An open-world mystery game with mascots
Promise Mascot Agency is a paid open-world detective game developed by Kaizen Game Works. Set in the town of Kaso-Machi, the game follows Michi, a yakuza exiled there tasked to revive a failing mascot agency while uncovering the mystery behind his exile. He's aided by Pinky, a moody mascot assistant manager.
Promise Mascot Agency blends crime drama, mascot management, and open-world exploration while you explore the town in Michi's truck. You will uncover secrets, forge friendships, collect items, and establish business partnerships along the way. The game is filled with quirky dialogue, cutscenes, and music mainly supplied by Michi’s truck radio.
Michi’s mind-boggling way to discovery
Promise Town’s Agency’s main setting, the town of Kaso-Michi, is populated by unique mascots with distinct personalities and desires. Recruiting these mascots involves fulfilling their often-quirky demands, from fame and fortune to simple requests like rice balls. Once recruited, mascots can be trained and dispatched to various jobs to earn money and gain experience. The controls are easy to understand and don’t have any weird mechanics to familiarize yourself with.
These jobs, however, are not without their challenges. Michi and the mascots may encounter obstacles like narrow doorways, kitchen fires, and even nightmare spirits. To overcome these hurdles, players utilize Hero Cards, representing characters encountered throughout the game. These cards provide unique abilities to assist mascots in completing their tasks successfully. As this is an open-world game at its core, you can do whatever you want, at your own pace.
Keep in mind that the game features mature content like alcohol, drugs, corruption, and mild profanity, making it unsuitable for younger audiences. The game's job management aspect can be overwhelming for players seeking simpler gameplay. It also suffers from pacing issues, with some finding the game's progression slow at times. Nonetheless, the game itself is pretty straightforward and relaxed when it comes to its system requirements, enabling gameplay on older hardware.
The beta release’s many quirks
The beta release sees the game releasing a performance patch to fix known bugs and technical issues for a smoother gameplay experience. The enemy's strength and difficulty are also fixed to be more balanced and fair with players. Also, aside from the already existing additions in the game, the new beta release added more new areas, characters, and storylines to expand the game’s world. Lastly, new sound effects are also added.
Refreshing and lots of fun
Promise Mascot Agency offers a quirky blend of exploration, strategy, and story-driven drama. The unexpected blend of open-world and mystery game, while playing a yakuza lieutenant trying to revive a mascot agency, is bizarre in a good way. Despite some issues in pacing and the choice to be a mature game, this game proves that there are still enough ways to be as original as possible under the open-world genre.