Pinky Swear

After falling in love with Paradise Killer 5 entire years ago I was vibrating with excitement to get my hands on Promise Mascot Agency. I intentionally avoided as much information about the game as possible to the point where I skipped the demo, knowing only the high level pitch, which was wild enough for me to trust Kaizen Game Works with a lil walkin’ around money on release. To say I have regrets would be inaccurate – PMA is undeniably good – but by the time the credits rolled I was hit with the realization that I had just played the same game twice.

All who would do harm to To-Fu deserve violence.

Let me set the scene: The year is 2020. Kaizen Game Works releases Paradise Killer, a game where you play as a recently disgraced specialist who’s otherwise lauded in their field solving a web of mysteries. You do this by chatting with a town full of weirdos, roaming a surreal open world, collecting an increasingly ridiculous quantity of widgets, and enjoying summer vibes accompanied by a boppin’ soundtrack. The ending doesn’t quite stick the landing, but the journey is enough to warrant a recommendation.

Five years pass. Kaizen Game Works releases Promise Mascot Agency, a game where you play as a recently disgraced specialist who’s otherwise lauded in their field solving a web of mysteries. You do this by chatting with a town full of weirdos, roaming a surreal open world, collecting an increasingly ridiculous quantity of widgets, and enjoying summer vibes accompanied by a boppin’ soundtrack. The ending doesn’t quite stick the landing, but the journey is enough to warrant a recommendation.

Except, like, slightly less.

Sweet, we’ll shake on it. Or whatever works for your weird-ass physiology.

PMA feels like Kaizen playing the hits, a band exclusively performing their singles at a live show, which is a little bizarre when you consider that they’re essentially a one-hit-wonder at time of writing. Granted you’re in a vehicle now, and driving a kei truck with increasingly goofy upgrades is undeniably fun, but that’s the primary mechanical differentiator. For a game specifically titled after its agency, you may be surprised as to how unimportant the business sim mechanics are to the overall experience.

If you’ve already started playing PMA but have yet to finish I’d forgive you for being confused. In the early game the agency is everything, with each new recruit massively expanding your earning potential and each new source of income helping to keep your head just above water and your matriarch un-stabbed. It isn’t a spoiler to state that this tension isn’t maintained forever. As long as you don’t offer your first few employees massively generous pay packages you’ll hit escape velocity fairly quickly (I really hate that sentence), and at that point there’s essentially no way to slow the exponential growth of your bank account.

Wrong side of the road, gaijin.

Let’s take a second to address Yakuza with a capital-Y. I don’t like to compare indies to decades-spanning AAA series, but PMA invites it on several levels. Our disgraced specialist of the day, Michi, is voiced by Takaya Kuroda of Kazuma Kiryu fame. The business portions of the game bear more than a passing resemblance to the management minigames in the Yakuza series, as do some of the other sidequests. The Showa stylings don’t warrant comparison to Kamurocho, but towns in several of Yakuza’s smaller locations and spinoff games are dead ringers. The focus on constantly seeking out side stories to advance while occasionally checking in on the main emulates the feel, if not the mechanics. Hell, it’s basically an identical structure but with more collectibles strewn about the map and combat sections replaced with characters yapping.

That last part is not intended as a complaint, to be clear, because the dialogue writing is once again Kaizen’s greatest strength. Between the townspeople and your potential employees we’re talking dozens of folks to meet and help out, all of whom have some sort of questline, and none of them suck! It could be argued that there are a few too many of them considering that several are given very little material to work with (most mascots are restricted to their 3 step side story chains, think Persona social links but shorter), but I can’t think of a single character I was ever unhappy to see. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Pinky’s abrasive personality would get grating, but it never does! She’s great! She didn’t even threaten me with bodily harm to get me to say that!

I love the political sidequest in theory. In practice, it’s kind of the same thing forever.

There isn’t a lot else to criticize, but that’s the thing, there isn’t a whole heck of a lot else at all. You drive to sidequests, you get distracted by collectibles dotting the map, you pause to send mascots on jobs or save them from botching a job, repeat repeat repeat. By the time I made it to the finale it had started to get a bit rote. You could reasonably argue that means they just about nailed when to call it quits! I just wish that final act ended on a high.

Note: I am not going to detail story spoilers below, but I will vaguely mention elements of the finale I found lacking. Feel free to skip to the last paragraph for the conclusion if you prefer!

The ending being weak is the single flaw that hurts PMA the most. You’d think with a more grounded plot Kaizen would’ve been able to stick the landing after not quite managing to in Paradise Killer, but that’s not the case. Hell, they arguably do worse here! Loose ends are tied up in rapid succession, including entire character arcs that were barely given time up until the last minute. Combine this with a repetitive “final boss” sequence that practically refuses to end despite giving players almost nothing to do beyond advancing dialogue, and it feels like the game simultaneously desperately wants to end and can’t figure out how to.

I love the spirit, execution notwithstanding.

Calling Promise Mascot Agency a sophomore slump feels premature. That’s typically a designation given once there’s a broader body of work to judge. I want to be clear that despite the tone of this writeup, I really did enjoy my time in Kaso-Machi, and I still have little doubt that Kaizen can deliver something truly great the third time around! What frustrates me is that despite what’s on offer here being worthy of a recommendation, I can’t shake the feeling that they played it too safe from a structural perspective. The most damning criticism I can level at the game is that I still think about Paradise Killer to this day, whereas I haven’t thought about Promise Mascot Agency unprompted since I finished it.

7/10