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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–My (actual) Official Review, part six

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I am back for the most definitely final installment of My Official Review of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works). My Pinky plushy arrived today and is sitting on my desk. She is cute as hell, and very adorable in her summer gear. She is my mascot, and speaks to my twisted, dark heart. Here is my post from yesterday in which I’m gushing about the characters and how much I adore them.

I think one thing I need to make absolutely clear: I am a freak and a weirdo. I am nowhere near ‘normal’, nor can I hope to ever be. I spent my childhood and teens hating myself because I was convinced there was something wrong with me. I was an alien in an alien world, and I had no clue what to do.

In my twenties and thirties, I realized that I was very much on the fringes. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I wasn’t completely comfortable with it, either. At times, I did wish I were a normal person, but that seemed to be so far away from me. I used to say to K that it was hard to be a weirdo and that I wished I was normal. She listened to me gripe about it many times until one time I said something about getting married and having children. I was saying how much easier my life would be if I could just be fucking normal for once, got married, and had children. She said in a stern voice, “Do you want to get married and have children?” I blurted out, “Fuck no!” without even thinking about it.

She mentioned that if I didn’t want to get married and have children, it was pointless to yearn for them. And, in fact, it was counterproductive to be wistful about it when it wasn’t something I wanted in the first place. She was right, of course, but it was still hard to be such a weirdo.

I have spent fifty years studying society and trying to fit in–or at least not stick out like a sore thumb (which, by the way, is fucking hard for me. Not just because my brain is weird, but because I’m Asian, have big tits, and am just visually memorable. Not so much now that I’m old, but definitely when I was younger).

There are very few times when I immerse myself in a piece of pop culture/media that I feel like I am truly seen. It’s hard enough being an AFAB, Asian American, queer person in the nineties/aughts, but each individual piece has gotten more visible over the years*. However, now that I have thrown in being agender and doing weapon forms in Taiji, it’s nearly impossible to find anyone like me. Oh, and let’s mention neurodivesity as well. I am pretty sure I’m on the spectrum and maybe have ADHD.

Throw all of that into a pot, stir it, and let it simmer overnight. You get one hot mess called me, and I’m not palatable to many people. Or rather, my smoothed-out-edges version of me is tolerable, but nobody wants to see the full me. Or even the half me. Quarter me? Probably not.


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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works–My (actual) Official Review, part five

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This is the fifth and last post I’m going to write for my official review of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works). I still think about it, even though I have not played it for several days. All the thing s that irritated me about it have melted away, and all I have are warm feelings about my time with the game.

I have gone on and on about the characters in the last several posts, so I won’t do that again. But I will point out that this is similar to why I started writing my own mystery novels. This was decades ago when there mystery novels were niche, and it was a big deal to have female authors, let alone authors of color. There were two Asian female detective leads that I knew of. One was a Japanese American woman living in Tokyo, written by an Indian American woman–which, fun fact. The author’s stepmother is a Taiji classmate of mine. The second was a Chinese American woman (I think) with a really cringy, stereotyped Tiger Mom. I read the first book, cringing the whole time.

Nowadays, there are so many more, but still–no one anywhere near me. I am a weirdo/different in so many ways, I just accept that I’m different than the norm in every way that matters. Because I did not see anyone even close to what I am in the mystery novels I was reading, so I started writing my own.

That’s how I feel about this game. In general, games do not have characters that are anything like me. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall), a game I’ve talked about a lot, is one. Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games) is another. Both of them had oddball characters who were on the fringe of society. These characters were not put into the game to be made fun of or laughed at. They weren’t there to be pitied, either. They were just there, living their authentic lives.

One of my issues with most media is that I cannot relate to the characters. This is visual media, by the way–so movies and TV shows. Books are different. One of the issues with American movies and TV shows is that everyone is just too damn good-looking. And white. So very white. (I haven’t watched TV or movies on the regular in over a decade, probably closer to two). When I did watch movies, I preferred European (mostly British) movies because the people in them looked like actual people.

