I’m at the end game of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works), and as is true for most games, I play, I’m rushing to get to the end of it. Oh, by the way, this is the post from yesterday. I started Act 3…yesterday? The day before? Something like that, but then I promptly put it on the back burner and tootled around cleaning up all the side quests.
Speaking of which, I am even more a believer in trimming the fat. My god. The amount of side quests/mini-games that are available is mind-boggling. I know it’s that way in the Yakuza series, too, and I found out a fun fact. It’s in the trailer I included in the post yesterday, and I’ll whack it in this post as well.
The main character, Michi, is voiced by Takaya Kuroda, who is the voice of Kazuma Kiryu in the Yakuza series. It’s a testament to Takaya Kuroda that I did not sus that out. Granted, I don’t play the Yakuza games, but I have heard his voice often enough that I could have put it together. Michi and Kazuma are similar men. They’re yakuza, obviously. Both are honorable men who took a dive for their families. They are bottled up and anxious to do the right thing. They are repressed, diffident and distant, and they are goddamn hot.
I don’t know Kiryu very well, but Michi has wormed his way into my heart. He’s compassionate in that he cares about the people around him, and he wants to do the right thing. In addition, he’s encouraging to his friends and truly wants to help them realize their dreams.
The characters are the best thing about the game. Each mascot has a distinct personality and is memorable. The art work is impeccable in the game, and I love the use of color. Music is appropriate and really adds to the environment. Most of the time, the game looks like an anime/manga in style, but then once in a while, they throw out the chibi version of the characters–who are adorable.
I have my favorites, of course. Of the mascots, I mean. To-Fu is the first mascot I recruited, and he holds a soft (heh) spot in my heart. I just recruited the 20th and last mascot, and he’s adorably charming, too. Even the ones who are creepy, though, are so in a lovably quirky way. I can’t think of a single one that I don’t at least mildly like, and I truly adore most of them.
That said, I don’t love the busy work of sending them out on jobs. I know! That’s ironic given the name of the game, but I have twenty mascots that I have to send out on jobs. I have roughly 80 available jobs now, which is way too many. In the beginning, I would carefully match the mascots to the jobs when I had three mascots and maybe ten jobs available. Now, I just go down to the ones that pay the best (I have them listed from least lucrative to most) and rapidly assign jobs as quickly as possible.
And, because I still have to participate in the grand prix mascot regionals even though I’m number one, that means I have to keep one mascot held back so they are ready to go when need be. I think at some point, this should just be automated. I know the name is Promise Mascot Agency, but it is honestly one of my least-favorite parts of the game.
Number one would be flying. For someone with my limitations, it’s horseshit. I can make it work, barely, but it drains me ever time. There is one item I just cannot get no matter how hard I try, and one time I had the perfect fly, but I could not manage the landing. I don’t *need* the item (it’s an upgrade for a mascot support hero card, probably the bird. No, I don’t know this, but that’s what it’s always been).
I also don’t love the boating, but it’s tedious, rather than horrible to control. The flying is so bad, I don’t use it to get across the map. I will praise once again the respawn button for when I end up wedged in a tight spot somewhere.
Mini-game-wise, I would get rid of the crane game completely. I have done it three or four times, and it has pissed me off each time. I don’t do it any longer because it’s so fucking irritating. My lack of depth-perception doesn’t help, to be sure, but they made it deliberately terrible.
I didn’t mind doing the cleaning up. It irks me that I have one or two spots I’ve missed (of course they tell you the percentage you’ve done), but I’m trying to ignore that. I love talking to all the NPCs and wish there were more of them. I mean, more dialogue, not necessarily more NPCs. There was a lot of dialogue, but I could not get enough. I loved hearing the backstories of everyone and figuring out what made them tick.
The characters are the driving force in this game. The story, on the other hand, is weak. From the start, I knew who the bad guy was, and I was right. I’m in the denouement, and I just wish it were better. I mean, there really was only two people the bad guy could be (besides the obvious one who truly was a one-dimensional bad guy) unless the game had the guts to totally pull a rabbit out of their hat (they didn’t), but it’s disconcerting how quickly I figured out who the true bad guy was.
I keep going back and forth between ‘of course the devs made it obvious since that’s not the point of the game’ and ‘I think they think the plot is very byzantine, intricate, and elaborate’. It’s very convoluted and layers upon layers, so that would lead me to believe it’s the latter. On the other hand, it was so immediately obvious who the traitor was, I could not get past it.
I can’t help but compare it to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). Not because they are anything alike, but because they both came out of nowhere and took me by surprise (and, in the case of the former, the whole gaming world). The former has sold 3.3 million copies whereas the latter has not revealed their numbers. I doubt it’s anywhere close to that, though, mostly because mostly if it were, I’m sure they would be eager to talk about it.
It’s funny because my feelings about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are very mixed and at odds with the majority opinion. I don’t think it’s a masterpiece, although I do think it’s a very good game. As for the story which everybody raves about, I think it’s a hot mess. I believe I gave the story a 3 if I remember correctly.
I have more to say, but I need to get to bed. I’ll do another post comparing the two tomorrow.