Promise Mascot Agency

This game is a 10/10 visual novel, 7/10 management sim, a 7/10 driving game and a 6/10 card game. The game is split into narrative, management style gameplay, driving gameplay, card battles and collecting THINGS. It follows a similar formula to PARADISE KILLER in some of its gameplay. If you have not played that game go play it, it is also by the same devs! This game oozes charm with its larger than life characters, absolutely VIBING beats, nostalgic visuals, witty dialogue and its both predictable and unpredictable chaos. The art and visuals are pleasing to the eye and immersive for this little world (not so little to drive around in). Pros: + Lovable cast of characters + Full high quality JP voice acting for story cutscenes + Fun narrative with several endings + A variety of gameplay elements to always switch things up + Absolutely AMAZING soundtrack + Witty dialogue and sprites + Just oozes passion and charm + Extremely chill to explore the town + Cheap game, with a nice amount of play time and easily 100%-able Cons: - Sometimes you want to focus on one gameplay element such as driving around and exploring but you will need to balance and focus on the job management of your mascots to keep a steady flow of income, which interrupts what you really want to do in that moment. - Some story beats can be obvious, so its down to taste on whether you still enjoy them or not. - The variety of gameplay mechanics means none are too in depth. To expand on this; management is more just a menu game with occasional cutscenes to show you how your mascots are and very often you need to send them help on jobs which requires playing the "card game" which has very little depth to it often making it a bit tedious. Another example is driving, it is fun but its not very tightly controlled for how much time you will spend in your truck. I would absolutely recommend this to almost everyone and would overall give it a solid 9/10 experience. It is honestly incredibly fun and charming. PLUS I JUST LOVE MY GAL PINKY AND MY SWEET LIL TO-FU!

I don’t often write reviews but I LOVED this game. While the game itself is mostly exploration with some very simple management sim elements, it’s elevated by bucketloads of charm. You’ll fall in love with the world and its characters - I genuinely didn’t want it to end. Another thing is that the lead character is heavily implied to be asexual which made me incredibly happy, as it’s a type of representation you don’t often see, even in otherwise queer-friendly games. But yeah, I loved every second with this game and ended up checking out Paradise Killer afterwards too. Highly recommended.

My wife and I got home after our wedding day, exhausted, and turned on an episode of Game Grumps playing this game. We were baffled. We couldn't let it go. As the days went by we just kept talking about it over and over, finally we decided to buy it. If you liked saints row like driving weirdness and have big anime energy, this game is for you. We've been playing it literally every chance we get. We can't put it down. It's addictive, cute, funny, sad, super deep. All the character arcs are interesting and add to the world, and this game has become a top fav so quickly. Love love love. I can't recommend it enough. Thank you Paradise Mascot for giving us a new obsession as we start the next chapter of our own redemption. 9/10 if not 10/10.

This is the best game I've played in so long! The story, the driving gameplay, the finding collectables, the humour!!!!! I've gotten so much joy from this game I haven't been able to leave it alone! so I finished the main story in a few days of gaming XD This game is so fun because it makes you want to explore and enjoy finding things before in their own right, before you even realise they are achievements. And do I even need to say it? the music slaps so hard!!!!!

lucu banget! I adore this art style and the era of Japan they bring on the table! Very fun little game

This is such a weird and fun experience, I love it! There really ought to be more games like Promise Mascot Agency. Gameplay isn't very difficult, but you don't mind since you're too busy being caught-up in the story. Great story, characters, and concept. 10/10, can't wait for the free DLC. More content, please!!!

Entertaining, hilarious, and addicting game with incredible music on top of it all. Hooked by the idea of Kuroda-san voicing Michizane, then naturally pulled into all the wackiness of running my own mascot agency. The gameplay loop is satisfying and I love all of the humor and mascots, especially Pinky. I'd perish for her. Pinky for mayor of Earth!!

Overall, I love this game but the love varies. Promise Mascot Agency is a fantastic visual novel, a pretty good management/driving sim, and a mediocre deck builder. The game-play loop consists of open-world driving (to collect items and recruit mascots), ledger-based financial management (to earn money, pay employees and other expenses, and upgrade the agency), and time-based card games (to resolve problems with mascots). The visual novel unfolds during this game-play loop. If you read the store page synopsis and like what you read, you will like this game.

It's like the forgotten Dreamcast game that your geeky cousin swears is the best thing he ever played. It's a lightweight business sim/open world collectathon where you drive around in an indestructible Japanese truck with a bratty disembodied finger who claims to be your sexy secretary. There's so much dialogue that it almost feels like a visual novel, but the writing is pretty great, so I'm okay with that.

It's a "Yakuza" game, but only the side-tasks and mini-games; which several would agree are the best parts of the series. Would certainly recommend for people who enjoyed building up Ichiban Confections or Dondoko Island. There is always a lot to do in this game, sometimes to the point of being a bit overwhelming, but there's always time to go exploring or work your way through side-quests; you never really feel under pressure to rush through tasks or avoid finding collectables until later. The game is also very forgiving; the crane game costs no in-game money to keep playing, failing a mascot event only removes the bonus, not the entire payment, and the incident card game does not require any great strategy to beat. Overall, any small annoyances are quickly forgotten by the sheer mass of things to do, and how well the game handles them.

Frankly the most genuine game of 2025. If you believe games are an art form- put your money up for this one and prove it.

In a year with so many heavy hitters, I would have never imagined this being one of the front runners for my GOTY. None of the driving, card combat and other mini-games are particularly outstanding on their own but this game definitely adds up to more than the sum of its part. The general vibe, and tone are just something special with so much hearth - during a pretty stressful time for me, just driving around Kaso-Machi and hanging out with all its weird characters instantly brought me to a nice zen flow state. 10/10, Pinky for mayor!

