I have wanted to write a serious review of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works), but I have ended up just babbling about my love for the game and characters. As is evidenced in my last post which was over a thousand words of me gushing about the characters in the game. In fact, as I think about the game, I’m tempted to do it again. But I won’t.
I heard about this game in passing, and I thought it sounded interesting. I put it on my Wishlist (on Steam) so I would remember it/think about it later. I never really did because I was engrossed with one game after another for the past couple months. When someone mentioned it in the apppropriate channel in the RKG Discord, I was between games and thought it might be a refreshing palate cleanser.
It was on sale, and it was fairly cheap to begin with ($24.99). I bought it not even knowing there was a demo on Steam. Or maybe I knew, but I did not play it. I bought it on faith and jumped right in. All I knew was that a yakuza member was starting a mascot agency, and Shiuhei Yoshida, the ex-president of Sony, was one of the voices. I thought he was a mascot, but he was a mascot support hero instead. He called himself a mascot in interviews, which was why I thought he was one of the mascots, but he’s not. I really like his character, though, as a cranky old duck who was trying to save and renovate an arcade/old games.
The game started with a prologue that was pretty bare bones and serviceable. A yakuza member named Michi, along with his oath brother, Toki, were supposed to bring money to another yakuza family. As they were doing that, they were ambushed, and the money was taken. As a result, Michi’s yakuza mother faked his death and banished him to a place called Kaso-Machi where he needed to make enough money to pay back what was taken from him. It was something like a hundred billion yen. He was known as The Janitor because he was always cleaning up the family’s messes, and his yakuza mother said that this was one more mess he needed to atke care of.
As I said, the premise was paper-thin, but I was willing to accept it as the vehicle for getting this story going. Also! I found out several hours into playing the game that the voice actor of Michi, Takaya Kuroda, was the same voice actor of Kazuma Kiryu, the protagonist of the Yakuza series. When I found that out, I mentally hit myself on the head for not realizing it. It’s a tribute to Takaya Kuroda, though, that he used a voice different enough that it wasn’t immediate obvious. He has a deep, rich voice that is extremely easy on the ears, and to be fair to me, I haven’t played the Yakuza games, but still. I had heard his voice as Kazuma Kiryu often enough that I could have picked up on it.
From the moment I met Pinky (Ayano Shibuya), I knew this was a very different (and special) kind of game. She was an actual severed pinky (presumably to represent what yakuza members had to do (don’t know if they still do) when they bring shame to their family. Michi himself did it in the prologue), and she was foul-mouthed, rude, and a ball of rage. But, she was also deeply protective of anyone she loved and she had a burning desire to make the town better. She owned the mascot agency at first, but then the mayor shut her down for being so rude and crude.
And for other reasons, but I’ll get to that later.
The mystery of the game, who betrayed the family, is nothing outstanding. Oh, Pinky’s father is part of Michi’s yakuza family, and he’s also a severed pinky. Pinky’s mother is a fairy, and she has passed away. Pinky’s adopted grandmother is the mother of Michi’s yakuza mother, and the Don (Pinky’s father) placed Pinky with Mieko (said adopted grandmother) before disappearing from her life.
To be frank, I did not give a shit about the story because I knew it was just an excuse to get to where we needed to be in the game. In addition, I have read several hundreds if not thousands of mystery novels, so I knew all the tricks of the trade, as it were. I kept going back and forth as to whether the game developers though the story was intricate, elaborate, and exceedingly clever or not. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter because it didn’t impede the enjoyment I had playing the game.
In the beginning, I was dismayed to learn that I would be spending nearly all my time in a beaten-down truck. It handled like shit, and with all my spatial/reflex/directional issues, I was having a shitty time with it. The first upgrade smoothed it out to the point that I was irritated the truck didn’t start with the first upgrade. After that, though, I was fine with the driving–especially since I had the choice of third person driving with me being as far back as possible.
I found out that this was the devs who did Paradise Killer, which had a similar off-beat, weirdos vibe to it. It was first-person, though, and I could not play after an hour or two. I tried, but it made me so nauseous. That’s why I was very happy to see that this game could be played in third-person as well as first.
I want to start with the things that I did not like about the game because I want to end on an upbeat note. The main thing that I did not like was that I had to send money back to my yakuza mother at regular intervals or she would be killed. The amount of time I was left alone after i sent the money was dependent upon how much money I sent at a time. In the beginning of the game when I was scrambling to make money, I could only send fifty thousand yen at a time, which only earned me ten minutes or so.
The in-game ramifications if I did not find an ATM and send the money was that the game would be over, and I would be sent back to the last save. The game autosaved, but I didn’t know how often. The game has a map, but my spatial issues makes it really hard for me to follow many in-game maps. Especially when I am desperately trying to find an ATM in a slightly-panicked fog. The game doesn’t tell you how long you have, but the screen will start pulsing red as it gets closer to the end. Also, my yakuza mother has two adopted daughters who are stone-cold assasins, and when it gets down to crunch time, they will call me and scold me for not sending money.
The first time I missed sending money, it was because I could not get to an ATM for the life of me. The game sent me back a bit, and I was so annoyed. I hate timed events in games, and this really turned me off in the first several hours. I took to micro-saving every minute or so, which really sucked the joy out of the game. It became trivial many hours into the game when I was rolling in money, but it really made me question why it was in the game in the first place. It did not add anything to the game, and it really felt as if the devs wanted to amp up the stakes for no discernible reason.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back tomorrow.