I’ve played more of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works), and I need to talk about it. I love so much about it–but there are a few things that really drag it down. In my last post, I touched on two of the things that really annoy me about the game, and I want to go even more in depth about them.
The first is the artificial timer. I have given the million yen, but the timer is still there. At least it’s not a red banner at the top left of my screen, screaming at me all the time. Once I hit the mill, it disappeared. But it shows up again if I don’t send money for awhile.
I. Hate. This. Mechanic. Especially in the beginning when I was barely scraping by with fifty thousand yen in my pocket. In tandem with not clearly explaining the contract situation (perks I offer when recruiting the mascots are repeatable. Meaning, the bonus perk of fifty-thousand yen repeats every seven jobs. Yes, it’s written in the contract, but the game throws so much at you in the beginning, it went right over my head).
Having to pay one of three mascots an extra fifty thou after seven jobs was painful. As I mentioned in the last post, having only two mascots doing 10 thou jobs was not making me much money.
Speaking of which, the tutorial has two problems: they throw way too many things at you at one time, and they don’t explain them very well if at all. There’s a ton of reading to do as well. I like reading, but my eyes started glazing over when I had yet another thing to read. Also, the game introduces a mechanic in which I can ask Pinky, my assistant (and a mascot representation of a tip of a pinky) questions. I didn’t fully realize that I *should* ask Pinky questions now and again because they were tips as to where I could find more mascots, jobs, and other tidbits like that. I hadn’t done it since the beginning of the game, so I had a shitton of new places, jobs, and mascots to get. Why the hell didn’t the game tell me I SHOULD talk to Pinky? Not just ‘oh, if you need help, talk to Pinky’?
The game really gets in its own way too often. I’m getting that open world fatigue I get when I mainline an open world game. When all the side quests start blending together because they’re all the same. In this case, they’re fetch quests. Amusingly-described fetch quests, but fetch quests, nonetheless. Old arcade games for one support here; the child cats of a cat of another support here; various DVDS (CDs? No, I think it’s DVDs) for another. They are scattered around the map, and finding them improves the stats of the support here who requested them.
I was into it for the first three or so hours. Now, though, I’m tired of it–if I’m to be honest. I have spent so much time trying to scrape together enough money to keep my yakuza mother alive, I have not even explored the whole map yet. I just went somewhere I’d never been to talk to my oath brother from my past life. He wanted to talk about another character who he, my oath brother, thought betrayed us in the prologue of the story. My oath brother pushed it hard, which made me immediately think it was he, my oath brother, who betrayed us.
That’s just how my brain works. The man he’s accusinig is the right-hand man of the family, I think called The Don? I tried to look it up, but I had to be careful because I did not want spoilers–so I’m not sure. He is also Pinky’s father and abandoned her when she was a child. Michi’s oath brother is insisting The Don is the only one who could have betrayed them, but he, the oath brother, could have as well.
I still have to drive at a crawl because if I do the improoved boost, I careen off the side of the road. And then I get stuck. Fortunately, I can respawn in that situation, but it’s still frustrating as fuck. It still makes me slightly nauseous, but I manage to tamp it down. I still dislike the driving, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.
I think some of my girpes about the game are things I don’t like about open world games in general. The repetitive tasks and the urge to do everything to completion. In addition, so many things stuffed into every corner. I just discovered how I can fish, which gives me random items. Some of which are requested by yet another NPC. Instead of being elated about it, I sighed heavily as I dutifully fished several times.
I also ran into another NPC who explained the cleansing sin thing I mentioned in a previous post–the white paper dolls moving on the side of the road that you have to run through to cleanse the sin. I had to look it up beacuse I had no idea what it was. Again, I probably was supposed to have met the priest before I did one of them, but they’re all over the place. The possibility I would find one before I discovered the priest was quite high.
When I talk about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive), I always say how the sum is more than the parts. I am not a big fan of most of the individual aspects of the game, but somehow, it adds up to something better than it has any right to be.
With this game, I like most of the individual parts except for a very big glaring few, and I think overall the game is very good, but there is just something missing. I can’t even pinpoint what it is, but something in my heart sighs as I am playing the game. I love the characters–that is the strength of the game. The tone of the game is impeccable as well. The story is…fine, but nothing exceptional. And yet, there’s something missing.
I am in Act III, which surprised me. I’m about ten hours in, and yet, there is still so much to do. The person in the RKG Discord who loves the game is near the end and has played fifteen hours. And has around fifteen mascots. I have ten or so, and don’t feel like I’m anywhere near the end. But I could be storywise; I don’t know.
The game is wearing on me, I’ll admit. It’s because of the things I mentioned above. Don’t like the driving and there’s a lot of it. Thankfully, it’s not as bad as it was in the beginning. It’s just overwhelming how much new stuff I keep getting. I like to cross items off my list, and I do not like it when i have to continually add new items to the same list. And, no, I don’t *have* to do the side quests, obviously, but my brain makes it uncomfortable for me to ignore anything I could be doing.
I don’t know if the story is considered a point of pride or just a perfunctory way to get Michi into this town. I’m assuming the former because there’s a mystery involved, well, two, actually. I’m not sure how I feel about that because it seems a bit of a weird juxtaposition. I’ll have to wait and see what the denoument is before mking up my mind, I guess.
I feel like there is just too much to do. I just started with the crane game, which, by the way is horrible. Utter trash. You have to find representations of the mascots around the world. Once you do, you can put them in the crane games that are in different establishments. In order to do that, you have to play the crane game to pick up the bundles so you can ship them out. You can probably guess how well I do at something that relies on having good spatial recognition. Oh, and no explanation of how the game works, either. When I looked it up, I found a forum question of if the devs know how shitty it is (because at some point, you can just skip it? I hope?), why did they include it?
I’m done for now. I’ll probably do one more post tomorrow.