The Caligula Effect: Overdose is an absolutely poor attempt at a JRPG on just about every front, which is a shame because I was initially very interested after watching gameplay of what seems to be a unique and gratifying combat system. The combat however, was woefully undelivering on what made it seem so fun, which is unfortunately the first of many things wrong with the game.

To start; the character in Caligula Effect are one-note JRPG anime mumbo jumbo with absolutely zero depth. If you've played character driven RPG's like Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, Final Fantasy VI-X, and even Persona 4 & 5, you're familiar with what an engaging and personable cast of characters feels like in an RPG. They are people worth fighting alongside, people who supply memorable experiences and have depth beyond what the protagonist does. In Caligula Effect, you have none of that. This game is trope galore, with resident "Angry and stupid but has a heart of gold," "The Futaba #Socialmedia keyboard warrior," "Male tsundere," the "EEK! Female Character," and nobody's favorite, "The Silent Protagonist." You've seen all of these characters before, and none of them provide any depth to the game throughout the story. About halfway through the game it came to my attention there was a social link system, if its that hidden that is not a good thing. After completing a few of the early social links, I quickly determined that going through each person's story was a complete waste of time.

Caligula Effect's story could be cool, and on a surface level the whole "people chasing an idyllic world that they wish not to leave" is pretty neat. However, when you add in the fact that it's run by two Hatsune-Miku-esque vtubers that have little to no depth, it quickly becomes uninteresting. The AI that follows your party is extremely annoying, and her forced humour detracts from a lot of the emotional moments of the game. Going from dungeon to dungeon with no hub world or moments of downtime really just... sucked, but given the lack of quality in the rest of the game, I'm sort of thankful. I can't imagine having to spend more time playing this game. I'm still generally unsure why the story gets player to move from location to location, as its not sensical and adds nothing to the overarching story. It's basically just "new location xD." There's one point in the game where you are meant to make a decision that drastically changes how you play through the next parts of the game, however it was so unsensical and the person enticing you to do so makes such a poor case, I couldn't imagine doing it.

The environments of this game are extremely drab and boring to traverse, and honestly quickly becomes taxing to do so. From the first "dungeon" to the last, you spend your storybeats walking down what feels like the same recycled hallways with soulless enemies (which are the exact same throughout the entire game) ad nauseum. Every mini-objective within the dungeon had a "your princess is in another castle" storybeat. Think you have gotten to the objective and can continue to the area boss? Nope, you have to find four different keycards to open the first door, after which you'll have to fight three different minibosses, and after that you'll have to collect two keys to open the last door. It's like this throughout the games many monotonous dungeons, and it never feels rewarding. I dreaded going to the objective marker because I knew it meant that I would have to embark on some new menial task. Everything when it comes to moving in dungeons felt like a slog, the areas were massive and there was never, not even once, a point a to point b traversal. If your objective looked like it was in front of you, that meant you actually had to curve around the entire map a couple times, fight the same enemies for what felt like forever, and eventually get to the next storybeat. Not even the fun music could save dungeons from their heightened level of boredom and dragged out length.

Combat in this The Caligula Effect: Overdose is what initially drew me in, I saw Youtube reviews and watched on Steam's previews to see how intricate the combat looked, however playing the game "the correct way" just felt like you were shorting yourself. It seems the intention is to select your moves, and use the future play-out the game provides to adjust accordingly to enemy movement, and to create combos. It was fairly early on in the game where I realized that I could just spam the basic attack for my protagonist and hit auto for the rest of the party. This method lasted from then all the way until the end of the game, I'm not even kidding or exagerating. Most bosses ended on the first turn of using what seemed the equivalent of a "limit break" or "ultimate" attack" for each party member. I played on normal and lack of difficulty or need to pay attention to the game's mechanics felt unfulfilling.

If you have an opportunity to play The Caligula Effect: Overdose or any other game, I cannot recommend picking this.