It’s the same with video games. Most Triple A games are very narrow when it comes to their themes, their looks, and their story-telling. Even if they’re telling a story that resonates with most people, those stories are still pedestrian. Look, I know there are six themes in the world. And I know that it’s what you do with them that matters. But for whatever reasons, the stories that really hit hard with other people just leave me cold.


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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–My (actual) Official Review, part four

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This is the fourth and final post of my official review of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works). I was obsessed with it as I played it, but as is my wont, once I’m done, I am DONE. Except for FromSoft games; I am never done with them. Here is my post from yesterday.

I may go back and play it again, though, because I was so charmed with the characters. I’m not sure, though, that I could put up with the several little (and a few big) things that annoy me for another playthrough.

I have played several games in the last few months, which is not like me. Normally, I obsess with one big game at a time while I have a FromSoft game going at the same time. I always have a From game on the go. Currently, it’s Elden Ring, but I just played the first half of Dark Souls so I could get Big Hat Logan’s very big hat.

Even though that is my thing (I adore the Sage’s Big Hat in Dark Souls III), I rarely go for it in the OG Dark Souls because his questline, like most of them in the first game, is very elaborate, labor-intensive, and costs so many souls to do.

Here’s the thing, though. One thing I absolutely love about the From games is that they are unabashedly what they are. What I mean is that Miyazaki has a very distinct vision, and he does not waver from it. For example, he has been asked about the overwhelming presence of poison swamps, and he said he could not help himself. He just had to put one in every game.

I don’t like every From game, but I respect each of them. They may not be for me, and that’s ok.* When they released Demon’s Souls, it was not a hit around the world. People didn’t get it and thought it was too difficult, too weird, and to obtuse. I’m not sure when that changed, but by the time I was hep to it, it was Dark Souls, and it was a cult hit.

From have released games very consistently and often since then, and all of them have their own style. Yes, they have Miyazaki’s stamp all over them, but to varying degrees. I know a From game in an instance because of that personal flair.

With the half-dozen or so games I’ve played in the last few months, one thing I’ve appreciated about each one is how true to the developer’s vision it is. I may not agree with that vision, but that’s not the point. Each of these games knew what they wanted to do, and they went and did it.


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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–My (actual) Official Review, part three

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In my last post about Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works), I wvas talking about the negatives of the game (to me). I have a few more before I get to waht I absolutely loved about the game.

The other biggest issue I had with the game was the story. It was serviceable as a way to get Michi to Kaso-Machi if I didn’t think about it too hard. It was only when the game tried to flesh out the backstory that I mentally shook my head. They tried to set it up so you would think one person was responsible for the betrayal, but it was so obvious that the person relaying the information was the betrayer themselves, that I started questioning what the devs were trying to do.

Did they think they had written an intricate and devious mystery novel plot that was the rival of an Agatha Christie story? Or were they knowingly making it obvious that the person divulging the invformation was the rat? From the amount of time they devoted to the backstory and how complicated they made it, I lean towards it being the former. But, beacuse of how glaringly obvious it was what really happened, I had it in the back of my mind that they were just fucking around with the story.

In the end, though, I decided it didn’t really matter because the story wasn’t why I was playing the game. I let it go with difficulty and accepted that the story was what it was.

Moving forward to what I loved about the game.

Let’s start with the graphics and the music. Both were excellent and very distinctive. I don’t know how to describe the animation style other than it was very pleasing to my eyes. I guess you could say it’s reminiscent of anime, but I don’t know enough about artist styles to get more specific than that. The music is very ambient and really fits with the game. I have included a video below that is sixty minutes of vibes (the OST) from the game.

Next up are the characters. I have waxed poetic about how much I love the characters in this game, but I want to reiterate it once again because I have not seen another game with such a weird and oddball cast of characters. I mentioned one in a previous post, Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall), which had a protagonist I really related to. And her bunch of friends, who were also weirdos and outsiders, but there was a difference.

