Promise Mascot Company has the power 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 by some means, 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 a significant inter-clan transaction goes pear-shaped. Along with his household in bother, his demise is faked and he is despatched to Kaso-Machi, an underfunded backwater city that is dwelling to the household’s remaining hope — a mascot company. With a purpose to redeem himself and repay the large 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 aren’t folks in costumes — they’re sentient beings.
Very similar to Paradise Killer — the developer’s earlier recreation — a variety of this data is front-loaded, and it may be so much to take onboard. Nevertheless, when you wrap your head round all of it, there is a advanced and well-told crime drama story to unravel over the course of about 20 hours.
In that point, you might 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 full of characters to satisfy, 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 occasions as you observe the story and discover the run-down setting, trying to find collectibles and upgrades.
Every part you do feeds again into the titular company; cleansing shrines across the city offers you with buffs that improve incrementally, whereas smashing into pink trash luggage 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 search out and characters to satisfy, a few of which is able to give you extra potential jobs to your company.
So, there’s loads to maintain you busy within the open world, however what concerning the company itself? To start out getting cash, it’s worthwhile 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. Nevertheless, your mascots will usually run into issues, and also you’re inspired to assist them which, should you do, results in a minigame wherein you do battle towards the difficulty — getting caught in a door, or knocking over a pile of bins, for instance. Utilizing quite a few hero playing cards you acquire all through the sport, you whittle down a well being bar in a quite simple fight state of affairs. It is fairly amusing and ultimately turns into somewhat more durable, however in the end these sequences develop fairly repetitive.
Whether or not you select to have interaction with these or not, your mascots will full their jobs and herald some money. Once you recruit a mascot, it’s worthwhile to sweeten the cope with numerous perks, like a bigger reduce of income, a bonus, or day without work after a sure variety of jobs. The higher the perks you select, the happier and extra motivated they’re going to be. These additionally have an effect on the sum of money you herald, which is essential since you’ll use it to take a position not solely in upgrades to your company, but additionally redeveloping key components of the city, in flip resulting in extra work to your mascots and extra avenues for making a revenue.
On paper, a variety of this sounds prefer it would not match collectively, however in apply it really works somewhat nicely. The circulation of sending out mascots to work, talking with the townsfolk, buying upgrades, and exploring the island is compelling; seeing your funds regularly develop is satisfying, and watching your affect in town and the company as you reinvest offers a rewarding sense of development.
There’s all the time 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 revenue. It might 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 realize merchandise, which may then be bought 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 probably be operating across the open world, and should you hit them, you will unlock upgrades to your truck, starting from elevated velocity to a much bigger increase bar, and even the flexibility to glide via the air. These extras fill out the traversal properly and will let you attain extra secluded components of the map. When it comes to management, there is a diploma of awkwardness concerning the driving; it is troublesome to be very exact, particularly whenever you go off-road.
Mainly all the assorted mechanics and options we have described have been accomplished earlier than many occasions, in some circumstances higher, however Promise Mascot Company combines them in such a method that all of it feels fairly recent. Once more, the way in which 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 components 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 a criminal offense drama story, administration sim mechanics, and open world exploration. Whereas there are some tough edges and repetitive elements, this hangs collectively due to an engrossing story, compelling development, and weird however likeable characters. Larger than the sum of its components, this distinctive recreation has cult hit written throughout it.