Compile Heart is a developer whose output I have come to approach with a certain set of expectations: pastel character art, a cast of eccentric personalities dialled up to eleven, some non-serious funtimes and… as past reviews have shown… standards from the really enjoyable to the really underwhelming. Their latest offering, published by Idea Factory International, is Calamity Angels: Special Delivery, a curious hybrid of turn-based RPG and board game built entirely around the noble profession of package delivery – feeling like a more modern take on Dokapon Kingdom, just Compile Heart-ified more. Players step into the shoes of Yuri, the freshly appointed leader of the Cutie Angels, a courier team whose reputation for mishaps is so infamous that the rest of the Delivery Guild has rebranded them the “Calamity Angels”, and it falls to you to wrangle this band of misfits into something resembling a respectable outfit as you carry parcels across the Orkotris Region. It is a premise with genuine comedic promise, and at a budget-friendly price point with a runtime of roughly a dozen hours, it is very much a bite-sized affair. But does this ragtag crew deliver the goods, or does the whole parcel arrive damaged in transit? Read on to find out!
For better or worse, Calamity Angels: Special Delivery keeps things narratively light. The main story is a thin framework of guild rank-ups and a package-pinching bandit gang, existing largely as an excuse to bounce its characters off one another, and while the courier premise gets the imagination going, the game rarely does anything meaningful with it. Thankfully, the cast picks up much of the slack. Each member of the Angels is built around a medley of anime tropes, and while none of them is given much depth beyond their signature gag, they remain likeable company throughout, with the character side quests offering more insight than the main plot ever manages.
Kei Nanameda’s character artwork in Calamity Angels: Special Delivery is the true star of the presentation, with designs so expressive that you can read someone’s entire personality at a glance, though the plain enemy designs, stiff chibi battle sprites, and samey environments do not receive anywhere near the same level of care. The soundtrack is jaunty and pleasant without ever being memorable, while the voice acting in both English and Japanese does an admirable job bringing the comedy to life, although it can feel like you are going through the same pre-defined voice lines after a while.
The core gameplay loop of Calamity Angels: Special Delivery is simple enough: you accept a delivery request at the guild, slot the package into a grid-based bag alongside your other resources, and then head out onto a board game-style map, spinning a wheel to determine how many spaces you can move as you wind your way towards the recipient within a set number of turns. The spaces along the way dish out buffs, debuffs, healing, currency, treasure, and monster encounters, with imposing Omoikurai beasts roaming freely to keep you on your toes. It is a genuinely charming structure for the first few hours, carrying that lower-stakes tabletop board-game vibe, where each spin quickly moves towards celebration or cries of despair from the player. The trouble is that there is very little underneath it: route planning never demands real thought, the bag management trivialises itself once early upgrades arrive, and because each map’s layout and rewards are fixed, the sense of discovery evaporates quickly.
Where Calamity Angels: Special Delivery fares better is in its RPG battle mechanics, which take the traditional turn-based formula and hands it over to a party who simply may not feel like cooperating. Every character has a Tension level tied to their mood, and commands that do not suit their personality run a real risk of being ignored entirely, with your chosen fighter instead doing something else… or nothing at all. What? You thought that because you gained control, a group nicknamed the Calamity Angels would suddenly be 100% professional and obedient? What’s clever is that disobedience comes with a power bonus, so managing personalities becomes tactical, and learning to steer each character’s stubbornness to your advantage is surprisingly fun. When it all comes together, it is hilarious and refreshingly unpredictable; the catch is that the difficulty never rises to meet the system, with most battles winnable regardless of how mutinous your crew is feeling.
Calamity Angels: Special Delivery is a package which combines a short, silly, character-driven comedy RPG with board game mechanics and a few quirks here and there – which is not revolutionary or particularly memorable in the long-term, but offers a fun, uncomplicated experience. Played in short sessions, its unruly cast and unpredictable battles will keep a smile on your face; played in long stretches, the repetition of its boards, the shallowness of its systems, and the endless chatter of its cast will wear that smile thin. However, I can see something special buried amongst the concept and wouldn’t mind seeing Compile Heart returning their gaze to the Cutie Angels sometime in the future, with more polish in a second outing.
Final Score for Calamity Angels: Special Delivery
This review is based on the PlayStation 5 version of Calamity Angels: Special Delivery. A digital code for the game was provided by Idea Factory International.
Calamity Angels: Special Delivery is now available to purchase on PC (via Steam), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.