TL;DR - This is a pleasant open world task-em-up game that's ultimately marred by weak writing. Worth it for the mascots themselves. Maybe grab it on a sale. So after Kaizen's last game Paradise Killer left me in a rather sour mood due to its refusal to count any one ending as a canon ending which ultimately ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back for me, I was oddly optimistic and looking forward to what the team would come up with next despite really not enjoying their first game whatsoever. And whilst I'd like to say that the optimism was well placed, it's unfortunately stuck with much of the same issues with the writing as PK was. So gameplay wise, it's a completely different affair than before. We have a surprisingly large open world of the town of Kaso-Machi to wander around in our truck, lots of collectibles to find, upgrades to get, mascots to recruit. Lovely stuff. Once we get the mascots, we can put them to work and have them bring in money. Occasionally they'll need help completing their work because despite this world containing both humans and mascots for years on end now, the entire thing is still solely designed around average human sizes for some reason. Put a pin in that for now. Complete enough jobs and the mascots will open up to you in "life satisfaction" events where you help them find meaning in life by briefly acting as a therapist or even taking them to specific spots on the map. As you gain more money and complete more of these various tasks, the world opens up a bit more, new places start offering work, and you're able to singlehandedly renovate chunks of the town to get them up and running again. This is the main bulk of what you'll be doing in this game, as the main story generally only progresses once you've done these things and in itself does not have much gameplay involved, acting more like a visual novel of sorts for these brief scenes. And it's here where it falls flat on its face. The writing is just...so lacking in committment. It wants to have this world with dense lore and lots of twists in the story. And it does go for it; ambition is not the issue. The opening of the game sets up the plot, the tone, the lore, everything. But then it just sort of stops suddenly. Maybe you'll find a bit of lore or mystery and intrigue at one of the many little locations throughout the town, but apart from one or two of those locations, the plot goes out of its way to dispel anything fantastical about that lore and as a result it sort of ends up ruining the thrill of being in this spooky backwoods town. Worldbuilding similarly seems to give up after a certain point. We're given a world wherein there's an entire second sapient and sentient species of bipedal creatures wandering around and outright coexisting with humans, having been fully merged into society. There's a whole WEALTH of implications this has for this world. I'm sat here finding myself enamoured with the possibilities; what was it like early on, how did the humans take any of them seriously to begin with, how long did it take before they became treated as any other human, how do the mascots that dont speak english actually communicate with the humans outside of magically being able to understand them, whats the history of these mascots, where did they come from, how did they appear, were they always here, if mascots can work in regular human jobs then why is the concept of a mascot industry even a thing, how is the mascot industry not considered demeaning or weird by anyone, is there a human agency devoted to entertaining mascots, how many mascot characters have held high positions in society like a ceo or a politician, if they have separate types of anatomy how on earth do they even create offspring to begin with, was there any social backlash or pressure against mascots having human partners, how does that even work to begin with, why is everything still built specifically to human scale when mascots have existed for long enough that its just normal and not even questioned by anyone like surely there would be a strong movement to create proper adjustments for them at this point because really if they've existed for as long as you've implied they have then why would any of them let this act of outright racism exist for so long it just makes no sense whatsoever!! None of this (admiteddly excessive game theory type) stuff is answered. It just sets up some base worldbuilding and then goes "yep, good enough for me" and moves on. I find it extremely frustrating because there's just so much you can be doing with this scenario, so much to say, so much to explore, and it just refuses to actually engage with any of it. And the plot doesn't exactly do much better. SPOILERS [spoiler]You spent a lot of time in the plot gallavanting around finding vague scraps of information and then your boss shows up and suddenly all of the information you need conveniently falls into your lap before oops never mind it's time for a mascot competition oh no its rigged but you win with the power of friendship and ogughhghghghghghgh [/spoiler] SPOILERS As if it wasn't bad or frustrating enough for me, once again Kaizen are refusing to acknowledge any ending as a canon one. But here, it makes even less sense than it did in Paradise Killer. In that game, it's all about what you personally were able to find out, with the game allowing you to simply end it if you felt like you had gotten everything you possibly could. It wasn't ideal, since it just lead to unsatisfying endings where the mystery isn't really solved unless you managed to scoop up literally everything the game doesn't tell you about, but it functioned. Here, the plot seems to be VERY vaguely dictated by player choice. Well, they say it is, but frankly I didn't see a single decision in the game that felt like it would actually impact what ending would happen except for one right at the very end before the credits rolled. There were three possible choices, I picked one, there was a little bit of chatter afterward, and then....nothing. Once again, there's nothing really going into the consequences of your choices, it just Happens and goes "shows over, door is on your right". It almost certainly has more than enough opportunity to fix this too, as it drops you back into the open world post credits to do a couple of extra tasks and let you finish up the collectibles as well. But those extra tasks, despite being plot relevant, also have zero impact on anything. They just happen and the game goes "okay there you go then". Why? Why are you bottling out of doing anything interesting? I just don't get it. Let's talk something positive as a change. As the title implies, a lot of the game involves managing mascots you recruit throughout the town. The designs on these guys are [i]delightful[/i]. Their appearances are super varied, they all have unique personalities and troubles, but they're all absolutely lovely people and I would frankly do anything for them at the drop of a hat. You got your super cute mascots like Ichigo Love and Neko Roll, your former corporates like Salary-Nyan, funky weirdos like Kofun and Karoushi, initially slightly unnerving weirdos like Trororo and Kabuya King, and former attempted horny club workers Oh and Taso. Karuoshi in particular is a stand out character for me; the guy speaks entirely in prose and it's cool every single time. And tbqh I wanna ask Ichigo Love on a date, he's an absolute sweetheart. ...Hey Kaizen, fancy making an outright dating sim spinoff? That could be very fun and would let you delve deeper into their characters. I'm not even being ironic here. Don't make it a jokey one, that'd ruin it. Honestly, it's a good time overall, but the writer really needs to commit to the bit more often. I can see myself replaying this game because cozy but the text is just annoyingly frustrating to me.

Bite-sized, exploration-focused, management sim, with the style and mini-games of a JRPG, sorta? It's got great vibes, lovable misfit characters, and didn't overstay its welcome. If someone in a Yakuza game dropped acid and had a strange trip while making deliveries, this is the game they would find themselves in. Give it a shot, and the other game by this developer too (Paradise Killer).

This is certainly a game. It has a lot of anime tropes that I like. Also I get to drive my truck around the ocean. 10/10!!

Loved this game, got 100% achievements in it and looking forward to that new content teased in the trading card update to return to the game again. I love Japanese Mini Trucks so from the outset this game had me sold and then to find that it was filled with such fun characters and conversations was such a welcome surprise

A wonderful and charming adventure. Hoping for expansion or sequel.

This is "one of those games" for me, it's essentially an exploration game disguised as a management game. First 10 hours especially are the absolute most fun I've had with a game this year, even if the back half never hit quite as hard, and the plot is quite bad. Still, would absolutely recommend.

real mixed bag of a game. fun story, endearing characters, but also a lot of side characters who are just their one gimmick and nothing else. game would probably have benefited a lot if it just had sideplots for 4 or 5 mascots that were fleshed out more and interacted with the story a bit (and also could have used this to make the town stuff more meaningful) and let the others purely be mini-game npcs. the main plot is good though and mostly what you're there for and at least the designs of everyone are fun. game gets a lot of mileage out of aesthetic. game also gets a mileage out of driving around being enjoyable, but it could let you do crazier stuff than it does when it comes to actually driving. because look if you haven't played the game yet: go to jose's garage first thing and then go up to the mt summit lake and get the fox there. you unlock a glider which is just better than driving at all points forever. and the glider is enjoyable enough but its weird that it invalidates driving more than a few feet at a time? and if we have so much freedom of movement anyway why not let us blast all over the place crazy style? the other big problem is that the mascot mini-game blows. once you've done it a couple times you've seen all there is to see, it presents the name of a different obstacle but its not like you build your deck so you just play the cards you have. it ends up being a huge waste of time clicking through all the dialogue and waiting for the loading screens and animations to play out. the good news is you can just ignore it entirely and it doesn't matter. the bad news is if you're entirely ignoring a mechanic like that, it's a bad mechanic! similarly stinky that the election rallies don't have more unique dialogue and that you get the same cutscene every regional grand prix even though pinky literally says "let's skip this it's boring". anyway the game still gets by on charm and good main plot. edit: also it really needs a backlog!! for the dialogue!!!

This is such a great little open-world game. Just enough story to make it interesting and enjoying just puttering around the island collecting various things and slowly building your mascot agency. Not terribly challenging but I feel like that was never the point anyway. No online service because it's not necessary. Whoever on the development team made the decision to NOT include achievements for finding all the garbage bags and doing all the life satisfaction quests for every mascot... Thank you. I really would not have enjoyed doing that, but I would have done it.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Promise Mascot Agency. Wild driving, fun characters, and a great overarching mystery.

What a delight! Not typically the type of game I would've pursued on my own, but I'm glad I took a chance on it. I loved the goofy characters & setting, graphical style, and the management elements. Highly recommended.

Kaizen Game Works have mastered a vibe. It is a vibe I enjoy. A balance of relaxing and engaging. Try it.

A wonderfully addictive Yakuza game hidden inside another insane platformer from Kaizen Game Works. I found myself constantly heading for new objectives on the way to something else that I saw as I was heading to my original goals. The story and characters were very charming, especially if you are a Yakuza fan. The business management side applies the right amount of pressure for as long as it needed to as well. Can't wait to see what the devs make next!

Just like with Paradise Killer, this game combines exploration with unique writing, fun characters, and surprises to collect (or run over). There is a fine balance where you're juggling all of the tasks to do and it feels utterly satisfying marking them off one by one. I never knew I wanted to be a little kei truck. I look forward to what Kaizen Game Works decides to do next.

I loved my entire time with the game; I can't fault it for anything. The characters and the writing were so charming and hilarious. I look forward to more from these devs!

cute and funny and short. great writing.

An odd, quirky and strangely wholesome open world game. If you don't mind reading (the writing is great), doing light management sim and want to have a chill open world experience, this is for you. Vote Pinky☆!

This game has had an absolute choke hold on my existence. the characters are so enjoyable,the voice acting is fantastic, the setting feels great, the driving is fun, and the story had me NEED to finish the game to its upmost completion. going in a "few minutes" ends in me playing for several hours. This is easily one of my favorite games i have ever played. The accessibility for the font and visuals made my heart flutter. when i first bought this game i played it for about 10 minutes and instantly bought another copy for a friend of mine. i laughed a bunch at the absolute silliness and it really made me feel good about creating again. easily one of my top 5 favorite games of all time. i would die for Pinky☆, Michi has no right being that attractive in my brain, im in love with mama-san. every character is memorable and well written and im so happy to have put 95 hours into this game (as of writing) and am fully intending on putting in many more. i just want to keep coming back. i super reccomend this game to anyone that can get their hands on it. worth every penny

