The Caligula Effect: Overdose (Switch) Review

The Caligula Effect is an RPG on the Vita that I played nearly two years ago and enjoyed.   I was surprised that it was not only getting an updated release, but also being ported to other systems.  I've played my fair share of remakes and re-releases, and what The Caligula Effect: Overdose adds is one of the best ways to do it.

First off, I don't think the combat has changed much.   This will be a deterrent to some people, but not me.  I mostly enjoyed the fights.  When you come in contact with an enemy in the dungeon maps, a fight will start right where you are.  Since it's a virtual world, it will also remove things like walls.  This is good and bad.  Good, because you won't be cramped, but bad because an enemy in another room might be close enough to be an unexpected part of the encounter.

The battle UI and menu have changed, making it easier to navigate.  It isn't as unique as it was, but overall it is a good change.  In fact, pretty much all of the menus had an overhaul, making them cleaning and more user friendly.  Skills have received an overhaul as well. For better or worse, it feels like there are less of them.  Plus, some don't feel as useful as they once did.  The main character's rapid fire, a favorite for juggling enemies, is slower and less accurate.  Kotaro's launch isn't as reliable, and his rapid punch is too slow to start.  I used to love hitting them into the air, then punching them on the way down.  Now, Kotaro can't even do the one thing I liked him for.  I didn't think they could make me use him less, but here we are.

However, the "super" attacks no longer have to be purchased with skill points and are available at the start.  You have to build up a bar to use them, but this bar is persistent, so I just save them for bosses and other hard fights.   Plus, they don't cost any SP!  Skill points can now be used to increase the level of the skill, from 1 to 3, as well as purchase new skills.  Increasing the level makes them stronger, and secondary effects (like launching, etc.) more likely to happen.  While it does make them stronger, I didn't notice a remarkable increase in the secondary effects.  It wasn't something I extensively tested though.

You will choose your action from a list separated into three categories.  Basically your attacks, support skills (buffs, debuffs, heals), and misc skills (moving and recharging your SP).   Each skill has an activation time and SP cost.  After selecting what you will do, the game plays out a shadow version of what may happen, called an "imaginary chain".  This allows you to tentatively see how much damage you may do, and coordinate attacks with your teammates.  You can set up to three skills in a row.  While useful for piling on the damage, be aware that your next turn will come up slower, since you have committed to a few attacks already.   In the previous release, the default setting of the confirm button was to end the chain.  Now it is to select another attack.  This makes it faster to use several attacks in a row, but slightly slower to smash through a selection when the enemy is really weak, or about to be finished by your friend's attack.

In a strange choice, defeated enemies can no longer be juggled.  Sure, it served no logical purpose, but it was fun to do on the last or lone enemy.  My guess is that since a defeated enemy would still be in the way, they disappear so as not to inconvenience targeting another enemy.  Of course, you will still attack the air where they were, so maybe not.  The extra experience for defeating an enemy in one turn is also gone.  Experience gain overall feels faster, so I don't actually miss this as much as I thought I would.

What is new is being able to get a preemptive strike.   If you attack an unaware enemy on the dungeon map, you will start the fight with the enemy's risk level elevated.  This in turn makes it much, much easier to risk break them, which allows for greater damage.  Mifue makes this incredibly easy, as one of her basic attacks increases risk by 1, guaranteeing a break on hit.   Before, the only similar function was to get the attention of an enemy.   In theory, you could separate one from a group, making the fights easier.   While I did use that occasionally, it wasn't nearly as useful as the current system.

The dungeons in the game make sense.  There's a school, the mall, the library, and other places that feel natural in an imaginary city.   Yes, even the hot springs.  The new bosses each bring a new location with them.  Each dungeon is fairly sprawling, taking awhile to navigate.  It does feel a lot quicker to go through them than the first release.  I attribute it partially to my previous playing, but mostly to faster fights and easier to avoid enemies.  Also, boss fights are much faster easier.

My main complaint with the dungeons is how each floor or area inside is largely identical to the others.  Sure, the library has a section with marionettes, but that doesn't help as much as it should.  I could rarely tell you what section I was in, and I couldn't get a grasp on their layouts.  I can follow the quest dots, but had trouble trying to locate the student request side quests.  Maybe if I had a better grasp of Japanese school layouts, but as it stands I could rarely tell one area or floor from another, or even how they fit together.

Speaking of the other students, befriending them has been streamlined.  Part of the UI redesign made the affinity gain much bigger.  It's also a lot faster, meaning you don't have to talk to people quite so much.  You will still need to invite them to your party to fulfill their side missions, which is something I kind of gave up on in the original.  Sadly, I wasn't too keen to try it again.

Now, on to the biggest changes.  Two new characters join the Go Home Club, and each bring a Musician counterpart.  Even better, you can go all Yojimbo and join the Musicians to work against the Go Home Club.  Both of these are very well woven into the existing story, and do not feel superfluous.  I was very eager to try out the new story line, but had to wait until after the second boss to start it.  Disappointingly, there isn't really anything you can even do at that point.  Once you beat the next boss, however, you will gain two Musician party members, and have a bit of story with them, setting up what you will be doing.  You can jump between the two, but as far as I can tell, you have to unlock a place with the Go Home Club before you can venture there as a Musician.  Even so, it's an interesting addition that I like.

Overall, I still enjoy The Caligula Effect.  The Overdose release has some significant additions, which are well integrated into the story.  That's the key thing that makes it worthwhile.  I'd recommend it to fans of the first release, and further to any RPG fans that skipped or missed it the first time.

