Caligula Effect 2

This is a live blog of notes because I can feel things slipping away lol.

At the moment I’ve finished the first three dungeons, so that’s Machina, Pandora, and MU-kun. So far, the gameplay’s definitely a step up but… not that much. I still have a lot of issues with it.

What I’ve been enjoying so far is the new music, new characters, and more importantly, I think the dynamics are a lot nicer in this game compared to 1 lol. As a friend put it, the go-homie club…

It’s interesting that I felt in Caligula 1, a lot of the game was about how to face your regrets. I mean, that was the whole point. But I guess it was more about… accepting who you are.

In two, so far it’s felt less about accepting who you are/were, but more about how the characters face forward. Like embracing it and then moving on. It’s similar, but at the same time different. Like in Caligula 1, a lot of the musicians clearly take up their form that’s almost an “opposite” of what they were in reality. Well, some of them at least. In 2, so far it feels like they’re like an “ideal” of who they are, again, similar but different. For example, Machina takes on the form of an undying body, Pandora creates an isolated garden, and MU-kun creates someone who’s loved by all. This isn’t necessarily an opposite of who they are in reality and a way of escaping their form, but it’s a way that personifies their ideals basically.

Those are my two cents so far. Who knows what I’ll write next!

I finished more of the main story but more importantly I finished Gin’s, Sahara’s, and Shota’s character episodes!

The first one I finished was Sahara’s, as someone whose grandma passed away not too long ago, it was actually a little… painful at times to read through. Her thoughts about how she lived a long enough life and that she would be more than okay with passing and willing to self sacrifice as a result well, that shit kinda hurt me. Because I sympathized with the main character and Ki when they said that regardless they still wanted her to live. My grandma went through some things and I wondered how she felt near the end. It just felt like one of those weird universe moments where I read/played this right after my grandma passed. It makes me feel weird, and well, ultimately I think I just wished I spent more time with her despite how hard it would be since she lived in another country.

The second one I finished was Shota’s, which I thought was also somewhat relatable lol. I too have difficult times making decisions and choices and while it’s not because of something as traumatic as his, I get wanting that security of someone making the choices for you and just executing them. But it’s not a way to live, and I’m glad he realizes that too. Sometimes you just have to have conviction in your choice, and I liked that he acknowledges that he would’ve gone back and make the same choice too. Part of me wonders if it would’ve been a bit more effective if the child had died as a result of his actions, and how traumatized he would’ve been after that. Maybe a bit too dark for Caligula? Though Caligula does get pretty dark anyways…

Now my favourite of the three that I finished was Gin’s. I feel like Gin’s character episodes really solidified as to why I like Caligula’s writing. Normally with sorta silent MCs I’m not really a big fan of them, but I think Ki makes up for it in a big way. Her character development through the character episodes and story is honestly very touching, and I was astounded when she admitted to looking up agender and nonbinary terms to try to understand Gin better. Her willingness to understand the Go-Home club is what makes her very endearing to me. And I appreciate how they explored the topic of Gin’s gender issues too. I’ll even admit I was actually worried that when Gin began going “well I don’t feel right as a man either” that they were somehow going to walk it back, but when they brought up the topic of being non binary I was very pleasantly surprised. Not to butt in with my own feelings but I also am not really one for liking being labelled and prefer being my own individual being, so when Ki explained that you could just pick what you like, I agreed whole heartedly and very much supported Gin in their journey as well on that. Gin is my non binary goat…

Played another big chunk and got to the point where you could get the bad end (wicked my goat) and of course the transition to the true end.

I think they learned a lot from Caligula 1, and that they decided to integrate the musicians a lot more throughout the story. It was definitely the weakest part of Caligula 1 for me and I think including them more centrally and bringing them back from time to time instead of a musician “side” really helps a lot with the story’s pacing.

As for the musicians themselves, I’m not 100% like “yeah they’re all cool!” the same way I liked a lot of the musicians from 1, but I do like how the musicians are pretty individually motivated. A lot of them are basically like “yeah fuck off bluffman you NERD” and I like that.

Another thing I really like is the wire conversations, there’s a bit of QOL that would be nice (letting you skip past previously sent convos) but otherwise I like the insight you get into each character from them. It adds an unsubtle level of foreshadowing for some (Niko…) but it’s a fun way to learn more about each character in a way that doesn’t break the flow of the game.

I’m very interested to see how Marie/Wicked are treated throughout the true end. Again, it felt like they learned from one where Wicked was a bit of an okay character to me because she didn’t get much screen time, but bringing her back in this way was an interesting way to not only give her some more closure (even after the book) but to also set up a nice hook into the second game too.