In that game, there was dark humor, yes, but the tone in general was gritty and realistic. There were some really big issues being dealt with, and the game did not sugarcoat it. They talked frankly about mental health issues, and they made Mae (the main character) very complex and nuanced. She wasn’t very likeable, but I loved her and only wanted the best for her. My heart broke for her as well because life was so hard fro her.

In Promise Mascot Agency (PMA), the tone was much lighter. Yes, there was talk about grim subjects, but it never got too heavy. I still felt bad for the mascots because most of them had self-esteem issues form being shunned/castigated/bullied most of their lives. I appreciated that they weren’t angels who were all sweet and light.

There were a few mascots I did not like when I met them, but I grew to at least understand why they were the way there were. In general, though, I adored the mascots, and they were why I loved my time spent in the game.

I also liked all the NPCs. They, too, had personalities that weren’t all sugar and spice, and everything nice. They were a bit one-note, but that was ok by me. There was a moment when I thought there might be a romantic element to the game (in that maybe I could romance some of the people in the town), but I was glad when it turned out to not be true.

I liked tooling around the town and just cleaning it up. Once I upgraded my truck so that it drove smoothly, I did not mind that I spent 95% of my time in it. I did not set out to 100% the game, but I could not pass by trash on the road or the signs of the mayor without running over them or launching Pinky at them. No one was making me do that, but it’s in my nature (obsessive/compulsive) to the point that I could not just drive by the detritus without cleaning it up.

Then, at a certain point, probably around 75% done, I knew I had to 100% it. And I was fine with it. I accepted it as my fate because, again, I know how I am.

I liked the rebuilding of the town and bringing the community together. I liked having a common enemy, and I liked that the villain was so cut-and-dry. I mean, the villain in the town. The betrayer of the family, on the other hand, I irrationally hated from the beginning. Well, not in the prologue, but soon thereafter. I just did not like that person, even though they did not appear in town until halfway into the game. From the moment I talked to them, I knew they were a wrong’un. And I hated them with every fiber of my being.

I liked the stories in the game. Each NPC had a story to tell, and I was interested in every one. I enjoyed doing their fetch quests for them, except one of them because there was no way to know where those items were. In all the other fetch quests, the game would tell you where to find them, but not that specific one. I ended up looking it up because I could not be bothered to comb every inch of the map yet again for three items (I had already found two of them).

I did love the jobs that became available for the mascots and filling them for the first five hours or so. I just wanted there to be more variety in what you did with the jobs or make it automatic, but what was left was kind of a weird place in the middle.

I know this is radical, but maybe just cut out the combat part of it. The game did not need it. On the other hand, though, I loved the mascot support heroes, and I would not want them to be cut out of the game.

That’s all for today. I will wrap it up tomorrow.

 

 

 

Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–My (actual) Official Review, part two

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I’m back with part two of My (actual) Official Review of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works). Yesterday, I started with what I did not like about the game, and did not get very far because I just want to talk about the game in general. I did not get past my intense dislike for the mechanic of sending money back to the yakuza family who was threatening my yakuza mother. I hated it so much, I actually was thinking about quitting the game. I know it’s a me-thing because of my various issues with gauging spatial distances, my terrible reflexes, and my inability to accurately gauge altitude of the map, but I really don’t understand why it was in the game.

In fact, for the first several hours of me playing the game, I was mentally knocking a point off the score I was going to give the game because of it. It was only around the tenth or so hour that I didn’t feel constrained by it. Or rather, that it wasn’t weighing heavily on my mind. I still felt constrained by it, but it wasn’t as oppressive as it was in the beginning. When I started having thirty or forty million yen on me on the regular, sending a million or so was no big deal. But, and I cannot emphasize this enough, having that artificial time constraint added nothing to the game. In fact, I still think the game would have been better without it.

The other major things that bothered/irritated/annoyed me about the game mostly had to do with the truck. Once it was upgraded and I was able to use the Pinky launcher (firing her out of a canon to break things in the environment and to clean up the trash–it was loads of fun), I did not mind the regular driving at all.

