I want to see if I can do an actual review of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Group Works) in a concise, coherent manner. I spent the last two posts meandering as is my wont and musing about what I did and didn’t like about this game. Then, I will give it a number that is closest to how I feel about the game, and then I’ll call it a a day.
Maybe.
I went into Promise Mascot Agency knowing very little about it. I was willing to give it a shot because I had heard rave reviews about it, and I was in between games. I didn’t realize at the time that they had done Paradise Killer, but once I found that out, it made so much sense. The games have the same off-beat vibe to them and the visual styles are similar.
It took approximately three seconds for me to fall in love with the game. I’m not the type to cotton to games right away (except for From games). I mean, there are games I do feel warmly towards at the start, yes, but never had I felt an immediate connection with the characters based on so little.
I have said it in several prior posts, but it bears repeating. I loved that the characters were all, to put it mildly, hot messes. Each of them had flaws and personality traits that made them nowhere near perfect. I detailed that a bit more in yesterday’s post, so I won’t belabor the point.
I just want to underscore that in most games, the flaws are within a very narrow range of acceptable. Anger issues, impatient, arrogant, and the like. In some games, they are more open about mental illnesses, which I greatly appreciate.
One thing I really liked about Night in the Woods is that the protagonist, Mae, was deeply flawed. She was a black cat, which immediately won my heart, who had dropped out of college due to mental health issues. She went back home to recuperate, but she had friction with her mother already, so there’s uncomfortableness there. And her hometown was in the rust belt, which was going through really troubled times.
Mae was filled with self-loathing, anxiety, depression, and was bipolar. Huh. I just looked it up, and supposedly it was not bipolar, but derealization. I could have swore she said something about bipolar in the game, but it’s been a while. She acted in ways that were self-destructive, especially in terms of her personal relationship. She was rude, selfish, sometimes hostile, and she was bisexual (which you might never find out because it’s a missable interaction, as are many). For a long time, I had a picture of her looking in the mirror saying, “This is hopeless” with her ears down. This was after ten minutes of her trying to boost herself up to going to a party where her ex was going to be. The pep talk consisted mostly of her putting herself down.
People were split on whether they actually liked Mae or not because she’s a really unlikeable person. I empathized with her and wanted hor to be well, but I couldn’t say I liked her. But that was in a large part because she reminded me too much of myself.
This game doesn’t go as deeply into the soul of the characters, but it does show a lot of heart. It gives me enough to care about each mascot and NPC, even if I didn’t like them when I first met them. I think that was the biggest strength of the game, honestly. It was making me care so deeply about each character.
I will admit that by the time the last five or so mascots were discovered, that care was markedly less. That’s because I did not have enough time to get to know them like I did the ones in the beginning. I will say that one mascot I have not mentioned whom I really adored was Kaki-Gory (a play on words for kakigori, which is shaved ice with syrup on top. She is in the bottom right corner of this bleet).
She was a vampire who loved strawberries, not blood. She worked for the strawberry farm owner (another mascot), and she was so vulnerable and sad because while she loved strawberries and being on the strawberry farm, she melted in the sun. She wasn’t a vampire, per se, but she was clearly modeled after one. She was always worried about her strawberry syrup melting, but she tried to be so brave about it. Plus, she lisped, and it was very sweet.
I think one of my favorite things about the game was its sincerity. I have said several times how wholesome it was despite the over-the-top gore, and I meant it. I also mentioned how I found the last act overly sappy, but I didn’t mind it as much as I normally would. Why? Because the game earned it. It wasn’t a sudden happy ending that came out of nowhere, no, it was something the game had built its way up to from the very beginning of the game.
Let me be clear. The game made no bones about in which direction it was going. Did I ever doubt I was going to save the town and Michi in the process? Not a whit. Did I for one second doubt that I would be able to bring my band of mascots to come together and uniting to save the town? For some reason, I did not mind it. I found it comforting, actually. While I’m normally for nuance and layers upon layers, I don’t mind a simple story now and again.
I mentioned in a previous post that the fantastic voice acting in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) elevated the story so that it seemed more emotional and meaningful than it actually was. In the same way, in this game the strong characterization of the characters lifted what was an otherwise pedestrian story.
I would think Kaizen Game Works meant the story to be simple and straightforward if it weren’t for the very obvious red herring they threw into the mix of the story. I go back and forth as to whether they actually thought the red herring was believable or not. In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter because I was not there for the story. Honestly, as long as it was serviceable (which it was), I didn’t care about the story.
Normally, I am about reality in my stories. I want things to hew to reality because otherwise, my brain is bothered by the discrepancies.The only time I don’t care is when I’m watching a musical, and I think it’s because people bursting out into songs on the regular isn’t at all realistic. That makes my brain turn off the ‘that isn’t how it would actually be in the real world’ button so I can actually enjoy the show.
I’ve done it again. I’ve talked about Promise Mascot Agency at length just because I love the characters so much. I went in determined to do an actual review, but I immediately gave up on that. I will try again tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath.