Review: Promise Mascot Agency is going to be your next favorite game, I promise

Promise Mascot Agency welcomes you into a world where mascots aren’t just people in suits, they’re real and the same as anyone else. You’ll play as The Janitor, a should-be-dead Yakuza member in the Shimazu Family, who has been sent to Kaso-Machi, a cursed land that stopped being prosperous long ago.

Due to an error on your watch, you lost money to the tune of 12 billion yen, putting your family in a tight spot. The only thing that can be done is to spread the word that you’re dead while you go to the town that curses Yakuza men with death. There, you’ll take control of a defunct love hotel and transition it into a prosperous mascot agency with the help of Pinky, a mascot in the shape of a pinky finger.

By recruiting mascots and sending them on jobs, you’ll be able to make some money to pay off your debt. While you’re doing that, you’ll be able to help the townfolk with problems, better the city, and find some long-dead secrets resurfacing. 

Promise Mascot Agency: Money-back guarantee! Just kidding, you won’t need to return it, it’s amazing.

Promise Mascot Agency is a blend of several different things. You have your open-world aspects, your fetch quests, your timed mini-games, a management element, and your driving game all wrapped into one.

I played 20 hours of Promise Mascot Agency and I’m still struggling to find the words to adequately describe all the facets of this game. You’ve got a solid, overarching plot, character backgrounds and development, amazing music, great character design, voice actors out the wazoo, and gorgeous art. 

The only way I can even try to get you to understand how much you need this game is to try and break it down. We’ve gone over what the game is about, so let’s just dive into the mechanics. 

As the new owner of a mascot agency, you have to find and hire mascots. They’re dotted around the island and more will open up after you’ve triggered more plot. Once you have them secured, you then have to send them out on jobs. Each mascot has two types to them which range from cute, flirty, scary, nerdy, and more. 

You don’t have to match the types to send them out on jobs, but it nets you a bonus. Once you have them there, they’ll either finish the job with no issue or they’ll need help. This is where Mascot Heroes come in! Most of the people that you have conversations with can be Mascot Heroes. If they agree to be one, you’ll get a hero card from them.

This hero card had stats on it that you need to pay attention to. It will show what kind of damage they deal, how many actions it takes to play the card, and whether they give bonus actions or bonus cards. 

This is your timed event. You’ll have one minute to help your mascot against their foe whether that’s an upset spirit or not being able to fit through the door. Mascots have a range of things that can trip them up.

I think it’s safe to say we all have issues with online freaks…

At the top of the screen, you’ll be given a hit bar that you have to deplete in order to save your mascot. Unfortunately, you have to do it with five cards available and you only have two moves. If your cards give you bonus cards or actions, then you have more freedom to play. However, if you run out of moves or cards and the bar isn’t down fully, you’ll lose.

No worries if this happens, however. Losing just means you don’t get a bonus, you’ll still get a guaranteed minimum for the mascot being there. 

This is the only part of the game that I’d really call timed and it’s pretty low-stakes when you get the hang of the cards. And, if you don’t like your hand, you have the ability to mulligan twice. This means that if your hand is utter garbo, then you can try again.

After your mascots have gone on a few jobs, their life satisfaction will need to be evaluated. At this point, some of their stats will go up, making them a more accomplished mascot, but you have to make sure to have that conversation with them.

While the game is literally called, “Promise Mascot Agency”, you weirdly don’t do much more with your mascots. Scattered around the world, there are some agency plans to do some upgrades to your business, but that side of things is pretty encapsulated.

The rest of Promise Mascot Agency has to do with exploring Kaso-Machi, helping the town, and the people who reside there. Once you start talking to the townfolk, they’ll let you know more about the town and a lot of them will give you side quests. These side quests are generally just fetch quests where you have to explore in order to find things they’ve lost. By retrieving them and returning them, you can level up their hero cards for better stats during your mascot mini-game.

I wish I could level up my own skills by finding objects left on the ground…

It’s not just fetch quests that are dotted around the world, though. There are coins floating around that give you money, trash that needs to be picked up, signs for the corrupt mayor to tear down, fox spirits to catch, and sins to cleanse. The last one sounds scary, but it’s just a floating chain of paper dolls that you can tear up. 

Let me just save you some time, don’t worry about anything but the coins and signs at first. You need special upgrades to help you with the other things. To get those upgrades, you’ll want to find the fox spirits I mentioned. They stole some blueprints from the mechanic and by catching the fox spirit, you get to upgrade your truck.

These upgrades include launching Pinky from the back of the truck, making it seaworthy, giving it wings, allowing it to pick up trash, making it faster, and so on. The launcher is easily the most useful and important upgrade. Not only does it help with the signs and trash once you have that upgrade, but this is how you’ll tear up those sins. Plus, those fox spirits are really fast, so being able to launch Pinky at them is super useful.

