Not only is this game an ugly, broken mess, full of bad dungeon design, lame enemies, boring combat and repetitive music
But it also has the gall to start going off with fatphobic and transphobic jokes the second you leave the first dungeon
Actually awful
If people I trust didn't tell me the second one is better I would never consider touching it after this shit
Do not play this game

The Caligula Effect: Overdose é uma versão aprimorada do jogo original de mesmo nome lançado exclusivamente para o PS Vita, ela traz diversos aprimoramentos técnicos, novos personagens, a escolha de uma protagonista feminina e uma nova rota pra história principal.

Seu enredo nada original é bastante simples, mas o que se destaca nesse game são os personagens, cada um carregando traumas relacionados aos seus passados e surpresas de cair o queixo do jogador. O sistema social é bem semelhante aos Social Links de Persona, cada indivíduo possui 9 episódios e devemos responder ou agir de acordo com aquele personagem em específico. Além dos mocinhos, temos um grupo de vilões em que iremos conhecer e nessa versão Overdose podemos escolher um lado no final de tudo.

O combate é diferenciado, ele é tático por turnos e baseado em planejamentos sobre ações acumuladas; cada personagem consegue realizar 3 movimentos por turno e logo depois, enxergaremos o futuro vendo eles sendo executados, o interessante desse sistema é que nessas visões podemos ver as ações dos inimigos e caso eles ataquem algum personagem, o boneco em questão perde o restante das ações acumuladas. Portanto devemos planejar muito bem cada batalha e é muito satisfatório quando tudo ocorre como deve; mas nem tudo é um mar de rosas, infelizmente o game é bem facinho, então não temos tantos desafios assim..

O gráfico do jogo é horrível, mesmo sendo originalmente lançado para o PS Vita, pra você ter noção os personagens nem abrem a boca durante as conversas, os cenários dos mapas são repetitivos e tem alguns que parecem até imagens mal colocadas, as animações em formato de anime são pouquíssimas e mal trabalhadas; mas no entanto, as ilustrações de personagens são E-X-C-E-L-E-N-T-E-S, isso não tem como negar, felizmente o título é meio visual novel então veremos elas com muita frequência, incluindo menus de status, skills e por ai vai.

A trilha sonora dinâmica é ótima, cada faixa musical possui 3 variações e seguem aquela pegada JPOP/JROCK, todas bem únicas por sinal.

De conteúdo secundário temos episódios de personagens como já citados e um sistema chamado de Causality Link, ele seria uma grande teia de aranha conectando diversos NPCs do jogo, nele, poderemos aceitar side quests em busca de status melhores; no game existem mais de 400 NPCs e apesar de todos possuírem a mesma aparência, são únicos com nomes e profiles individuais e que ainda por cima trazem missões secundárias; então boa sorte para os complecionistas ai.

Pra finalizar, dificilmente vou recomendar esse jogo pra alguém, não me entenda errado, eu gostei das minhas 40 horas de jogatina, conhecendo ótimos personagens como Ayana, Suzuna, Izuru, Sweet-P além de outros como a Aria, Shogo, Mifue e Kotono; mas fora isso, o game é bem mal feito, ele apresenta boas ideias, mas péssimas execuções, mas caso você queira se aventurar nesse título mesmo sabendo de tudo isso, fica ai a discrição.

Ps: Bad Ending > True Ending, NAMORAL QUE FINAL FOI AQUELE SENHORES.

Es un juego muy dificil de recomendar. Los desarrolladores tenian 5 pesos y un sueño y se nota mucho por la mala y no carismatica calidad de los modelos y ambientes 3D, ademas el diseño de los dungeons es aburrido (la piramide siendo de los peores que me ha tocado forzarme a terminar)

Una de las cosas que destacan del juego es la musica, que para mi estuvo buena pero algunas pistas de los dungeons se vuelven algo molestas luego de andar por 2 horas en puro dungeon extenso y feo

Fuera de eso me gusto mucho como toca muchos temas personales (aunque algunos no se resuelven con el tacto que se merecen) y como se desarrollan los personajes al pasar la historia y sus escenarios personales. Creo que eso principalmente acarrea el juego ya que precisamente solo lo segui jugando para saber como se desenvuelve la historia y conocer los motivos de los antagonistas

Ayana Amamoto you will always be famous

Unfortunately, CE:OD falls into some of the usual traps when boomers write a story for The Youth; which in this case is that it's generally sympathetic to it's character's struggles unless it's something they deem worthy of being made fun of, resulting in some pretty nasty fatphobic and transphobic comments during certain arcs of the game. There's one character that is anorexic IRL - and in her case, it atleast makes sense that she's got a short fuse towards the former because of her insecurity - but the gross way a male character with a virtual female avatar gets treated is absolutely unnecessary, and does make it hard to recommend if either of these things (understandably) offend you.

That being said, the other 95% of the game is really good, and the way the game uses it's setting to the fullest with all other characters is incredibly well done. Characters might seem typical one-note archetypes at first, but though I hate using the word because of how ridiculously overused it is - it's a fantastic deconstruction of the general characters you're used to, and it's fascinating how much the characters grow on you despite not seeming like they're all that at first.

Everything Overdose adds is fantastic too - being able to side with the Musicians to get a more clear vision of their trauma is incredible, and all three of the new characters added to both sides of the parties are incredible. Provided you pretend Stork doesn't exist. Trust me, it's for the best.

So yeah, it's hard to really call it great when it goes out of it's way to be so unnecessarily vile to certain characters, but I do genuinely believe everything else makes up for it if you can put up with that.
For better or for worse, this game doesn't cut any corners with it's topics - so there's plenty of characters I could painfully relate to which made the game really comforting thanks to seeing them overcome their struggles and dare to go home despite the hardships that might await them.

I may be overly critical on Caligula Effect here. I picked it up because it was leaving PS Plus within one week. I had to streamline it AND I wanted the platinum. I knew extremely little of the game. I watched the trailer and it looked silly as hell.

The story and gameplay are mid-level in a JRPG. You're trapped in a simulation with a rag tag group. The story itself isn't necessarily memorable; however I do think it's cool you get to hang out and bond with the bad guys. Not many games let you experience both sides. The battles are turn-based but you can predict your combos. Something fairly new to me so that was welcomed. Battles get repetitive, especially when you're constantly pulled into them.

The story deals with heavy subjects. Suicide, bullying, body shaming, it goes on. It's fine to add those in media and I didn't mind the idea at all. However, CE doesn't hold all of those subjects with care. Some received real conversations. Others had constant jokes to the point where it left a bad taste.

My main criticism is much of the game feels bloated. There are 10 characters in your group and 9 baddies. All characters you can hang out with and bond. It's...a lot. Some get character arcs while others feel like they simply exist. Each baddie gets their own dungeon. Again, it feels like their only purpose is to pad the game. The dungeons get more maze like and bland as the game goes on. A great example to cut out what isn't necessary. More does NOT mean better.

While it wasn't a terrible game, I don't know I'd recommend this to others. There's better JRPGs out there.

Pudes creer que este álbum llamado "The Caligula Effect" vino con un juego gratis?

Hablando en serio, conocí Caligula Effect hace varios años, creo que un poco antes de su anuncio en switch por la misma razón que la mayoría, por su OST el cual incluso habiendo pasado más de 5 años me sigue pareciendo muy bueno y lo volvi a disfrutar cuando lo estaba jugando. Al final iba a comprármelo pero vi algunas reviews donde decían que el juego era una basura y que no valía la pena, así que nunca lo compre por esa razón.

Tiempo después se anunció y luego salió Caligula 2 y nadie confiaba en ese juego, pero solo con su salida en Japón la gente estaba empezando a hablar bien de él y bueno, si ya han visto mi review sabrán que al final lo jugué y termine hace varios meses y al igual que la mayoria, Caligula 2 me pareció uno de los mejores jrpgs que se han sacado en las últimas décadas, pero... Y entonces Caligula 1 lo iba a dejar de lado?

Luego de terminarme el segundo juego agregue a mi backlog el primero aunque estaba en una muy baja prioridad, ya que sabía que más que nada lo iba a jugar por obligación que por gusto... Pasaron los meses y este mes no sé por qué pero me decidí jugarlo de una vez por todas.

Qué me pareció? Lo termine? Fue insufrible? Tal vez estoy siendo muy bueno con Caligula 1, pero fue una experiencia "correcta"... No es el mejor juego del mundo, ni siquiera le llega a su secuela, pero tampoco es tan mala y si consideramos que salió en la psvita creo que incluso sería un juego que recomendaría bastante si tienes la psvita (aunque tengo enteendido que overdose tiene un sistema de combate totalmente diferente que el original).

