Promise Mascot Company has the vitality of a long-forgotten, experimental PS2 recreation that will have solely been performed by 12 folks, however these 12 folks would defend with their lives. Its mixture of story and design is unorthodox to say the least, however in some way, this open world crime drama administration sim makes all of it work.
You play the position of Michizane Sugawara, a yakuza lieutenant who’s exiled after an important inter-clan transaction goes pear-shaped. Together with his household in bother, his dying is faked and he is despatched to Kaso-Machi, an underfunded backwater city that is residence to the household’s last hope — a mascot company. To be able to redeem himself and repay the big monetary loss, Michi should restore the company, make some money, and preserve his yakuza household afloat. Two different fast issues: the city has a curse that kills any yakuza males that enter it; and on this world, mascots usually are not folks in costumes — they’re sentient beings.
Very similar to Paradise Killer — the developer’s earlier recreation — a number of this info is front-loaded, and it may be so much to take onboard. Nonetheless, when you wrap your head round all of it, there is a complicated and well-told crime drama story to unravel over the course of about 20 hours.
In that point, you may have loads to do. After you are previous the prologue and preliminary tutorial, you are free to discover the surprisingly massive open world of Kaso-Machi. The island city, constructed across the foot of a mountain, is filled with characters to fulfill, duties to finish, and crucially, mascots to recruit. Ever-bound to your trusty pick-up truck, you will drive the size and breadth of the city many instances as you observe the story and discover the run-down setting, looking for collectibles and upgrades.
Every thing you do feeds again into the titular company; cleansing shrines across the city offers you with buffs that enhance incrementally, whereas smashing into pink trash baggage or indicators for the corrupt mayor’s electoral marketing campaign will earn you extra followers. As you progress, the island populates with new mascots to seek out and characters to fulfill, a few of which can offer you extra potential jobs in your company.
So, there’s loads to maintain you busy within the open world, however what concerning the company itself? To start out making a living, you might want to recruit mascots after which ship them out on jobs. These jobs are broadly passive, and can run within the background in response to the in-game time. Nonetheless, your mascots will typically run into issues, and also you’re inspired to assist them which, if you happen to do, results in a minigame during which you do battle in opposition to the difficulty — getting caught in a door, or knocking over a pile of containers, for instance. Utilizing numerous hero playing cards you accumulate all through the sport, you whittle down a well being bar in a quite simple fight situation. It is fairly amusing and ultimately turns into slightly more durable, however finally these sequences develop fairly repetitive.
Whether or not you select to have interaction with these or not, your mascots will full their jobs and usher in some money. Whenever you recruit a mascot, you might want to sweeten the take care of numerous perks, like a bigger lower of income, a bonus, or time without work after a sure variety of jobs. The higher the perks you select, the happier and extra motivated they will be. These additionally have an effect on the sum of money you usher in, which is necessary since you’ll use it to take a position not solely in upgrades in your company, but in addition redeveloping key components of the city, in flip resulting in extra work in your mascots and extra avenues for making a revenue.
On paper, a number of this sounds prefer it does not match collectively, however in follow it really works fairly properly. The movement of sending out mascots to work, talking with the townsfolk, buying upgrades, and exploring the island is compelling; seeing your funds step by step develop is satisfying, and watching your affect in town and the company as you reinvest offers a rewarding sense of development.
There’s at all times one thing new to work in direction of. Perhaps it is the sub-contracting, the place you purchase out-of-town companies and make use of mascots to symbolize them, incomes you passive earnings. It may very well be throwing cash at redeveloping key components of Kaso-Machi, just like the marina or recycling centre, once more rewarding you over time. Ultimately you should use crane video games dotted across the city to achieve merchandise, which might then be offered in numerous locations for but extra profiteering. After which there’s the story, which saved us hooked as we slowly peeled again its many layers.
Mysterious glowing foxes will likely be operating across the open world, and if you happen to hit them, you will unlock upgrades in your truck, starting from elevated velocity to a much bigger enhance bar, and even the flexibility to glide by the air. These extras fill out the traversal properly and let you attain extra secluded components of the map. By way of management, there is a diploma of awkwardness concerning the driving; it is troublesome to be very exact, particularly if you go off-road.
Mainly all the varied mechanics and options we have described have been executed earlier than many instances, in some circumstances higher, however Promise Mascot Company combines them in such a means that all of it feels fairly recent. Once more, the best way it meters out new concepts, and drip-feeds story particulars from practically all character interactions, means your time is never wasted, giving the sport a pleasant momentum.
Conclusion
Regardless of its disparate parts you have most likely seen earlier than, you have by no means performed a recreation fairly like Promise Mascot Company, a recreation that smashes collectively against the law drama story, administration sim mechanics, and open world exploration. Whereas there are some tough edges and repetitive points, this hangs collectively due to an engrossing story, compelling development, and strange however likeable characters. Better than the sum of its components, this distinctive recreation has cult hit written throughout it.
