Caligula Effect Overdose

Caligula Effect Overdose was a game that a friend generously gifted to me and really liked. I’ll admit that initially I was a little skeptical because I heard the game wasn’t exactly great, but I learned that was mostly in reference to the gameplay itself. Seeing that the publisher was Furyu… well having played Crystar/Crymachina I guess I could say I wasn’t too surprised. But, overall I actually enjoyed my time with the game, though with a few major caveats.

First, to get the bad out of the way, yes, the gameplay was… Let’s just say that it’s been a while since I played a game with what felt like the potential to be extremely cool. I really, REALLY, liked the idea of the gameplay system. You get to plan out your turns, visualize cool combos, and see them execute? Sounds really cool!

Unfortunately, that wasn’t exactly the case. There’s a couple of glaring flaws with the combat system. The very first thing that became apparent is that after you plan out your turn, you enter a downtime that can sometimes be excruciatingly long. It doesn’t start out too bad, but when you realize that it can be upwards of like 5 seconds, it adds up and is extremely frustrating to deal with.

The other problem is that to balance the fact that in theory you can just juggle the enemy forever is that they added the concept of missing. What’s the problem with missing? Well, if you miss, then the rest of your combo is basically guaranteed to do nothing. Missing is also increasingly frustrating as the higher level enemies are, the easier it is to miss and do effectively nothing on your turn.

Enemies can also guard which force you to use a guard break move or also just sit there waiting for the guard to go down. Counter moves are a cool idea if it wasn’t for the fact that I previously mentioned, you can just miss and end up doing nothing.

This is also compounded by the fact that there is a LOT of enemies. Thankfully you can dodge them by walking around them, but doing so makes you lose exp. The other problem is that the enemy variety barely changes throughout the game. So for majority of the game you are facing effectively just a few different types of enemies. Some dungeons were also INCREDIBLY painful to navigate, namely one in particular that was just a maze of long narrow corridors that had many enemies you were forced to fight.

It’s a shame because almost everything else I think is really, really cool about the game’s gameplay system. Encounters start with enemies where they are, there’s no transition or anything. The way you plan out moves is displayed in the top right in a timeline similar to a music sheet fitting the themes of the game. And perhaps my favourite part, the song that plays in the dungeon plays an instrumental version until you enter combat in which case a vocal version seamlessly plays. That’s really cool! It is just a shame that the actual experience of doing combat is unfortunately not very fun!

Though then again, the real highlight of the game is the characters. My perspective if from the Overdose version which includes the Musician route, which in my opinion is pretty crucial to a lot of the characters. Playing without that route is… interesting to me to say the least lol. A lot of the characters feel like they would lose their depth and I think without it I would’ve had a much lesser opinion on the game over all.

Now that being said, the story itself is relatively straightforward. It’s a standard escapism plot and I think from the getgo of the game it’s pretty clear to see what direction the game is heading to.

What makes it interesting are the characters. I particularly liked that the main cast of characters are quite mysterious at first, and that throughout the game and their episodes you slowly start to figure out their true identities. It makes a lot of sense since they initially entered Mobius to avoid reality, so they wouldn’t be forthright about it anyways.

The most surprising thing to me about the cast of characters though (beyond some of their true identities) is how openly… hostile/terrible they are. And by that, I mean from a moral standpoint. In the second dungeon of the game Mifue throws so many fat insults some of them I haven’t even heard of before. And I’ve been on the internet for a while now. I was honestly taken aback by how rapid fire she was and how unapologetic she was.

Of course, learning about her trauma explains where that hatred comes from. What I was actually more worried about was that the game seemed to take a fairly negative stance towards Sweet-P, in a way that was not only just fatphobic but transphobic as well lol. But playing through Sweet-P’s character episodes, I was surprised to see how the game approached the topic of being overweight and general body image. It was a lot more than I expected given that start.

In fact, most of the Musicians I found to be quite charming and interesting. The main cast on the other hand I could argue are a lot “worse” as people lol. Some of their traumas and pasts are interesting and relatable, but I found the Musicians and their reasons for trying to stay in Mobius to be more understandable.

If there was one real miss of a character it would be Eiji in my opinion. His resolution feels the most… mediocre? In the sense that he kind of bows out of stage and there doesn’t feel like proper resolution between him and the rest of the cast.

Overall, I found the characters to be charming and fun and definitely the main reason why I enjoyed this game. The gameplay was so, so, close to being something that could’ve been really cool but alas it falls a little short. I’m interested to see how Caligula 2 builds off of this, but that’ll have to wait.