For years, I have played through the Like a Dragon series and been blown away by their ability to come up with wacky quests inside a serious crime drama. I was also impressed by how they would practically put an entirely different game as a large side quest. This made me want a game that’s basically just a Like a Dragon side story. Promise Mascot Agency is that game. Developed by Kaizen Game Works, the creators of Paradise Killer, their new game brings us on a Yakuza-themed adventure that’s set in a world where Japanese mascots are sentient creatures with their own special quirks and charms. I had a blast playing through it, even if most of the experience felt quite repetitive.
Promise Mascot Agency is available on PC, PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series X|S for $24.99/£20.99.
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Story – What If Kiryu Ran a Mascot Agency
In Promise Mascot Agency, you play as Michi, an infamous Yakuza known as The Janitor. After an incident involving a rival family and the sacrifice of 12 billion yen to save one of his closest friends, Michi is disgraced and sentenced to death. However, his family’s matriarch fakes his death and sends him to the distant town of Kaso-Machi to fix his mistake by running their last legitimate business, a mascot agency. Aided by Pinky, a walking, talking severed pinky finger, Michi must turn this shabby agency into a successful business to pay back the 12 billion yen. Of course, alongside the difficulties of running a business, Kaso Machi is home to a curse that kills all male Yakuza who reside in this town.
Advertising mascots are living, breathing beings who live alongside humans.
Promise Mascot Agency‘s story parallels that of the Like a Dragon series. The world you explore is a mix of bizarre and supernatural elements, while still remaining grounded, to tell one insane crime drama. Alongside the main story, you get to learn about the town of Kaso-Machi and the oddball residents that live there. I enjoyed meeting them, completing their simple fetch quests and learning how the big bad mayor screwed over the town. Side quests are sadly not unique since they’re all some form of collectable quest. However, you do get to learn more information about the section of the town. Overall, I found the comedic tone enjoyable and loved building up the mascot agency, but the Yakuza plot and some of the side quests felt lacking for the most part.
Characters – A Small Town of Oddballs
The town of Kaso-Machi is filled with numerous characters, both human and mascot. There was rarely a moment when a character you met didn’t have their own charm. From the assistant to the mayor, who is obsessed with an office-themed idol group, the easily lovestruck mother of one of your employees, and a bartender who wears a full latex catsuit. I had a great time learning their stories and helping them with their quests, even if they weren’t that fun to complete. I’d say the mascots are the real stars of the game due to them being the primary focus. They’re all mostly fun to talk to, apart from a few who are clearly there to fill up a slot. I personally loved Tofu and Salary Nyan, who were very funny and had entertaining stories to tell.
Yeah bud, we’ll help you get revenge my cute lil business cat
Regarding our main cast of characters, Michi is pretty much just Kazama Kiryu if he continued as a Yakuza and chose a slightly darker path. Outside of this, his banter with Pinky is great; he’s a very good straight man for her jokes. Speaking of Pinky, she’s the star of the Promise Mascot Agency, delivering NSFW one-liners, game references, and some laugh-out-loud comedy. I truly believe that without the comedy duo of Michi and Pinky, I may have bailed on the story quite early on. If there was a character I would’ve liked to have seen more of, that would be the sentai support hero, Captain Sign, since I could see a lot of comedic potential with his character.
Truly the hero we deserve but apparently not the hero we need right now
Gameplay – Running a Mascot Agency
The gameplay of Promise Mascot Agency is split between three elements: open-world driving exploration, mascot management, and a card game. Throughout the entirety of the game, you’ll be driving around using Michi’s worn-out truck. At first, it feels a little lacklustre, but once you meet Jose, the town’s mechanic, you unlock the quest to upgrade the truck. You gain upgrades by chasing down fox spirits, and the type of upgrades range from driving on water, being able to launch Pinky like a cannon, grinding on rails and flight. Once you gain these upgrades, exploring the island becomes a lot more fun.