What I did mind was the boating (somewhat) and the flying (to the depth of my soul). There were items to pick up/shrines to clean up on islands that were very far away from the main city. It took five to ten minutes to get there, which would not be so bad except for the ever-present/every-annoying sending money to the yakuza family bullshit. I had to make sure I sent enough before boating out to the island I was trying to reach.

I will say the one saving grace on the island jaunts was that if I used the respawn button, it sent me back to the main city. I will praise the respawn button to high heavens because it got me out of a jam more than once. Anyway, that meant that I did not have to boat/fly back to the mainland after reaching an island. I will say that one time, I reached an island, cleaned the shrine, and then had to hurry back to the mainland to send money. I realized by looking at the map that I had mised one item to pick up, so I had to go back again. That did not make me happy.

The acual mascot agency activities could have been fleshed out better as well. Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed the different mascot events and how off-beat they were. At any given job, there was a chance that something would go wrong. If it did, then Michi would be called in to send in the mascot support heroes to help out. The stats for the mascot support heroes could have been explained better as by the end of the game, I still did not understand what the symbols meant. I could not find any explanations online, either. I did realize at some point that some cards gave me an extra action point and some did not, but it took me watching a few battles to realize which icon/symbol denoted that would occur.

I ended up just playing the heroes with the highest number in the stat that was highlighted for the fight. Sometimes, I won handily. Sometimes, I won by a nose. Sometimes, I lost handily, and sometimes, I lost by a tiny margin–and I never figured it out.


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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–My (actual) Official Review

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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.


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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–My Official Review, part three

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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.


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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–My Official Review, part two

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I ended the last post with a side note that I didn’t finish because I was too tired. I reached the end of my ‘can do’ and abruptly stopped doing.

I was talking about how I’m such a weirdo and how I have learned to mask it so effectively, I have a hard time not masking. It’s one reason I prefer spending my time alone–because that’s the only time I can truly relax.

I have compared Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works) and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) because they are both indie games that I have played in the past few months. That’s it. They are not similar in many ways, but one way they are is that they are both stories about a rag-tag bunch of people who band together to work for a common good.

Except in the case of CO:E33, it’s the Hollywood version of the Brat Pack, much like The Breakfast Club. Each of them supposedly outsiders, but still impossibly good-looking and more put together than most average people.

When I was playing CO:E33, I could not get over how ridiculously good-looking everyone was. And how impossibly hot. Not to mention super-capable, fit, and better at everything than anyone else. Yes, they were in a tenuous situation, but it never felt real to me. There was no danger, really, and I never doubted that they would triumph in the end. I cared about them and wanted them to succeed, but it was with the thought in the back of my mind that they were just a bit too too (perfect) in order to be real.

They had flaws, yes, but they weren’t that deep. Not that they had to be, but…how do I put this in a way that isn’t mean because I don’t want to be mean? The tragedies were pretty generic. I look at the stories of each of the characters, and they were not that standout in and of themselves. It reall ywas the outstanding voice acting work that brought the characters to life. I have said this several times, the voice actors made the characters much more fleshed out and layered than they were as written.

The characters in PMA, on the other hand, were more on the cartoony side, yes, but they were real with their ugliness. The devs did not shy away from making some of the mascots visually unappealing, and their personalities were hard to take at first. They were true weirdos and freaks, and not in a Hollywood way. For instance, Trororo (whose name, I’m sure is an homage to Totoro and if not, it should be), a cute cat covered in yam, was interested in cooking and adult entertainment. He would wax poetic about the latter and bemoan how people were so prejudiced against it.


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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–My Official Review

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After completing Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works) and 100%ing it, I have had a few days to think more about it. It’s been weird not to play it because I was so obsessed with it while I was playing it. I loved the world and just hanging out with the characters.  Me and Pinky tooling around town became my favorite part of the game. I loved just shooting shit with her as we did the chores we had to do.

