Promise Mascot Agency Review (PS5)

Promise Mascot Agency has the energy of a long-forgotten, experimental PS2 game that may have only been played by 12 people, but those 12 people would defend with their lives. Its combination of story and design is unorthodox to say the least, but somehow, this open world crime drama management sim makes it all work.

You play the role of Michizane Sugawara, a yakuza lieutenant who's exiled after a vital inter-clan transaction goes pear-shaped. With his family in trouble, his death is faked and he's sent to Kaso-Machi, an underfunded backwater town that's home to the family's final hope — a mascot agency. In order to redeem himself and repay the enormous financial loss, Michi must restore the agency, make some cash, and keep his yakuza family afloat. Two other quick things: the town has a curse that kills any yakuza men that enter it; and in this world, mascots are not people in costumes — they're sentient beings.

Much like Paradise Killer — the developer's previous game — a lot of this information is front-loaded, and it can be a lot to take onboard. However, once you wrap your head around it all, there's a complex and well-told crime drama story to unravel over the course of about 20 hours.

In that time, you have plenty to do. After you're past the prologue and initial tutorial, you're free to explore the surprisingly large open world of Kaso-Machi. The island town, built around the foot of a mountain, is packed with characters to meet, tasks to complete, and crucially, mascots to recruit. Ever-bound to your trusty pick-up truck, you'll drive the length and breadth of the town many times as you follow the story and explore the run-down setting, searching for collectibles and upgrades.

Everything you do feeds back into the titular agency; cleaning shrines around the town provides you with buffs that increase incrementally, while smashing into pink trash bags or signs for the corrupt mayor's electoral campaign will earn you more fans. As you progress, the island populates with new mascots to find and characters to meet, some of which will provide you with more potential jobs for your agency.

So, there's plenty to keep you busy in the open world, but what about the agency itself? To start making money, you need to recruit mascots and then send them out on jobs. These jobs are broadly passive, and will run in the background according to the in-game time. However, your mascots will often run into problems, and you're encouraged to help them which, if you do, leads to a minigame in which you do battle against the issue — getting stuck in a door, or knocking over a pile of boxes, for example. Using a number of hero cards you collect throughout the game, you whittle down a health bar in a very simple combat scenario. It's quite amusing and eventually becomes a little tougher, but ultimately these sequences grow quite repetitive.

Whether you choose to engage with these or not, your mascots will complete their jobs and bring in some cash. When you recruit a mascot, you need to sweeten the deal with various perks, like a larger cut of profits, a bonus, or time off after a certain number of jobs. The better the perks you choose, the happier and more motivated they'll be. These also affect the amount of money you bring in, which is important because you'll use it to invest not only in upgrades for your agency, but also redeveloping key parts of the town, in turn leading to more work for your mascots and more avenues for making a profit.

On paper, a lot of this sounds like it doesn't fit together, but in practice it works rather well. The flow of sending out mascots to work, speaking with the townsfolk, purchasing upgrades, and exploring the island is compelling; seeing your finances gradually grow is satisfying, and watching your impact on the town and the agency as you reinvest provides a rewarding sense of progression.

There's always something new to work towards. Maybe it's the sub-contracting, where you buy out-of-town businesses and employ mascots to represent them, earning you passive income. It could be throwing money at redeveloping key parts of Kaso-Machi, like the marina or recycling centre, again rewarding you over time. Eventually you can use crane games dotted around the town to gain merchandise, which can then be sold in various places for yet more profiteering. And then there's the story, which kept us hooked as we slowly peeled back its many layers.

Mysterious glowing foxes will be running around the open world, and if you hit them, you'll unlock upgrades for your truck, ranging from increased speed to a bigger boost bar, and even the ability to glide through the air. These extras fill out the traversal nicely and allow you to reach more secluded parts of the map. In terms of control, there's a degree of awkwardness about the driving; it's difficult to be very precise, especially when you go off-road.

Basically all the various mechanics and features we've described have been done before many times, in some cases better, but Promise Mascot Agency combines them in such a way that it all feels quite fresh. Again, the way it meters out new ideas, and drip-feeds story details from nearly all character interactions, means your time is rarely wasted, giving the game a nice momentum.