Flying beats driving on land any day of the week
When it comes to the actual mascot agency, you’ll do a few different things. First off, there’s the recruitment side, where you’ll just go find them in the world. Then you have to look for jobs for the mascots and assign one to each job. However, not every mascot is qualified for the type of job. If you choose one that is unqualified, it’s practically a given that they’ll mess up and you’ll have to intervene. Alongside the main mascot agency, you’ll also be selling merchandise, rebuilding parts of the town and running subcontracts. There’s a lot to Promise Mascot Agency, but everything does feel quite easy, even on the normal difficulty. The only challenging section of the game is the card game you play when intervening in mascot events.
Mascot Events – Fun but Too Dependent on Luck
When a mascot requires help during a mascot event, you get to help them via a card game. The goal of this minigame is to defeat the obstacle sabotaging the event by playing cards to deal enough damage. First, the mascot will deal some damage, the amount of which depends on their overall experience. Then you join in with only two actions available. You can gain more from certain cards, with some allowing you to draw more. The cards are made up of support heroes that you gain from exploration and completing town quests. They’re based on characters you encounter and some off-screen characters, including ones from Paradise Killer.
Upgrade cards by completing town quests and finding copies of cards
As much as I enjoy this card game, it gets quite repetitive over time. There’s not much strategy since it’s mainly luck-based. You’re given a random hand from your deck, and depending on what you get, it will determine if you win or not. I had fun with this minigame, but as I went through the game collecting more cards and upgrading them, the challenge disappeared. I would only lose if my starting hand was terrible and if the mascot didn’t do enough damage before my turn began. This led me to be careful which mascot I assign to a job and made the minigame easier. Sadly, with this change, the difficulty spike never went up, even with story progression leading to higher-level jobs.
Use your support heroes to help your mascots in need
Collectables & Quests – A Lot of the Same
Returning to the side quests in Promise Mascot Agency, they all have the same connection and problem. They’re all just collectable fetch quests. There isn’t much difficulty in them, especially when you’ve upgraded your truck. It got even worse when one of them required Michi to fish for a collection of antique knives in nearby rivers, and yet there was no minigame to perform the task. Instead, it’s just a cutscene with no wacky dialogue as a reward for finding the spot.
Yes Pinky, I do want things, better things
Outside of mission collectables, the rest come in the form of random obstacles to hit, like the mayor’s election signs, some ghostly spirits, and pieces of trash. There are loads to find, but they don’t offer much reward other than some money from running over trash once you progress to a certain point in the story. The only other side activities are time trials for you to complete to win more support heroes, and a crane game used for distributing mascot merch to sell. For a game using numerous absurd and wacky elements, it’s surprising that it lacks activities that match the game’s energy.
Find the merchandise while you’re out and about, and then come here to win it
Graphics & Audio – A Vintage Style
Promise Mascot Agency‘s visual design isn’t the most beautiful thing to look at, but it definitely has its charm. While the town and environments are large, they are simple in texture, and there’s little animation among the 3D models. You’ll communicate with characters via text box cutscenes presented through 2D artwork. Each character design is unique and memorable. My favourites were Captain Signal and Pinky’s designs. The loading icons featuring Pinky and sometimes Michi are very cute and appealing too. There’s also sometimes a comic book panel cutscene to show specific actions occurring, whether it’s a fight scene or Pinky breaking into someone’s house.
Regarding the audio, all the voice acting is entirely in Japanese, and it’s great, especially Michi’s VA, since it’s Takaya Kuroda, the voice of Kazama Kiryu. The overall soundtrack switches from atmospheric to absurd quite quickly. There’s one track that plays when cleaning shrines that feels straight out of Japanese Horror. It’s just another example of how Promise Mascot Agency is an oddball of a game.
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- Love a good reference here and there
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- A reference and probably the best card in the game
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- There’s not many of these comic panels but they’re very nice to look at
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- I prefer flying but being able to drive on water is helpful too, plus Pinky’s sailor hat.
Promise Mascot Agency was reviewed on PS5 courtesy of a code from Kaizen Game Works.