No me malinterpretes, no es un juego sobresaliente, pero tampoco diría que es una basura u olvidable. Tiene sus fallos que su secuela arreglo como lo es diseño 3d de algunos personajes o lo raro que es no ver a los personajes mover la boca, pero su gameplay e historia sin ser sobresalientes, si hace el juego como mínimo disfruable (Aunque critico el diseño 3d, el arte 2d sigue siendo excelente, de los mejores estilos y diseño de personaje que he visto en un jrpg). He jugado a peores juegos que Calígula, ni siquiera lo consideraría como malo o algo así y no sé por qué en su momento fue tan duramente criticado.

La historia es más floja y los personajes no se sienten tan humanos ni sus motivos para estar en ese mundo son tan bien llevados como en su secuela, pero la historia entretiene (paso de mencionar como se normaliza aqui la gordofobia, la transfobia y meterse con el fisico de las personas. Como me parece hipócrita por parte del guionista ridiculizar estos temas cuando en sí la obra se atreve a hablar de muchos temas serios de manera madura, pero aun así no trato estos 3 temas con la madurez que trata a los otros temas). Claro, hubo cosas en la historia que se sintieron fuere de lugar y sin hacer spoilers hay 2 escenas (muy similares) en la recta final que me pareció brutal que se arriesgaran y mostraran "eso" en un juego, algo que ni persona que los "fans" se la pasan diciendo que es un juego maduro y trata temas serios y demás mamadas se ha atrevido a hacer y dudo que lo haga. El problema con estas 2 escenas es que son tan importantes y tienen carga emocional, pero que la manera en que lo llevaron fue tan pobre y poco realista que aunque aplaudo por atreverse a mostrar una escena así, al final no supieron darle el toque humano y realista a la escena...

Algo que criticar en ambos juegos es su final. Hablando del true ending solmente, donde veo que no Caligula 2 no fue el único que lo hizo, sino que lo hizo también su precuela que fue lo de crear un final tan poco desarrollado. Esto será spoilers, pero cuando al fin logran salir de ese mundo pasa lo mismo que en su secuela, que no muestran una escena donde veamos a todos reunidos en la vida real... Aunque bueno, al menos la primer entrega nos dieron al menos una "cinemática" de 20 segundos donde vemos al menos el cuerpo de los personajes y un poco de su vida en el mundo real (sí, cuerpo porque no había presupuesto para las caras y salían sombreadas).

Recomiendo jugar Caligula? Si vas a jugar Caligula 2 sí, totalmente, ya que aunque no es necesario puesto que muchos jugamos primero al 2, aun así sé que el 2 tiene muchas referencias al primero, además de que si haces como yo y luego juegas al primero, puede que te resulte incómodo pasar a un sistema de combate menos refinado que el primero (personalmente a mí no me incomoda estas cosas, pero puede que a ti si).

The gameplay is busted as hell in a way that makes it a tedious cakewalk. It's incredibly easy but I found myself avoiding combat as much as possible because it'd feel like a chore. There's some good ideas in the writing but the execution leaves much to be desired - for a game that ostensibly asks the player to have empathy for people with all sorts of physical and mental struggles, it thinks fat people are a punchline and trans people are disgusting perverts. That's all that needs to be said, really.

There's a moment in the game where a group of fat women are blocking the way. You get them to move by telling them there's a free buffet table. This causes them to run out of your way, shaking the screen while they move. This is played for laughs but it's delivered in such a lazy way that I can't even say it's a bad joke executed well!

Well they can't all be winners I guess.

I tried, I really tried but The Caligula Effect Overdose, a PS4 port of its original release is just derivative. It's Persona but with the charming colourful aspects that make that enjoyable rinsed out until you get this bland white paste left over. It's not even that it's bad so to speak, I guess it isn't, it's technically functional but it's just utterly forgettable. I'll at least remember a bad game, I won't remember Caligula Effect Overdose excpt what I wrote here for posterity.

The start of this game is kind of a mess of disjointed scenes, poor pacing and clumsy exposition to find you're essentially in the Japanese High School version of the Matrix. You've seen the glitch though and know what you are. You join the Go Home Club, a group who realise they've had their memories tampered with and are trying to break out of this virtual world. Like the idea is fine, even pretty decent if not wholly unique but the execution following these stumbling story reveals is where the game falls on its sword and twists a bit for good measure.