Ryutos character episodes shocked me the most. It’s hilarious that I did this right after a therapy session but I really felt it when they talked about how all this pressure was self inflicted. And that how he wanted to try living life like them, and to waste his talents on something.

I think the most surprising thing about Caligula to me is how touching and endearing the cast is, specifically how Ki grows as a character throughout. In 1, Aria kinda felt like a terrible person, but in 2, Ki actively wants to do better and tries to understand everyone. For that alone I really like her.

There’s a pretty mature conversation between Kiriko and Pandora that I liked. Kiriko doesn’t force her perspective of wanting to go home on Pandora and simply asks her to reflect on it.

I think in general I appreciate the mature approach the cast has to most situations. I guess it’s fitting since most of them are adults after all.

actual blog post below

Having just finished Caligula Effect 2, the first thing I want to say is that this is an improvement over the first Caligula Effect in almost every way. It was a fun time and I even took the time to finish some of the side content which I did not do in the first one. More notably is that I actually played and finished the game on normal and tried actually engaging with the gameplay.

Before I even talk about the main things, the performance in this game was already way better than the first (I was able to play it all on my steam deck!) and combat was an improvement, though… not by that much. There were still a lot of the same issues from the first game like how the downtime felt incredibly long (though some characters were better like Kiriko), chaining actions was sometimes incredibly unreliable because of how collision/tracking worked, trying to predict enemy actions was unbearable because any adjustment to your timing reset the timeline to the start, buffs/debuffs feeling pointless because of duration of both them and fights, etc. Like I felt with the first game, there’s a lot of POTENTIAL in this gameplay, I think it’s a really cool idea that also fits in with the musical themes of the game (the attack timeline looking like sheet music while also being divided into measures). It’s just the execution is unpolished. Maybe if there’s a third it’ll be even better.

What I did think was really cool was the inclusion of a video for each Musician’s song. The lyric video playing the back during fights was a good touch and really added to that sort of vocaloid aesthetic/feeling. Unfortunately, the camera during fights didn’t really accommodate. I would’ve loved having a better free cam during fights to focus on the videos, and there was also some desync but I’m willing to believe that might’ve been because I was playing on steam deck (with linux/proton, but otherwise flawless experience).

The models and animations also definitely improved from the first game, though there’s a couple of stiff ones and noticeably a couple of really stiff “ultimates” that look kind of funny because of how they kind of just stay on screen. Notably Marie’s where it’s just a frame of her unblinking for like a solid couple of seconds. Also the main character’s high five with χ is pretty funny too.

But as usual with Furyu games, the gameplay is usually secondary to the writing which I think 2 does an excellent job with.

I have to admit I was actually initially skeptical of a sequel to the first game. Mostly because the first game’s ending didn’t really feel like it would lead to a sequel. A (mostly) new cast would make sense but I was worried they’d either rehash things or it would just ultimately not reaaaally make sense to have a sequel. Thankfully my worries were unfounded, I think the reasoning they came up to have Redo made sense, though they definitely have the novel they wrote after 1 to thank for that. They also included the perspective of an “NPC” from 1, which I thought was a really interesting perspective to have in 2.

Speaking of, I enjoyed the Marie/Wicked novel that came out after 1. I think one of the biggest weakness’ with 1 was that Marie/Wicked’s character was kind of out of left field (though I’ve heard the anime does it a bit better) and even with the musician arc it’s a bit rushed/condensed due to the nature of when she’s introduced. The novel corrects a lot of it (even if it doesn’t take Overdose into account), and I was actually initially skeptical of 2 including her character since it almost felt like just a way to tie in a character from 1/have a reason for a sequel. But I was pleasantly surprised with how they treated her character in 2 especially given her very unique circumstances.

The overall story is relatively straightforward and mirrors 1, but obviously the biggest difference is what the cast is like. I really liked the cast in 2, a friend referred to them as the Go-Homie club and honestly I cannot think of a more apt description. In 1, the cast was… let’s just say not the best people. I still remember Mifue’s immediate comments towards Sweet-P’s allies and being insanely shocked at the level of fat shaming she did. I also admit this might also be a bit of recency bias but I also felt that the gang in 2 got along a lot better than they did in 1. They felt a lot more closer at least.

