Test-Promise Mascot Agency: Test: The most crazy open-world game of the year is somehow very cool

Promise Mascot Agency is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very strange game. And that in every way. Graphically ugly as the night, in a playful way, sometimes also stubborn, the humor so weird that he threatens to tip over at every moment, the story of a misleading panopticity of the nonsense and in between it even trolls its players by suddenly transforming itself into a completely different game than being stated all the time. But somehow it's also very cool.

Promise Mascot Agency comes from the same developers as the indie secret tip Paradise Killer, and that was also quite peculiar, told the least. But somehow very cool. In it you had to educate a murder in paradise that was less modeled on a garden of Eden than a bizarre small town with a prefabricated building settlement, luxury skyscrapers and marina. In Promise Mascot Agency you will now take care of building a job mediation agency for mascot to banish a curse that can be dangled with your spark of life like the Damocles sword under the silk thread.

And that's as weird, crazy and crazy as possible. Already in the intro you will be told that "mascot was born out of the earth for ages" and now live as normal among people. Mascot, you already know: these changing advertising medium in silly costumes such as a hot dog or a happy grinning cat that distribute flyers in front of shops and fast food shops and thus stir the advertising drum. Only that in the case of Promise Mascot Agency it is not people in sweaty disguises, but rather fairytale living beings in the type of Pokémon.

Diagonally as we cannot do weird

Your office assistant Pinky is not a cliché secretary with horn glasses and clamping board under her arm, but, now hold on to you: a lively, separate thumb in the size of a person and with a cute eye beat in Kindschema look. Your first employee in the mascot agency is a changing giant tofu who looks like a crying milk bag on legs. And in his first boss fight he does not fight against evil fantasy monsters, but against the pitfalls of a defective revolving door. All of this tells you the game in a seriousness and with a pathos, as if it were the most natural in the world. Or as if it actually made sense.

Promise Mascot Agency works in its cranky and exaggerated species to far above every border as Japanese as a game can only look at any Japanese. And nevertheless comes from British developers who apparently seem to have a very unusual preference for Japanese extravagances and will be willing to raise them in spheres who are even to most Japanese.

We are talking about a bizarre level that otherwise act Suda51, Hideo Kojima or Swery. The latter even has a guest appearance as a voice actor and thereby confirms the suspicion of which games acted here as a model. And in fact, Promise Mascot Agency reminded me from time to timeFrom the pen just that game development eccentric, also because it sometimes occurs terribly cheap and amateur. But just like the same is somehow very cool.

But what is it all about? Well, let's just start with the story, even if it contributes little to clarify the question, rather more confusion. You play Michi, a Yakuza gangster, who is fallen into favorite, who is banished by his mafia clan to a remote cursed city, where he builds up mascot agency in order to pay off his guilt with the money deserved and to lift the mysterious curse, which kills all Yakuza sooner or later, which set foot in the city.

Three games in one: Open World, Economic Simulation and Pokémon

Then how does it play? And with this question, we are more likely to get the secret about Promise Mascot Agency. Because the new game of the Paradise Killer makers is basically three games in one.

First: a Cozy Open World game, in which you explore a fascinating, but also spoiled game world and, when finding useful objects and collectibles, takes a never-down intoxication to dopamine kicks.Second: an economic simulation, in which you send your mascots to jobs, earn money and then invest in new improvements to make even more money-classic gameplay loop. AndThird: Collective card fightsAccording to the type of JRPGs or Pokémon, in which your mascots do not compete against hostile opponents on their jobs, but against adversity of everyday life as well as tight doors, a slippery floor or broken drinking machine.

Well, all right? Or already completely deterred? Then just let me insure me as an intermediate conclusion: at first I felt very similar. I was deeply undecided whether I wanted to play something like that at all. Whether there is a reasonable game behind it or just an excited important important developer who simply notices and want to dance out of the series.

Especially since the game does a lot in the first few hours to deliberately get on your nerves. I fear that many players will quickly throw the towel and give up irritated. But contrary to any expectation, and probably also against common sense, I soon only prevailed only one mood: I can't explain to myself why ... But somehow all of this is already very cool.

Open World: ugly, but wonderfully authentic

So let's just start with the Open World, because it was technically as outdated in Paradise Killer as a petrified dinosaur bone, but in turn fascinating and unique in her own way. The objects look cheap and angular, especially when, like me, you just justplayed that conjures up the Japanese landscape and architecture in a breathtaking splendor and impressive liveliness on the screen.

In Promise Mascot Agency, the same area sees (in fact the title plays in the same region as the Ubisoft Open World), as is the case on a weekend from the mode editor from the Ollen GTA Vice City. This can no longer be treated as a style. Something like style has the end of the broom that the protagonist (Yakuza Spitz name: "The caretaker") constantly drags around with him (still such a crazy whisper of the game).

And yet the open world of the game appears authentic and credible in its very special way, as the game worlds of Rockstar Games can achieve. Because as bombastic as it is staged in Assassin's Creed: Shadows, it does not seem artificial and made there, sometimes, not naturally grown, but rather, as is now composed of game designers from the asset kit, because you can meet the same copy & paste buildings, -felsen and forests everywhere.