Can you 1000% a game? Because I think I did it. If you can't tell, I LOVED PROMISE MASCOT AGENCY. At first, I was skeptical. I'm a huge fan of Paradise Killer, and listen to the soundtrack by Epoch all the time. PMA is not Paradise Killer, but it has some of my favorite game mechanics- exploring a weird city, talking to weird characters to find out their backstories, and COLLECTING. SO. MUCH. COLLECTING. The truck driving at first was janky as hell. But then you realize this is part of the game's charm. Pinky screaming her head off every time I crashed and burned, or accidentally ran into a wall, never failed to elicit a chuckle. Soon enough you get some awesome truck upgrades that allow you to go faster, shoot Pinky like a canon, and FREAKING FLY. Zooming around the city like a maniac and diving off cliffs to find random trash bags to destroy is some sort of catharsis. I kind of wish the game didn't end? And let me tell you, flying is so soothing. The chill soundtrack, the setting or rising sun, Pinky's little noises, it all makes you feel real good. Unlike PK, the story in PMA is on rails. You can vary Mishi's response to get different reactions from the characters, but I don't think it realistically changes much. And let's be honest here, Pinky is the real star. She's the one you get to pull Kaso Mochi from the gutter. Everyone loves her and she deserves to be in charge. VOTE PINKY FOR MAYOR. The story is fine enough, but it's really the environment and collecting here that shines through. I'm one of those people that would be happy never fighting in an RPG and just exploring people's houses and dungeons to see cool things and get loot. And there are so many little secrets and weird things in PMA, I really encourage you to just drive/fly around to see what's out there. No, you don't get achievements for all of them, but I'm glad of that. It's enough for there to be an in game metric. I'm really looking forward to Kaizen Game Works' next game. They offer really fun game play without a lot of stress. I'll be replaying both PMA and PK in the near future. There's no other games quite like them!!

Michi is crazy hot and Pinky☆ is crazy fun. Highly recommend!

I can not give this game enough praise without swearing, ranting, or being aggressive. This game, I learned about through Ina of Hololive and thought seemed a good distraction. It quickly became an obsession during my off time as a fireman. It's perfect.. yes the steering is a little odd, and flying is a bit rough on mouse and keyboard, that said. I learned and loved. Such an amazing game, and Devs if you see this. PLEASE hit me up to play or playtest any new games.

Decently rewarding gameplay loop, although I find the characters off-putting and the story rather uninteresting. I wish it had more actual minigames instead of just light visual novels.

game is a banger on the steam deck. feels like a good'ol nostalgia type game that is actually fun to play, it has a unique feel to it. There's some areas that could be improved, but overall it is 9/10. I hope to get future games from kaizen referencing pinky. [b] Some areas of improvement: [/b] In the jobs section, let us pick the mascot first then the job available to them. Then sort those jobs from most money to least or hardest to easiest, then the food you want to send them out with. This removes the scrolling through a long list of jobs, and makes the obvious job that the player will pick easier to find. This also shows which mascots are available without clicking a job first or looking at a different page. There are points which the dialogue seems bloated. some parts could be removed and it will still send the same quirky and fun message/story. I had to spam the skip button on some parts since it will take too long to read the entire convo. Some mascots are just not interesting enough to actually pay attention to their story line. It feels like there are few mascot that had extra attention given to them compared to others. A good example is tofu. Tofu feels fleshed out compared to other mascots. The saving mascot mini-game does feel repetitive super early. Could be nice to have an upgrade/character that just handles helping your mascots for the late/end game.

I'm really not feeling this game. The dialog can be funny but I do find a mainish characters voice extremely grating. The game is fetch missions. Though the overworld exploring is kinda cool. But once I progressed past early game I started getting flashbacks of tom nook shenanigans of a purpetural lingering money dump that floats over your head. eh. I'm good.

If you like Yakuza with a heart of gold, come help this powerful janitor sweep up Kaso-Machi. You get to cruise around in a cool little truck with NO2, killer hydraulics and more, while enjoying all the silly mascots the island has to offer. This game rules.