Personally I also felt the musicians as a group were more interesting in 2. I think the musicians in 1 individually were a bit stronger too me as a whole (musician arc helps with that a lot), but as a group I found their dynamic and motivations being different a lot more interesting. In particular I found Pandora and #QP very funny with how they couldn’t care at all about Redo, and even Kudan having her own goal that’s separate from Bluffman’s to be more interesting. What really helped is I think they learned from 1 and integrated the musicians more throughout the story.

Something I felt also pretty cool, and this could be me talking out of my ass, but I liked how the overall theming of the character arcs between 2 and 1 are different. Both are about characters who escape reality with the idea of “redo"ing parts of their life in an ideal way.

However, I think the biggest difference is that 1 felt a lot more like escapism to me. In the sense that a lot of characters felt like they were running away from their problems, or ignoring them in some way. In 2 however, I felt they were more about chasing their ideals. They’re similar, but not exactly the same to me.

I felt this way strongly when going through the character episodes in 2. A lot of the character episodes in 1 felt more like about confronting their trauma and learning to accept it. In 2, it felt more like about moving forwards in life. And their forms/roles in Redo reflect this too with what they “want” to be doing.

In general, I really liked the characters in the Go-home club in 2. Their character episodes went a long way in solidifying how much I liked them since it was on top of their already fun dynamics in the main story.

I think I’d want to give a special shout out to Gin’s character episodes because I think it encompasses a lot of what I really liked about Caligula Effect’s characters. I will confess that I was initially worried with the direction they were going in when Gin talks about how they don’t feel like they fit in as a man either when they definitely didn’t feel like a woman. In my head I thought “please don’t back track on this somehow and say that Gin should just return to being a woman” and was incredibly surprised that they talked about agender and nonbinary. Even more so that χ was the one who brought it up. When χ mentioned that she had looked up the terms to better understand Gin I was incredibly, incredibly touched. It felt like compared to Aria in 1, χ was much more mature and I felt that her character growth and the way she accompanies the main characters in scenes makes the silent protagonist work well.

This is to say that Caligula Effect 2 surprised me with how mature the characters acted and behaved. Another scene that caught me off guard was when Ryuto was acting like his usual prideful self. I expected the rest of the characters to go through the process of shunning him, the usual things that would happen when a kid goes off on you like that. But again, I was surprised that the characters took it in stride and acknowledged that he’s a kid. Of course he’d act like that.

It reminded me that despite the setting being in a high school, the characters are (mostly) adults. And the adults can actually act like adults. I think that’s another reason why I enjoyed the writing was because the characters acted their age and their reactions were realistic for the situations they are in. Their traumas are handled respectfully (in 2), and don’t get played off as jokes.

I remember the first time I saw Kobato, I initially thought I was going to hate that character. I usually don’t really like those playboy characters because they tend to be grating, but I was again quite surprised with how much I liked him. He was a very honest to himself person, and it made sense considered that he felt like his youth was stolen from him by being locked in Mobius. More than that, he’s actually quite respectful in his own ways, and very earnest.

Another standout character episode to me was Niko/Iori’s, whose backstory/trauma was a bit more traumatic than I expected. I had thought she would’ve been replacing her sister, but did not expect the parental involvement as well lol. It was quite dark honestly, and the ending of the character episodes was a bit vague, but that’s actually something I really liked about the character episodes in 2.

In 2, I felt that a lot of the character episodes resolutions were actually open ended in terms of how each character was going to move forward. And honestly? I really liked that.

The character episodes explored each character and their desires on how they wanted to live in reality, and the struggles they faced with their current selves. But a lot of traumas are not very easily resolved, even with a magical world like Redo. I really liked that instead of a blanket ending and the character is “complete”, there’s still road left for them to travel.

Funnily enough, I was actually going to write that one downside I felt was that some character episodes didn’t feel fully integrated and I wondered if the writers wrote the main story technically taking that into account. But upon further reflection, I think it works in the same way I just talked about before where their traumas aren’t easily resolved, and the character episodes are more about them finding a path forward when they previously didn’t have any. Iori’s is an interesting case, as she makes the decision to keep living as Niko for a little while longer while she thinks about it. I almost wonder if they did this to prevent the story from changing too much, but in some ways again, I actually think it’s not an incorrect choice to make.

Anyways, there’s a lot to write about, but I’ll probably stop here. Those were the main things I wanted to talk about anyways. I was again surprisingly touched by the maturity of the characters and the writing as a whole. The OST was good, and once again, the Furyu curse of jank gameplay… I’d be interested in a third game since technically they’ve shown that they’ve been able to improve themselves each time, but I’m worried that they’d lack a good way to introduce yet another Mobius.