In PROMISE Mascot Agency, on the other hand, the game world works as it could really turn out: the small town with its pedestrian zone and the shops, the cemetery and scrap site on the outskirts, the fishing port with its promenade full of restaurants and cafés and then the Japanese shrine in the forest, the farms and rice fields in the surrounding area and the transition on the hill. As usual, the Open World does not extend largely on the plane, but goes land on and land, and the streets there wind the hill up in realistic serpentines. At no time when playing, I had the impression that I was in a video game world that was designed by level designers, but one whose model could actually exist anywhere in this way. So somehow very cool.

And what do you do in this open world all the time? Well, you can find new mascots that you as an employee for the agency, and NPCs that hand over new cards for the fights and apply collection quests. And otherwise: just that. Collecting, collecting, collecting. So actually exactly what is otherwise annoying in open-world games as nonsensical employment therapy, but actually really makes you really in the mood: Because you find something every few meters that you can need for something, and is rewarded with a small dopamine kick every time.

But before PROMISE Mascot Agency can have an effect as a relaxed Cozy Game, the developers first set the pure stress: As I said, you have to regularly pay protection money from your hard-earned agency income to your Yakuza superiors. And this means that the first hours of play are constantly on the gums.

Because the income is just enough to pay the claims, one is constantly being exposed to the risk of the final game-over. You would like to invest the money earned so much and urgently in your company in order to increase sales and thereby break through the vicious circle of the constantly threatening bankruptcy. But nothing becomes of it. So that you have the feeling of doing something wrong or not having understood properly, because instead of only always hair, it seems to go along the curve to the inevitable end.

A spoiler you want to know!

It may be a huge spoiler, but believe me that I will show you a fighting service if I tell you: it doesn't stay that way forever. After about half of the 20 hours of playing time, the complete gameplay loop reveals itself as a big finte by the developers and Promise Mascot Agency as a Schelmischer Harlekin from a game that has successfully kept you fools all the time.

Because once you have exceeded a certain point, everything will be easy going. Then you suddenly swim in the money and can enjoy the game completely differently, namely as a relaxing experience. At some point your car can even fly and simply suck in collective objects by driving past. Super chilly. The stress at the beginning only wants to put your thumb screws in order to let you feel the relief all the more intensely from the moment when it is solved and the pain of pure bliss gives way. Life can also be nice, you will think.

So my tip: don't let yourself be done at the beginning! Play the game according to your possibilities, collect new mascots, earn money and pay off your debts without grief if things don't seem to go forward in the course of the game. Because that is also part of the indescribable creepiness of the game: Even in its basic game principle, it breaks all expectations and rules that the game history has instead instilled for decades, and trolls its players epochal.

On the other hand, it may also be that the developers simply have completely bogged down when balancing - but I don't think so. The vexier game of the false gameplay tracks simply fits too well into the crude overall picture of a mildly not poor game, with which the developers ultimately simply want to play a big shield citizen prank. But no matter how, in the end it's all somehow cool.

Fights: The final opponent is a door

What annoys something in the long run are the constant "fights" in the way of Random Encounter: In their inserts, your mascots always have to struggle with everyday problems and that in the word sense: Tofu is stuck in a too narrow door, or the pink bear is suddenly followed by a swarm of bees during its appearance, the clumsy fragrance (YEP!) And stumbles over a stack of stacks, and stumbles over a stack of stacks during its appearance. The sexy Legostein lady in suspenders (YEP !!!) gets into a mess with a broken coffee machine.

She then solves the "conflict" in a quick collective card fight. Tofu vs. door. This is strange for the first time to scream, but rather the game flow at the 100th time. Fortunately, the fights are quite short, not too demanding, but basically very smart. So on the whole, somehow very cool, if not all the time.

No game for everyone

Obviously, Promise Mascot Agency is not a game for everyone. You have to have a soft spot for strange and grotesque to get excited about it, and above all, you must not be discouraged by the frustrating initial phase. You also have to be able to recognize the beauty in the ugly. Especially on this point, its presentation, the game is unfortunately giving away unused opportunities, because of course a small development team is unable to create an open world that can be measured with that of a rock star and Ubisoft, swim a little too much in this discipline and stab against the current, as if they wanted to say: " To try hard." Like a punk band that plays guitar with deliberately shitty.

But with a little more love, a few details would have made up for many details, which was not possible in view of the low production budget. If, for example, the collective cards like inorwould be accompanied with a little spark flight and cool effects, the sidewalk could be endured very differently. And if the items found were not just reported with a bleeding, but also presented themselves visually like a small fireworks, the dopamine would really kick.

Strangely enough, everything never really bothered me. I was completely surprised by myself because I constantly felt that I was actually not even as good as it was. And yet I had a lot of fun with a Promise Mascot Agency during the 20 hours of play, also because, unlike pretty much any other open world game, there is hardly any phases of idling, but always has something meaningful and entertaining.

Certainly not everyone will be like that. Probably very few. But maybe that's why it's all somehow ... oh, you know it now.