Throughout the entire Promise Mascot Agency event, I was Pinkie's girlfriend. Wherever she needed to go, I had to transport her in my crappy truck. In fact, I was responsible for transporting each and every mascot that came across the doors of the Promise Mascot Agency and fell under my work. When Kofun needed to go to the nearby cemetery, I stepped up for the job. When Trororo needed a ride to the local adult store, I reluctantly told him to hop on over. Whether by land, air or sea, it was my responsibility, and mine alone, to make sure everyone got where they needed to go.
Promise Mascot Agency is a game filled to the brim with chores and mundane tasks like this one. As I traveled around the island of Kaso Machi, in and out of ramshackle villages and farm fields, I discovered that the cast of Promise Mascot Agency was full of people in need of some help. An English teacher who worked unpaid overtime switches to night school at her underfunded workplace. A nearby mechanic with an insatiable curiosity about the occult who has no time for work and family. If there was a shrine to sweep, I was there with a broom in a split second. Whether it was a local bartender in a shabby suit, a farmer turned streamer, or, of course, a disenfranchised youth, I was there with an olive branch to extend.
Promise Mascot Agency probably sounds like a confusing game. This. In one breath, this title is about a former yakuza, beautifully voiced by the same actor who plays Kiryu in the Yakuza games, driving around the countryside, collecting seemingly endless collectibles and upgrades, and sending living mascots (like a giant crying tofu block) on missions through a simplified control system and card mini-game. In the latter case, you must play support cards with different strengths and weaknesses while the talisman is doing its work, in order to overcome the disturbing interference that arises and ensure the success of the work. In other words, it is a complete exercise in compassion and empathy. It's rarely slick and sexy—Promise Mascot Agency doesn't offer over-the-top decorations or hide neat new super moves to reward the player for completing a long to-do list. But real, tender compassion for your fellow man rarely looks this good, and the unappealing honesty of Promise Mascot Agency is what I admire about one of 2025's best and brightest games.
When you first arrive in Kaso-Machi and take over the mascot agency, your main goal is to increase traffic to the city's previously popular tourist spots. Due to the deteriorating economic status of the island, most of the people who lived through its trials and tribulations abandoned it. All that remains are groups of increasingly poor people who are either too proud to leave or simply stuck. The economy needs a shot in the arm, and so it falls on you, as Michie, who was kicked out of the yakuza for his poor performance, to send mascots to the few businesses that are still in business, raise interest rates, and invest your earnings in other businesses and mascots around Kaso-Machi.
Progress is slow but steady. Before you know it, areas that once seemed destined to fade into oblivion begin to show faint signs of life again. A long-dormant festival is reborn, and over time this energy spreads to the rest of the island. A virtually abandoned train station in the city center, run by a charming man and his cat in the hat, is once again on the verge of redundancy. A few towns away from the central hub of Kaso-Machi, you revive the arcade. As the cultural centers and infrastructure of Kaso Machi are revived, life on the cursed island begins to flourish again, and its inhabitants pour their goodwill and energy back into you, the catalyst for this change.
Granted, what I'm describing is a pretty standard upgrade system, but something about the way Promise Mascot Agency presents them makes it stand above its peers. The “boosts” given by Michi and Pinky are not actually skills that the player can then use to their advantage, like a standard skill tree or progression system. For example, you get a turbo upgrade for your truck, but using it will benefit more than just you. There are no races in Promise Mascot Agency, although time trials were added in a post-launch update. However, it is useful for getting you and whoever you are driving to your destination faster and continuing to help and delegate tasks around the island. The same goes for the possible boat and aircraft upgrades you'll receive.
Spoilers for Promise Mascot Agency follow.
The gun upgrade you get as you progress through Promise Mascot Agency almost feels like the point where some form of vehicular combat might be introduced into the game. Instead, you use it to launch Pinky, the Promise Mascot Agency's sociopathic companion character, into piles of trash, as one of the side activities you're invited to take part in is cleaning up Kaso-machi's trash. You can also fire her at the sign of the re-election of the corrupt mayor that Pinkie encounters in the final act of the game! Otherwise, the cannon is almost comically useless: it will simply launch Pinky straight into the sky, doing no one any good.
It's funny how ordinary Promise Mascot Agency is. In that sense, it's very similar to the Yakuza games, which have no shortage of strange characters going on sometimes baffling journeys that often end up in deeply humane, relatable, and sometimes heartbreakingly boring ways. It's a look into the human condition that I resonate with on a deep level, and I was so glad to find it beneath the surface of Promise Mascot Agency. That's why I enjoyed the simplistic motivations of the cast and why I was fascinated by the hard work they constantly put on me, as well as the mission to improve the lives of everyone in Kaso-Machi. About building a community that can resist corruption in local government, overcome its terrible and tragic past and build a bright future together.
All the community-building efforts the player works toward in the game—all the trash you clean up, the signs you take down, and the businesses you bring back to Kaso-Machi—culminate in the game's uplifting ending. In short, the continued existence of your agency, which has provided a home for the mascots, economic stability on the island and exposed local corruption, is at risk. The only way to ensure its continuation is to win the national competition, which, as it becomes clear, is stacked against you.
You lose, and you lose badly. But at Meechie's lowest point, he retreats into a mind palace of sorts (Pinky calls it a “metaphysical nightmare”) and comes face to face with everyone he's helped – who you, the player, have helped. Every mascot we've hired, every business owner we've helped, every teenage thug we've taken down, and even members of the yakuza family that kicked us out have shown up to Michi. The friendly faces of the whole island supported us, dusted us off and reminded us that we were not alone.
The end of the game is reminiscent of the Promise Mascot Agency card mini-game. Only at the end of the game, all the support cards of your allies are combined into several strong ones that destroy any threat in one game. And as I headed toward the end of Promise Mascot Agency on the back of a community that I had spent over 20 hours building and strengthening, I couldn't help but think that, of course, the strongest force of them all was the power of friendship. Who would have thought that I would find one of the most powerful examples of community in one of the most bizarre games about driving a sentient (and not to mention deadly) human-sized thumb around the city?
