The Caligula Effect 2

released on Jun 24, 2021

In The Caligula Effect 2 a virtuadoll named Regret has created the world of Redo in order to save people from their past regrets by unknowingly imprisoning them in a simulation. However, this "paradise" is shaken to the core when a virtual idol named X breaks into Regret's virtual reality and restores a high school student's memories of the real world. In order to escape Redo, they re-establish the Go-Home Club, a resistance group that seeks to fight against Regret and her enforcers, the Obbligato Musicians.


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the ending is dumb in that its the best thing I have ever seen. its got incel and indeed femcel rep and tales of skrunklies you can actually cheer for instead of caligula 1 where you kinda wanted everyone to shut up

Caligula Effect Overdose was a pretty legendary kusoge with a good story backed up by some of the worst gameplay systems on every level you can imagine. But, even in that game they managed to nail the vibes. When you first leave the classroom in Overdose and Peter Pan Syndrome starts playing, then get into battle and the vocals come in--its perfect.

They smartly leaned even more into that in Caligula 2 while softening all the edges that made that game so unplayable otherwise. In basically every way, this game is just "Caligula Overdose but better", down to the plot taking place in Redo, a literal redo of the first game's premise.

And I really do mean everything. Starting off, the dungeons are no longer awful, just bad. There's nothing like the fucking library or Aztec Temple of the first game, which alone is great. I hope by the third game they actually manage to make a good one.

The combat was always passable in Overdose, but the various aesthetic improvements here really nail the "contructing a music video" vibe of the game, especially the new "x-jack" feature which instantly swaps out the bgm with one sung by your friendly neighborhood good guy vocaloid and buffs your team--its honestly so sick when you're fighting a boss, x-jack and proceed to 100 hit combo all over them while your theme song plays, it just feels so triumphant and powerful. The mechanical improvements help too, of course, I can genuinely say I was Having Fun with the fights the entire way through, if I played through again I'd probably go to the highest difficulty just to see how crazy that is.

Narratively, while this game sacrifices playable musicians and doesn't dwell quite as much really fucked up protagonists--there's no absolute scumbags like Eiji in this game you're forced to play with--it makes up for it by just having a really entertaining party. Your initial two--trendy sneakerhead Gin and airheaded old soul Sarasa are immediately endearing and stayed some of my favorites through the entire game, the local fuckboy Kobato is easily the funniest womanizer I've ever seen in a jrpg--basically every line he says had me dying of laughter, the genki zoomer Nico is similarly hilarious and has one of the most interesting interior lives I've seen in a game, and who can forget our lovely class president Marie who's character basically manages to carry the entirety of act two on her predicament. Even the less-immediately interesting party members all have many moments and exploring their backstories is rewarding all the same. I genuinely love all these weirdos so much.

Even the ost is better, while I would never say Overdose's collection of vocaloid-inspired bangers anything remotely nearing bad, it was a bit too similar sounding--never really trending away from that sort of edgy emo-rock sound(with one or two notable exceptions like Oster Project's wonderful Tokimeki Reverie). Here, the tracks generally trend a bit more towards pop, but there's a significant amount of drift in sound, all for the better, with stuff like the wistful main theme SINGI, the funky spoken word infusion of Miss Conductor, or the immensely groovy Swap Out all being standouts for me. And of course, every time you get to a boss fight and the teddyloid EDM remix happens--its always amazing, even managing to take the more generic songs to incredible heights.

And when you get to the end, and you see what exactly the conflict of the final boss is--you can't help but laugh at it all. The narrative at play here is surprisingly stripped-back for what you're doing, but it works and for how little it actually says it sold itself to me.

If Caligula 2 suffers, its mostly just in the matter of budget--the side content continues to be lacking, if not as bad as the first game. Some of the climaxes fail to really connect just because they didn't really have the budget to sell the moment. The generic ost outside of the vocaloid tracks is penis music.

Altogether, just a really wonderful game--my hope is that this game's (relative) success gives them access to more resources so they can keep sanding off the sharp edges, because I genuinely believe they can produce one of those once-in-a-lifetime masterpieces with just a bit more.

all of the dungeon/boss themes were composed by vocaloid producers which is all you need to know
lowkey better than at least some of the nusona games

Better than Persona 5, fight me in the Denny's parking lot about it.

I REGRET that i didnt play this sooner
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