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.