Promise Mascot Agency

The least amicable city council meeting you've ever attended and probably the best game you'll play this year.

Promise Mascot Agency is one of the most offbeat, gonzo, and bizarre experiences I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing this year while also being one of the most wholesome and comfortable. The contrast between the eccentric and the heartfelt really resonated with me. While the gameplay is simple and uncomplicated, it still draws you in because there’s just so much to be done. It just feels satisfying to be helping out these lovable characters and rejuvenating Kaso-Machi. Chaotic and easy-going in tandem, Promise Mascot Agency is a real one-of-a-kind experience.

Promise Mascot Agency's Kaso-Machi is an unforgettable setting packed with mysteries, mascots, and chaos. It somehow crams together almost any genre you might care to mention, from management sim to open-world RPG, and it does it all with style and heart.

Promise Mascot Agency blends driving, money management and talking blocks of tofu to create a gleefully weird game that demands your attention.

To be sure, most of what goes on in Promise Mascot Agency is utterly insane if you view it with any kind of detachment. This game is unquestionably bonkers. But it’s also the kind of game you can sink your teeth into in many, many ways, and if you want a unique experience, Promise Mascot Agency offers exactly that.

Promise Mascot Agency is bizarre, hilarious, stylish, and incredibly fun. It gets its hooks into you with its brilliant world-building, wicked sense of humour, and thrilling narrative, then delivers a blend of gameplay systems that combine into something truly unique. There are a few quality-of-life bugbears, but these pale in comparison to the wealth of content that this game has to offer.

Part management sim, part open-world adventure, this is both weird and familiar, and deeply comforting stuff.

Promise Mascot Agency is a positively zany yakuza adventure that's an unpredictable delight.

Promise Mascot Agency’s a good time. Uniquely charming enough that it doesn’t fall into the trap of being as dry as Michi’s ideal Saturday night, but with enough rough edges that it’d need to work on itself a bit before it could run for mayor of whichever cursed town all of the truly great games inhabit.

I have fallen head over heels, or rather bumper over wheels, for the world of Promise Mascot Agency. Though some elements might get a little repetitive, the narrative, gameplay, and unique charm have made it one of my favourite games so far this year. I have been left wanting more, but not because it didn’t deliver enough. The whole adventure was so moreishly enjoyable and the world so intriguing that I just want even more of such a good thing.

Promise Mascot Agency is still a strange game. Its repetitive gameplay loop, limited management aspects and refusal to be serious at any point may be off-putting to some. But if you enjoy surreal humor and are seeking a cozy life sim with a vaguely threatening aura, you’ll be able to find a home in Kaso-Michi.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those looking something unlike anything else out there, Promise Mascot Agency offers a bizarre flavor of storytelling that feels inventive and fresh. It doesn’t have the staying power to keep its repetitive gameplay interesting throughout, but the richness of the world and unapologetic insanity more than make up for its excesses.

Quotation forthcoming.

I'd wager that while I had fun with the game overall, part of what I'd hoped the game offered at the beginning was a mechanically-dense resource management sim where I have to carefully plan out my actions step-by-step, and while that's certainly how it looks like things will head at the start, in the end the game's actual gameplay mechanics feel like set dressing. It's essentially an excuse to get you out and about driving a Kei truck through a fictional Japanese town. There's nothing wrong with that, and we do cover games that veer towards narrative experiences, but I can't shake the feeling that Promise Mascot Agency wasn't quite what I'd signed up for - even if the end result was an enjoyable romp about reviving a town in its twilight years.

Crucially, we never lose our will to continue. [Issue#410, p.114]

Promise Mascot Agency's oddball, sometimes grotesque characters are actually incredibly charming, and the town of Kaso-machi is great to explore. These yakuza-managed living mascots can be messy mechanically thanks to poor balancing, but I'm won over by its truly immaculate and bizarre vibes. It's hard not to love the result, even if it could be a lot tighter.

It’s as if Promise Mascot Agency actively recoils from anything complex enough to take players out of the open-world driving for more than a minute or two.