Simply immaculate vibes, an interesting story and really fun gameplay. 10/10 A joy to play

Pretty fun gameplay loop, enjoyed the story.

All the elements on their own are simple as hell and would make for a very boring but all of them together makes for a fun and engaging game that keeps you going and doesn't overstay its welcome, definitely get it when you can!

Quirky characters and sense of humour. Looking forward to their next game and will probably go back and play their previous game now

The greatest innovation this weird and wonderful game has made is that it's an open world where you never leave your car, so you can spend all the time you'd normally waste looking for your car on the arcade claw minigame.

A visual novel with an underlying management sim game and a whole lot of collectables. The map is fun to explore and you are given the right tools to do so. The writing is very fun and dialogue is highly amusing - you'll be warm from both laughing and the feel-good moments. The voice acting is very fun and it seemed like the VAs were having a good time. There is a very optimistic feel which I quite appreciated - you're enabling change and helping people. What's not to like? There is a timer ticking in the background which can make the game feel like a rush. This is connected to a game over state which has caught people off guard. I personally never experienced pressure from it, but I also attended to the mini-games with fervour. You are juggling mascot events, upgrades, exploration, quests, money flow - a mate who was watching described it as "I have no idea what is going on, but you seem to know what you are doing." It can feel like a haze of tasks that you are stumbling through. But it keeps you busy and the story beats act as great rest moments - you disengage from the mechanics and just enjoy the story. Mascot events are an interesting mini-game in concept, but they did grow bothersome as the game grew on. You juggle your resources (action points and card draws) and beat the health bar. Initially it seems cool, but you quickly get cards that outpace the difficulty, resulting in it just being a chore. The prompts are highly varied and amusing, though. Also to note, there was a ringing noise that played in the track which caused me irritation. Like a high pitched tinnitus chime. It's a small thing, but it is a thing. So, overall, it's a fun visual novel with a whole lot of mini-games to break up the narrative. This makes the flow feel good, but I can see the mini-games being a sore spot for people wanting to just enjoy the story. I got my money's worth and I recommend it.

It is a visual novel where choices don't matter. It's a good story, fantastic voice acting, and interesting backgrounds. Collecting is fun until the last 7% where it's difficult to find stuff but at the last 5% they start showing up on the map. I feel like the other reviews are over-praising this game. Mascots exist as sentient beings, and despite a few very quirky ones, they behave just like humans do. That and an indestructible kei truck are about as whacky as it gets, because otherwise it's a solid down-to-earth story that makes a lot of sense. There is no difficulty in this game, you just progress and collect. I've 100% every collectable without any guides and I guess overall it took me about 20 hours. The game could benefit from map filters, and just... Doing something with the crane game. Time passing while playing the crane game would have been nice. There isn't much to management in the game. You just check to see if the sticker is highlighted to the right when choosing assignments and just tap until you get confirmation and do that over and over until all the mascots are on jobs. Choosing their perks doesn't matter either because easily and soon you'll have enough money to just, give them a bonus to make them happy and motivated... Whatever those meters do anyway. You don't need to pay attention to them at all. The Showa filter is interesting, maybe permanently damaged my eyes, but fit the theme well. Map is great and well designed, maybe a bit too many cat themed mascots though. It's a good game, I was expecting it to be more fantastical based on other reviews. 8/10. Crane game sucks

This game is a delight. I was surprised by just how much I was taken in by it; often, big open-world games overwhelm me more than being fun, but the combination of this world being a manageable size and the rest of the game loop really drew me in. I love all the characters a lot, and just exploring Kaso-Machi feels great. Another thing that gets me is how wholesome this game ultimately ends up being? It feels tonally at first like it’s just going to be madcap and cynical, but at its core this game is really sweet. I also got invested in the story at the end. Generally, I just couldn’t stop playing. It’s really fun! Also, runs great on Steam Deck in my experience! I haven’t finished 100%-ing the game at about 18 hours in, but I did hit the credits, so it’s also not as long as some similar games appear to be, but I think it’s just about the right length. I’ll probably take the time to finish traveling around the island to at least collect all the remaining of a few things soon, though, because I had a good deal of fun.