The Good:
New characters and story line make a fun game even better.

The Bad:
Doing side quests is a chore.

The SaHD:
So your friends don't even notice the mysterious new Musician uses the same dual guns as you?

(Review copy of The Caligula Effect: Overdose was provided by the publisher)

The Caligula Effect (PS Vita) Review

The Caligula Effect starts with an interesting premise: students are trapped in a virtual world, and go through high school on a continual loop.  The thing is: many of those people want to be there to escape reality, and don't even know they are in a virtual world.  I don't know why anyone would think of high school as a paradise, but I digress.  Your main character is one of a select few who awakens to this reality, and sets out with fellow students to set things back to normal.  To do so, you have to find and stop the virtual idol, Mu (it's written as the Greek symbol).

Like most RPGs, you run around a map, get into fights, and solve quests.  The locations in the game are appropriate to the setting: things like school and the mall.  Enemies and NPCs roam around, and fights take place when and where you engage the foes, which can be problematic.  It's usually possible to sneak around enemies as they roam.  Aria does say the Digiheads (aggressive students who fight you) have bad eyesight, and boy, is she right.  Well, if you out level them anyway.  You will probably fight a lot of them anyway, and they do respawn.  Sometimes a bit too quickly for my taste.  Even if you avoid a lot of them while running around the dungeons, it can take several hours to get through each one.

Fights in The Caligula Effect are the game's most unique aspect.  When you select a skill, it shows you the likely outcome of that attack.  Things like damage, countering, etc. can be planned in advance to make the most of your turn, and destroying a target quickly.  The game actually rewards you with double experience if you can win in one turn.  Some skills are counter skills, which can cancel certain types of attacks.  I shouldn't have to tell you how useful that is.  Some skills launch a target, or knock them down.  Some will do extra attacks if the target's "Risk" is high enough.  Some skills will benefit from hitting targets in the air or on the ground.  The bottom line is: plan out your attacks to get the most out of them.

To facilitate this, you can delay the timing on them.  This is pretty useful, and has great synergy with the predictive function of combat.  Unfortunately, you can't skip or delay your full turn if you wanted to wait until another character is ready.  You can string together up to three attacks, each one costing a reduced SP cost, which will really pile on the damage, and take advantage of launch or otherwise indisposed targets.  It seems a bit more complicated than it ends up being, even though it does look really chaotic when you have four party members all attacking some poor sap at the same time.  Once you kind of get how the attacks work, you can set them and have a pretty good idea what's going to happen.  As such, a majority of my fights ended in one turn.

This is all well and good, but what about bosses and strong enemies?  Sadly, that's where the battle system is weakest.  Planning the small details of a turn and timing everything properly is great and all, but if the enemy survives it (or if they aren't launched)?  You are left just hitting them with stuff and hoping they eventually die.  If an enemy is a higher level than you, the damage you deal is cut down drastically.  You will probably run out of SP in a turn or two, depending on character, and then have to sit there and use the charge skill for it to come back.  It quickly becomes a chore to finish those fights.  I do really like the battle system overall, so it's a shame that it can crumble so quickly.

Equipment is also pretty unique.  Instead of more traditional stuff like armor, you gets "stigmas", which are more like personality traits.  They affect your stats and can even give different skills.  There is also a rarity scale to them, so you can get stronger versions of each one.  The skills you can use in battle have the normal range of attacks, defense, and support abilities.  Honestly, I rarely used anything that wasn't an attack, the SP recharge, or the occasional emergency barrier.  I never really had the need to.  The points you use to buy skills are earned by gaining a level, winning some fights, and finding discoveries.  They are also stored in a communal pool, so all the characters share the same stockpile.  This can make it harder to save for the ultimate skills, since you may want to flesh out each character's other skills first, but you can gain more by leveling up the NPC students if you are a bit low.

Even though you are mostly a silent protagonist, there are many times you can make a dialogue choice.  I'm not sure how much each choice actually affects things, though.  Well, except for getting through the library.  Anyway, you will also end up chasing fellow students around and talk to them to raise their friendship.  A lot of chasing, and a lot of talking (it raises slowly).  I did like seeing new people, but it is a bit daunting to have so many possible people to talk to, and multiply that by the number of times you have to talk to them.  Sheesh.  There are also little quests where they may want to meet certain people, or go to a certain place.  It doesn't sound that hard, but with 500 students, it's going to be a long process.  I'm not sure it's worth it just to be able to use them in battle.

The Caligula Effect isn't really a hard game, even on normal, provided you understand (or can at least use) the combat system.  I only really had trouble on a few enemies that were just above my level (because of the low damage), and for that reason I tended to avoid them.  You get most of your HP and SP back after a fight, so going through the dungeons wasn't too bad except for all the running back and forth you do.  The bosses are more difficult than normal fights, but not by much.  The story will run you over 30 hours, but there is a new game plus and some post-game stuff.

A lot of what The Caligula Effect has to offer is its unique battle system.  The story is pretty good, and I liked the dialogue, but the fights are what really set it apart.  They seem a lot more complicated than they ended up being, and I can easily see it turning off some people.  I'd recommend sticking with it if you can, as the game is pretty fun.  A solid RPG offering on the Vita.  One final note:  I've heard chatter of a bug that erases your save file near the end of the game.  I have yet to encounter it, and hopefully never will.  Make sure to back up to the cloud and be careful!


The Good:
A fun and exacting battle system...

The Bad:
That falls apart if a battle takes too long.

The SaHD:
"Archive of Regrets" is a great name for a location.

(Review code for The Caligula Effect was provided by the publisher)