Also known as Kaisoku Tenshi (or as the English on the Japanese box art says, "High Tension Comical Action Game The Rapid Angel"), this is a game I learned about via a video that someone on the Slack chat shared with me about cool, rare games on Japanese PSN to look at before the service was (going to be) shut down. It looked neat, so I picked it up, and this month's TR theme of playing very expensive games made it the perfect thing to try out. I really didn't know what to expect from this game other than something a bit silly, but I was absolutely delighted with what I ended up finding. It took me a little under 2 hours to beat the game playing as Ayane on my PS3.

The game's story is ultimately pretty simple. You play as one of three girls working for the Rapid Angel delivery company. You aren't a very popular delivery company, but when you get a very important delivery, it's up to you to see it to its destination! It turns out this is a VERY important delivery, as you'll be fighting no shortage of bandits, evil animals, super powered assassins, and demons before the package reaches its safe(?) destination! The game has a SUPER 90's animation style, and it not only has a (weirdly very compressed) animated opening video, but also full VA of the characters speaking to give the story through stills and VN-style asides in between levels. Each playable character even has her own version of the story, giving it a good deal of replay value outside of going for higher scores and such. It's super charming and silly and I was really taken just how wacky it is. It won't be everyone's style of humor, but it was something I found very entertaining~.

The gameplay is a side-scrolling action platformer with a few branching paths thrown in. There are plenty of bosses, both mid-level and end-level, to fight, but the important thing here is your time limit! It's not the strictest time limit in the world, but it plays into the whole aspect of making your delivery on time. While the combat is fine, your range is short, so it's often the smarter choice to prioritize your health and your clock, because you have a delivery to make! The game does have infinite continues, and you do have a pretty big health bar, but you also only have one life. This gives the game a good level of challenge without feeling too unforgiving, and even though I felt satisfied beating it using a few continues, it's something I think I could beat in one continue if given a few more playthroughs.

The presentation is excellent. As previously mentioned, the very 90's style fits the tone of the game fantastically. Characters have tons of really silly and exaggerated facial expressions they'll pull to match how extra their VA work is, and it all fits together great. The soundtrack is also quite solid, though not super duper memorable compared to the graphical presentation.


Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a bit of a harder game to recommend if you can't understand Japanese, but I definitely got my 600 yen's worth with this one. It's even on international PSN as well as Japanese PSN, so you don't even need to make a foreign account to pick this one up the same way I did~. If you're into platformers and love a weird, silly style, this is absolutely a game you can't afford to miss out on.