I instantly disliked the cast, either bland or just fundamentally unlikeable. I played for 3 hours and just didn't form the slightest spark of interest in any of them or their issues. I can't even tell you one of their names, it just didn't matter. The reason it didn't matter is they are practically the same as every other white uniformed generic looking character walking around the school. I don't like to use the term but the game is so bizarely generic whilst trying not to be. Almost every NPC has a name, hobbies etc. You can talk to them 3 times in a row to make them your friend and then find out what's troubling them underneath their bland looking exteriors. There are over 500. Five hundred with maybe 6 character models. It's like they took the social link idea from Persona, applied it to every NPC whilst missing the point of personality, attachment and emotional investment.

The dungeon design is the same, I never beat the first one. It was a large sprawling school of the same one corridor, two rooms, and 6 NPC types wandering around. It was needlessly huge sending you from point A to point B. By the time I got to the 4th section and it still looked large and the same, I just couldn't deal with the idea of playing anymore.

If I had to be generous, the music seemed decent and has a cool idea that the track plays all the time but singing only kicks in during combat then transfers to instrumental while walking around and the character art seems nice?

My main take really though is that I may hate Unlimited Saga but at least I remember it and can talk about it passionately where as this I don't really want to talk about at all.

Awful dungeons that not only are repetitive, but they always forces you to take longest path.
Boring and simplistic combat where you'll probably set it to auto or just press one button all the time.
The only saving grace when navigating through the mazes and awful combat was the music. Some of them are so good.
Well, I would not say this is a good game. It has good characters, touches some themes well, others not so much. But would you say dragging yourself through 20~30 hours of an annoying experience is okay? I'd not unless it had excellent characters and an excellent story. That's not the case here.

This makes a really rough first impression, starting off with one of the most bizarrely structured intros I’ve seen from a JRPG, its low budget immediately apparent with the shoddy presentation, and following up with dungeons that I had to drag myself through to stay interested in continuing. Still, I pushed past the first few hours and by the end I guess I didn’t hate it? It does have some good qualities that aren’t apparent at first, which could’ve made for something more compelling if it weren’t let down by its other aspects

The game revolves around a bunch of students trapped in a virtual world called Mobius that’s meant to be an escape from harsh reality, and your group called the “Go-Home Club” tries to fight the Musicians keeping everyone captive and break out. The story itself’s kinda lackluster, but where it shines more than I expected is with the characters. Each get their own scenarios where you can learn more about their trauma and what secrets they’re hiding about themselves, eventually figuring out their true personalities in the real world. In addition you can actually decide to side with the Musicians early on and become one of them as Lucid, secretly working with both teams throughout the game. Some are handled better than others, but it generally does a good job fleshing out not just the main cast between dungeons, but also the villains who get their own scenarios too. I enjoyed this part of the game the most

Though there’s also another aspect called Causality Links, where you can actually talk to any NPC in the game and form a bond with them for passive skills. But instead of just a handful, there’s over 500 walking around each with their own name and quest. Conceptually this is interesting, but unfortunately doesn’t work well since that’s far too many to keep track of and their interactions are shallow. So beyond a couple I didn’t bother with this part much

The combat’s fine if too simplistic. It’s turn based, and you can see how everyone’s turn plays out before you chose it which lets you set up stronger attacks and combos (it won’t show if you miss your attacks though which does happen very often). But there’s not much variation to speak of aside for a few basic skills you’ll unlock as you level up

Unfortunately it gets pretty repetitive simply because of how bad the dungeon design is. Every single one is just a maze of the same environment asset that gets progressively more tedious as it forces you to take the most long winded paths toward your objective. You’re likely to wander aimlessly if you aren’t staring at the map since the pathways go on forever, and it’s made even worse that you’re running into the same type of enemies the entire game. On top of that you have to go through all these dungeons twice if you opt to join the Musicians…

I did like the music at least, especially with how the dungeon tracks only switched to vocals whenever in battles which made them less fatiguing to listen to. And despite the lackluster 3D visuals, the menu and character art was cool

I’d hesitate to recommend it given its flaws, but wouldn’t say my time was wasted. If you can get past the frankly awful first few hours and it's poor dungeons then this might be worth checking out. I’m curious to see how the sequel improves on it

(Update: The sequel's a dramatically better game to the point I would just skip this one and go directly to that lol)