Promise Mascot Agency was a title that carried high expectations from the moment it was announced, and in my opinion, it delivered on them remarkably well. Right from the start, the game presents a captivating story, full of mystery and fun moments. One of its most distinctive features is, without a doubt, the wide variety of bizarre characters you encounter throughout the plot, each one stranger and more iconic than the last, all with their own well developed backstories. The art design is incredibly striking; the choice of a retro style gives the game a unique touch that fits perfectly not only with the story but also with the time period in which it’s set. Gameplay also has a lot going for it. This is an open-world game that allows you to fast travel to different locations or take your time exploring everything it has to offer: from discovering hidden areas and meeting new characters, to completing their quests and collecting a wide range of collectibles. It’s also worth mentioning the variety of mini-games, which can keep you entertained for hours, with mechanics that will remind many players of classics like Yakuza. If you're looking for a relaxing game with a captivating story where you can take your time, enjoy the music, and admire the scenery while completing a wide variety of collectibles, Promise Mascot Agency is definitely a title you should add to your list.

Beautiful game. I sincerely love the story and the characters. A Kaizen Game Works game with a political storyline and cutthroat mysteries will always do it for me if this pattern keeps up! A complete package and I'm super satisfied with the experience. I loved Paradise Killer and there were clearly some learnings implemented in this new game. The collectibles in this game actually have a benefit, and there are SO many. Exploration is rewarded appropriately! As long as you are doing a balance of activities you will do well in this game. I thought the business portion of the game would be more daunting than it was. The earlygame is appropriately stressful, but near the end, the small business decisions stopped mattering and the management loop lost its lustre. Expecting this game to be a management sim that grows and grows wasn't the best way to go into it. Either way it was still an important and fun aspect! Definitely play this game to drive around in its gorgeous open world and indulge in its fantastic worldbuilding.

Just finished it! It was a great, whimsical fun time. It was a very weird but cozy time doing all the mascot job management and collecting everything. I finished it at 11 hours and completed most major things. Take your time, drive around with the sweet jams, and have a few smiles with the Promise Mascot Agency

I'm conflicted with this, but because I was compelled to finish it I think it warrants a positive rating. Stylistically the game holds up to the quirky standards you'd expect from their last game. Driving and gliding around in the kei truck is easily the best part of the game to me. The voice acting is exactly what it should be and impeccably performed. Pinky has a few very good lines in spite of leaning a bit too much on the "wacky bipolar side kick" cliche. When considering the size of the dev team, it's impressive what they've done to make such a dense open world game. My biggest issue is repetition, which I guess is the cost of making a large scale game with a small team. The mascot events are mostly a tedious annoyance that gets slightly engaging once your choice of cards actually matters, but you're mostly just mashing the A button to get it over with as soon as possible. There are at least 2X too many mascots and it's hard to care about any of them when they follow identical formulaic progression events with different text. The game is an unabashed collect-a-thon, a style of game I was very much done with back in the early 2000's-I spent half the game looking at pink trash bags wondering when I'd get the tiresome subquest to find them all. Almost every goal in the game is to drive to a location for dialog or pick up some thinly themed numbers to collect (knives, dvds, arcade machines, all of which do the same thing). I wish there were more interesting uses of the truck beyond the fun of driving around, which is eventually undermined by a fast travel feature anyway. Despite being sort of lo-fi, it runs in Unreal so of course it runs slower than it seems it should. Another review mentioned this being like a business sub-game from the Yakuza series and they couldn't be more accurate. If you liked them, you'll like all the numbers and layers of income, staffing, location renovation, etc. If you're like me and avoided those aspects of the Yakuza games, you will have to push through a lot of resistance to enjoy it. The game's economy does successfully tickle the "number go up" gland (an unfortunate irony given the game's attempted focus on treating workers well) which propelled me through, but I wish it wasn't the main motivator because while the writing is solid, I wasn't too invested in the story. The plot is similar to the Yakuza games but without most of the compelling drama, some of the comedy, and a lot of the bland Yukuza business politics. I think the positive ratings for the game mostly speak to the kind of person into these grindy business sims with a silly twist, but if you're more like me you should gauge your tolerance for repetition first before jumping in.

Brilliant game if you love collect-a-thon open world games. It's a slow starter, with lots of dialog, but it's worth it.

Excellent Open world business sim, great music and story.