a piss-poor truck is initially frustrating. Handling is sluggish, and climbing hills is the equivalent of thrush. There’s even a dedicated jump button and respawn feature, as seen in Gas Station Simulator, which, at first, is a good idea as for the first 15 minutes, I was thinking this was going to be another Paradise Killer – a game with high acclaim that I could not enjoy, also by Kaizen Game Works. TLDR: I ended up loving it.
Van Life
What accelerated the fun was the exploration element and lack of challenge. The latter sounds like it could be off-putting, but what that means is that there were no looming death or skill walls that required a significant amount of time just to beat an early boss. There are no bosses, and theoretically, there is no combat. Instead, you explore Kaso-machi and unlock hero cards and upgrades for the truck.
These truck upgrades include the ability to drive on water, increase power to hill climb better, a glider(!) and a cannon that fires Pinky*, unlocking hard-to-reach items and flying items such as shikigami. After a couple of hours of exploring and completing side quests first, Promise Mascot Agency became a complete joy.
As for the management part, Michi befriends folklore characters and yokai to send on jobs. These are often automated, bringing home the bread to forward to the matriarch to keep her alive. However, there will be times when the mascot needs help with dealing with stalkers, chasing off unfriendly dogs, or getting stuck in doorways. This is where the ‘combat’ kicks in.
Without Restraints
For each mascot skit, you can play several heroes using collectable cards. Typically, you have two action points to play some cards to ‘defeat’ the incident, and if completed, you earn a bonus. If you fail, it’s simply less money but no game-overs. When you complete more sidequests and locate missing items for NPCs, their respective hero cards level up, thus beating some higher-level scenarios.
Perhaps the early exploration and completion of side quests was a deciding factor, but Promise Mascot Agency isn’t tricky in the slightest – even when being told to send money to the boss was never limiting as you’ll constantly be earning money as long as you send the mascots out, complete fetch quests, and invest in some of the business opportunities like stocking up classic crane catching games, or again with the Yakuza reference: UFO catcher arcade games.
This casual approach allowed me to enjoy the exploration thoroughly. The more I explored, the more I got out of it and the quirky interactions with the oddball characters. The development team knows their source, as this feels wholly like a Japanese-made game and much more ‘native’ than something like the cliché-ridden JDM: Japanese Drift Master. Shot entirely with Japanese voice talent and featuring some excellent tunes throughout, Promise Mascot Agency is a genuinely immersive experience for all Japanophiles.
Promise Mascot Agency Review Summary
Although you can spot the open-world, visual novel, and management mechanics throughout, there isn’t anything else like Promise Mascot Agency. It’s unique, quirky, oddly hypnotic and a casual experience with more depth than its counterparts. This was intended to be a game for which I would receive a code, but I purchased it with my own money, and I encourage you to do the same.
