Promise Mascot Agency

You every had one of those games that has a really weird premise (or at least weird to explain) but after you gave it a chance, it turns out that's an absolute work of art and now one of your favourites? The type where you just played a 4 hour session that felt like half an hour? A game that you wish you could forget everything about, just so you can experience it again "for the first time"? Promise Mascot Agency is that kind of game for me. One that I can only wholeheartedly recommend to anyone that enjoys a good crime drama game, mixed with a management game and rounded of with a nice open world to explore. That's the short of it, but now a bit more in depth: ----- Promise Mascot Agency plays in a fictional somewhat modern day Japan, where so-called "Mascots" live alongside humans. They are not pets or anything like that - just normal people that are born somewhat different i guess. While not going too much into the whole story (which is awesome by the way) and spoiling a lot: After a money hand-off gone awry our protagonist (and yakuza), Michi, is sent to the town "Kaso-Machi" to both appear dead to the world, and make some money for his matriach. And how should he do that? Well that's simple: Turn the run-down love hotel into a Mascot Agency with the help of the Mascot "Pinky [insert a star here]". And that's where the main gameplay loop comes in. Hire your first Mascot that you can send to some jobs. But wait... What jobs? Well that's the next part of the equasion: Talk to the locals. Their livelyhood is on the line in this town but a bit of promotion by your Mascots might help! And so the cycle begins: You hire more Mascots, so that you can fulfill more jobs, which in turn also helps you meet more people that have jobs for you, so on and so forth. This is a really harmonic mix, especially once you have the opportunity to invest your money into other ventures, upgrading the Agency, sending some money to your matriarch, and buying new Hero Cards! Hero Cards? Well, yeah... Once you send out the Mascots to jobs, you get a call every so often, that they require help from some helpers, so called "Heroes". You need to help the Mascot out of sticky situations, like getting stuck in a door that is way too narrow, or having stalkers creep them out. And what better way to do that with a card battle system? The "problem" has some amount of HP and you have a certain amount of turns (with some cards adding turns back to the total) to play your cards and get the HP down to zero. Easy and classic. But don't worry: This is not really a deck builder - it's actually quiet nice in that regard (I say, as a big deck builder game hater). While the battles themself have some strategy behind them, the real star is once again the game design with this one. You read what I wrote above with the whole "talk to the townpeople and help them, yada yada"? Well some of those people now want to help your Agency even more, so they also want to become Heroes! That's the kind of game design I love! You focus on the main story? -> progress You focus on the side stories? -> progress You focus on the open world? -> progress You focus on the management sim? -> progress You help out your Mascots when they call? -> progress Everything just plays into each other like a big clockwork mechanism! And, as mentioned above, while I don't want to go too far into the story aspect itself (it's hella good), I just want want to mention a few things that influence it: The character, the voice acting, and the writing. In terms of characters, I think this game has hit a nail on it's head. Every single character is unique and well written with their own aspirations and dreams. You have teacher that gets bascially no budget, but loves to teach the kids of the town, even if she has to pay stuff herself. You have a businessman that's always on the phone with his wife. Always. No, he doesn't hang up when you talk to him. You have a gyaru that loves to do farming of the local crops, while livestreaming the whole thing. And of course the real heart of the show: The Mascots. From a bear(?) that wants to teach people about safe consumption of eroges, to half of a boiled egg that wants to save the local hotspring, to literal gods, to an always crying block of tofu. They are not only the star of the show - they steal it. There's literally only one character that I disliked (a certain dark colored Mascot with no direct words) and with a cast that large, I think that's pretty impressive! I can't really say that much about the voice acting, other than that it's really fitting. It has the perfect balance between "this is just some goofy ♥♥♥♥ sprinkled in" and "this is serious ♥♥♥♥ that might kill us all". And while I sometimes also switch the language to either my native of at least the english one, here you both can't, but also shouldn't. All of the Japanese really sell their role and also place and character in this world. Having the VA for Kiryu of the Like A Dragon/Yakuza games voicing Michi just adds to the whole crime drama feeling that the game is going for. And just like mentioned a few times: The writing is awesome! Of course this really goes hand-in-hand with all the personalities and conversations with the characters and such. But the writing really sells the whole setting and keeps you on the hook and guessing what could happen next in the story. What happend to the districts investment fund? Why is this town so run down and on the brink of collapse? What is the curse of this town? And while the game slowly unravels the answers to these questions, new keep on pilling on. I don't want to hype it up as "the best story in gaming ever seen" - I just want to say, that every aspect of the game, its cast and the world they live in make a really intriguing story that really fits the games package as a whole. ----- I want to cap this off by once again saying that I absolutely loved this game. It has firmly landed itself a place in my list of favourite games of all times. It oozes mystery with it's story, it has charming characters that each have a real personality to them, and a gameplay loop that is so satisfying, that I couldn't stop playing at the end of each session. This review is basically the proof of this. I barely write long reviews, because I often can't be bothered or can't really "say that much" about a game, even if I put a hundred hours into it. But for me Promise Mascot Agency has found a way into my heart and I can't recommend enough to everyone reading this. I would by a "Promise Mascot Agency 2" (or a spiritual successor) in a heartbeat! The 20 hours of playtime I got for the 100% of achievements just flew by in a jiffy! Now that I'm done, I'm actually kind of sad that it's over... Also if someone hurts my best buddy To-Fo, I'll send Yui and Nui to put you in an unmarked grave! I'll never have anyone even get to lay a finger on him!