This is a game that burrowed deeply into my heart and made a home there. I have compared it more than once to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive), not because they are at all alike, but because they are both indie games that took me by surprise. One of them (CO:E33) had considerably more hype than the other (PMA), but I always had reservations about the former. From the first trailer, I had a feeling that it would not be for me, and I was right. Yet, I could not quit it. I hated playing it by the time I finished it, but I cannot deny that it had something that kept me hooked.

As for this game, there was no fanfare for it. The only reason I kew about it was because Shuhei Yoshida, the ex-president of Sony was cast as one of the mascot support heroes, and he was interviewed by Greg Miller of Kinda Funny Games (which I watch on the daily). I thought he was going to be one of the mascots, but no. He was a mascot support hero. At any rate, I was intrigued, but only mildly so.

Then, someone in the RKG Discord was raving about it, and I decided to give it a try. I didn’t know there was a demo, but I don’t think I would have needed to play more than two minutes before I was ready to jump in, anyway. I was immediately smittened by the premise and the characters.

It’s funny because even though this game is clearly an homage to the Yakuza (Ryu Ga Gotoku) series, I liked it so much better than the hour I played of whichever Yakuza game I tried to play–I have blocked it out because it was so unpleasant to play. I also tried Like a Dragon, which was better, but still so not my jam.

There is a Yakuza channel in the RKG Discord. I dip into it now and again just to see what people think of the games. Some people are absolutely rabid about the games, and I just don’t get it. I’m happy for them to like something that much, but it’s so not for me.

What I’m trying to say is that Promise Mascot Agency should have put me off because it has many elements that the Yakuza games have. A ton of wild characters, a boatload of mini-games, ranging from fun to tedious to downright infuriating (for me). and lots and lots of exposition. There aren’t many cut-scenes, fortunately, until the last act. And, as I said in yesterday’s post, I did not love the last act of this game, it did not irritate me as much as it would have had  I not already bonded with the cast of the game.


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Comparing two disparate games, part three

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I’m back to muse more about Paradise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works) and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). In the last post, I was focused on the stories of each game and how I felt about them.

Oh, by the way, I bought a Pinky plushie. I was so enamored by her, I wanted to see if there was a plushie of her. I didn’t expect to find one, but much to my surprise, I saw this. I also bought the fun-in-the-sun accessory pack, so I can dress her up for the summer.

The story in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is almost universally critically acclaimed. I have heard people call it a masterpiece and gush about how evocative it is. I can understand why people thinkt it’s terrific, but it left me cold. By the end of the second act, I was privately calling it hot trash. The third act did nothing to change my mind. In fact, it made me just dislike the story even more.

It’s not something I talk about much because I don’t want to yuck other people’s yum, nor do I want to get into it. I ‘m comfortable with my opinion, but it’s not somethnig I feel the need to defend. If other people were moved by it, more power to them. It just felt very pompous and overblown to me, not to mention needlessly convoluted and not as smart as it thought it was.

I have been thinking why I am more forgiving of the story in Promise Mascot Agency, and it comes down to why I don’t like movies because they’re not realistic, and yet, I love musicals–which are anything but.

When Moulin Rouge came out, I loved the soundtrack. LOVED it. I saw the movie, and recommended it to my bestie, K. She just could not get over how I, someone who griped about the slightest  non-realistic thing in a movie could be so enthusiastic about musicals. I told her it was because they weren’t trying to be realistic so I didn’t have to pretend they were or try to make them realistic in my brain. Plus, the showtunes were always bangers.

The story in Promise Mascot Agency is charming and quirky. The characters are seriously flawed in a way they aren’t in Clair Obscur: Expediiton 33. In the latter, the characters in the party are all noble to a certain extent. Some have questionable motives, yes, but overall, they are definitely the Heroes of the story. And the villains are similarly drawn. The fact that all the voice actors are stellar really papered over the problems with the characters.


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