You’ll spend a lot of time driving around and exploring things. Also, did I mention that you never get out of the truck? You do everything from the truck. I wouldn’t even believe I had legs in this game if the cutscenes didn’t show them to me. Luckily, the driving function is excellent. There are sometimes when I’m driving up steep hills that the truck gets a bit naughty, but I assume I’m not supposed to put the truck in billy goat mode, so that’s really on me. 

Taking the truck to heights it was never meant to climb!

As you drive around, you’ll be treated to beautiful graphics and some of the best music in a game I’ve heard in a long time. I’m not usually one for buying soundtracks, but this is one game where you’ll absolutely want to own it.

In addition to the mascot hero mini-game, there’s a fun little crane game that gets opened up later. Once it’s operational, you’ll be able to find merchandise for your mascots dotted around the island. Why are they dropped off randomly? Because they can. By finding these drop-offs, the merchandise will be added to warehouses that have crane arms on them.

At that point, you’ll be able to move the crane arm around like any other crane game and pick up the mascot merch. Once you have it, you can send them off to the various businesses that you revitalize for them to sell, giving you some passive income.

That’s not the only way to get passive income, though! There are two other major ways to do this! Not only will you find upgrades for your agency, but you’ll also find plans for areas like the festival market or updating the shrine. By buying these upgrades out of your own pocket, you’ll be cut in on a portion of the profits. This will be invaluable because your bills will pile up.

The other way to get passive income is through subcontracting. You’ll be able to buy other agencies and mascots that will run in the background. Once you’ve bought them and assigned the mascots, you never have to worry about them again.

There’s just one catch, you have to find the mascot business cards in order to hire them, so you’ll need to do more searching.

‘Mo Mascots, ‘Mo Cheddar… if only there was a mouse mascot for this joke…

And, while we’re talking about bills, the trouble you’re running from is still heavy on the Shimazu matriarch’s head, so you need to make sure that you’re sending enough money home in order to keep her safe.

This is a ton of money to juggle, especially upfront when you’re not raking in the dough. Let me just pre-emptively let you know that as long as you’re keeping her meter from dropping to zero, you’re good. It goes down slowly, so you shouldn’t have to worry about failing in that regard, just be sure you’re keeping an eye on it.

The last thing I want to talk about before I get into the things I didn’t love about Promise Mascot Agency is the story. This is a spoiler-free review, so I won’t go into specifics, but I will say that having played through the whole game, I can happily report that the story works. All the loose ends get tied up, everything makes sense, and it keeps you a bit on your toes. 

So, let’s touch on the not-so-great things. Firstly, it’s not an actual con so much as a preference. This game is VERY dialogue-heavy and it’s not just the main plot line that’s wordy, everyone is happy to chat your ear off. 

This aspect is great for worldbuilding and character development, but you’re not going to care about everyone’s life story. I’m guilty of just mashing a few buttons to get through some conversations. 

My first, actual, qualm is that not everything is indicated on your map. You’ll be able to see where mascots, shrines, and fetch quest items are. But, you’re not going to be told where signs are, sins that need to be smashed, or trash that needs to be picked up. Considering these things have a percentage bar, it’s a little frustrating that there’s no indicator to show you where things are. 

Listen, I don’t achieve much in life; give me this one thing.

You have to scour every inch of the land if you want to 100% these aspects. I was hoping that after the main story concluded, the map might update with that information, but, sadly, it did not.

The second thing is the truck upgrade that makes it fly. The truck just driving works like a dream, but flying the truck is the most janky experience. It doesn’t go fast, it’s hard to keep it on course, and it’s almost like there’s a wall sometimes that jerks the truck away from where you’re aiming it. 

There is a card upgrade that sits atop a building with the only way to get it is through flying. I tried countless times to get the truck up onto that building, but when I got near the building it was like an invisible wind buffeted the wings and veered the car off. Legend has it that that card upgrade is still on top of the building. I gave up due to frustration.

All in all, my issues are very little, and the greatness of the game far outweighs the cons. And, between asking the team for all the items to be indicated on the map and the car flying better, I’d ask for a map update any day of the week. 

I found Promise Mascot Agency to be a joy to play. I think the character and mascot designs were ingenious and I genuinely enjoyed learning more about Pinky and Kaso-Machi. 

If you’d like to run your own Promise Mascot Agency, you can get the game for $24.99 and, since I got 23 solid hours of gameplay out of it that I enjoyed the whole way through, I’d say it’s a very fair price. If you want to check out a different review, you can take a gander at the one we did on Tiny Garden. It answers the question of what gardening would be like if it were in a Polly Pocket compact.