I’ve been maundering on and on about the games I enjoyed playing this year for the better part of eight prior posts. I’ve played more games this year than in previous years (this is an estimation and me going by vibes), and I’ve enjoyed half of most of them. Here is the post from yesterday, in which I talk a whole lot about my evergreen favorite game, Elden Ring (FromSoft).
I’ve talked about it in previous posts that this was the year of me being deeply divided about games that I’ve played. That includes this, which is my last award. Let’s see what I want to call it. Hm.
*thinks for several seconds*
My favorite game this year that really charmed me with its whimsy and off-beat kookiness, not to mention the quirky NPCs
Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works Limited)
From the moment I saw the announcement trailer for this game, I was really intrigued. I liked the style of it and the premise, and I was drawn in by the quirkiness. I saw an interview with Shuhei Yoshida, the former president of Sony in which he talked about his role in the game. SWERY (Swery 65), a well-known Japanese game developer was in it as well.
Kaizen Game Works first game was Paradise Killer–a slick, retro-feeling game that gave off neo-noir vibes. Also very quirky and offbeat. I tried to play it, but I got really bad nausea because it was first-person. I could only play in fifteen minute bursts, and I gave up after a few hours.
I did not try the demo for Promise Mascot Agency when it came out because I knew I was going to play the game, and I don’t usually play the demo when I’m going to actually play the game. Then, I forgot the game existed until the pre-release fanfare was blaring. Then, I got excited for it, but still held off. I ended up buying it a few weeks after release, I think, and I was immediately struck by how much I loved the characters.
One thing I did not realize as I played the game was that Michi, the main character, was voiced by the actor who plays Kiryu in the Yakuza series, Takaya Kuroda. Granted, I have not played anything more than an hour of one of the Yakuza games, but still. I had heard his voice often enough that I should have recognized it, but I didn’t. I put it down to how good his acting was in this game.
I loved his character form the start. He has honor, is hardworking, cares about others, and is jsut an upright man. I liked spending time with him, tooling around Kaso-Machi in his broken-down truck. I did not like driving said truck, by the way, but it became tolerable once I could upgrade it.
Then there was Pinky, a literal tip of a pinky, but human sized, with a foul mouth and a passion to save her town (Kaso-Machi). I liked that I could find different designs for her nail around town, and that I could change them to fit my mood. At first, I was slightly put off by her exceedingly foul mouth and murderous attitude. But, as I spend more time with her in my truck, I grew to love her for her generous spirit. And murderous heart, if I were to be completely honest. I loved her so much, I got a plushy of her, which makes me smile.
To continue the theme of the games I love being deeply flawed, this game falls squarely within that dichotomy. I adore the characters and spending time with them. In reading my old posts, I noted that this game had characters who were true oddballs and freaks, and not glammed up versions that we so often see in pop culture.
I made the comparison with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) because it really stuck in my brain. The CO:E33 group is the Hollywood version of the rag-tag bunch of heroes trying to save the world. They are good-looking, virile, and outsiders only because of circumstances. There is no doubt from the start that they’re going to save the world, no matter what obstacles are thrown in their path. And they will do it without letting a single hair get out of place.
The Promise Mascot Agency gang, on the other hand, are the real thing. They are the dregs of humanity and on the very fringes of society. They are not prettified versions of freaks and geeks–they actually are freaks and geeks. Some of them have ugly sides to their personalities, and those flaws are not glossed over.
This goes for the support heroes as well as the mascots. The former are good-looking for the most part, but they are each a hot mess in their own way. The stories in the game are all heartrending, and I ate up every morsel.
Funnily, I did not get along with several of the actual gameplay mechanics in the game. I hated the driving until I got upgrades that made it tolerable. I loathed the flying, and I did not care for the gliding. In short, anything to do with traversal really ground my gears. The crane minigame was atrocious, and deliberately so. The artificial timer to send money every ten minutes or so actively impedeed my enjoyment of the game and reduced me to microsavinng every five minutes or so, and ironically, the mascot jobs part of the game was something I pushed through to get to the good bits rather than something I enjoyed in and of itself.
The best part of the game was the characters, bar none. I wanted to spend all my time with them, and I was always happy to recruit another mascot. Each one left an impression on me, and To-Fu, the first mascot I recruited, remained my favorite throughout the game. As I said, each one felt real in a way that characters in other games don’t. Not because they’re hyperrealistic, but oddly, because of the opposite. They were cartoons, but each one had a very distinct personality. Each was memorable in their own right, and I remembered them far past the end of the game.
I liked the backstories and how some of the characters related to others. The side quests were meh at best, but I willingly did them to help the NPCs I had come to love.
I think that’s a huge part of my love for the game–how distinct each character was. It really added charm and papered over some of the more tedious gameplay mechanics. I was willing to overlook some of the flaws just so I could spend more time with the characters in this game.
I would love to see more of them, but I don’t see how a sequel could be made from the ending of this game. Oh, and I did briefly dip back into the game for the update, but it was 90% flying time trials, so I dipped back out again.
I put in maybe twenty-five hours into the game and 100% it. That was the perfect amount of time to play the game, though I would not mind catching up with them. The game was not deep and the story beats were very obvious, but I will never forget my time in Kaso-Machi.