The Caligula Effect: Overdose Reviews
A competent if flawed JRPG that has a unique combat system undermined by poor localisation as well as just dull implementation. If you are after a Persona-like RPG you might get some enjoyment from this, but it's pretty generic fare.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose is not such a bad title if you dedicate yourself on it. However, the repeated scenarios, weak combat and characters without charisma make everything extremely tiring and monotonous.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
The Caligula Effect progresses at a fast enough clip that, for the second time over, I haven't wanted to put it down.
Even without prior knowledge of the Persona series, it's hard to walk away from this game without criticizing the quality. A boring story, uninteresting characters, and a soundtrack that begs you to play with the sound turned off are just a sample of the myriad reasons to avoid The Caligula Effect. For a select niche, the incredibly fun combat system may be worth overlooking all of the faults, if at least for a few hours. While I had a terrific time beating my opponents into dust, everything else is just too egregious to recommend to anyone.
The Caligula Effect Overdose brings up interesting ideas and shows potential that can be achieved in later games. It's an honest game.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
As someone who lacks a basis for comparison, Overdose is a bit on the overwhelming side when it comes to the story… and honestly most of it felt a bit nonsensical to the point I only peripherally paid it any attention...
An interesting story, an entertaining combat system, a sublime soundtrack and slightly outdated graphics; all this is what we will find in The Caligula Effect Overdose.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Subjectively speaking, I absolutely adore this game. Objectively, however, it’s far from perfect. All-in-all, The Caligula Effect: Overdose is a unique JRPG with a captivating story enveloped in the fragility of human psychology, but tends to fall a bit flat when it comes to actual gameplay. Its decision to move to the PS5 also still baffles me. Still, I’d recommend playing it if you’re interested. And, hey, I guess you can play it on the modern PlayStation platform of your choice, too!
It personally resonated with me, as someone who struggles with facing their personal shortcomings, but tries their best to overcome them, even with adversity standing in their way, with strength, passion, and desire. It may start a little rough around the edges at first, but the title came through for me after getting through that first hurdle. It definitely has left a lasting impression, and still has me thinking after completing it.
In its entirety, The Caligula Effect: Overdose is an underwhelming and mediocre experience from beginning to end.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose has a lot of interesting design elements to set it apart from the crowd: the combat, the story premise, the recruitable school body. While these sort of unique elements are normally enough to secure my interest, the performance issues and poor character development make it difficult to get invested in. It’s certainly far from approaching the lofty heights of the Persona series, but it may still be able to catch your interest.
When it comes to wrapping up a title like The Caligula Effect: Overdose, it’s hard not to be left with a sense of mixed feelings about the game. Many of the PlayStation Vita’s fundamental issues remain such as inconsistent storytelling elements, gameplay issues (repetition), and rather stiff character animations. A part of me wonders if it was the fact that it is a PlayStation Vita port, just using a brand new engine to bring it up to speed, or if this was in fact – an intentional design choice at the end of the day.
While The Caligula Effect: Overdose seems like your typical JRPG, it tries to stick out with its unique features. Sadly, it failed to properly implement these features and there’s still a lot of room for improvement. Regardless, The Caligula Effect: Overdose was an incredibly enjoyable game for me and kept me invested for hours. The combat is fun and even though I didn’t make use of the unique features at all, I can still recommend it to anyone who is into the genre of JRPG as well.
Overall, I have to say I really loved how “relatable” or “real” the characters in Caligula Effect Overdose felt. A lot of good improvements were made on the original, and there were a lot of new and innovative gameplay ideas. While the game may get a little repetitive at times, if you intersperse with trauma resolution, it becomes significantly more manageable. I’m really hoping the team that made this continues on to do future work.
This The Caligula Effect: Overdose is the videojueguil materialization of three shots followed by the post. Everything is about to fit in, but in the end, although there is no defeat, there is still the uneasiness that we were close to victory. We were close to Person 3.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The only sentence that I can say about this game is: "Don't expect it to be a new Persona game"! The Caligula Effect Overdose is a remaster that's not very commendable but it's still worthy of being played. It can be a good starting point for newcomers of JRPG genre and a mediocre experience for veterans of this genre.
Review in Persian | Read full review
For the first few hours I've always wondered, "What am I actually playing here?", And now after about 40 hours, I still wonder somehow. Caligula Effect is a typical NIS game. Not really outstanding, but it really does not do anything wrong. The story is quite interesting in itself, but it is told very slowly. We fight each other from boss to boss, but the way there is laborious. The dungeons are huge and felt they are getting bigger and eventually comes the point where you have to visit old dungeons again. A dungeon is divided into several areas and you should of course initially explore everything, but eventually you just do not feel like. Each dungeon has its own design, but they are not very interesting. The same textures are used throughout and nothing new is coming. The fights are harmless or merciless, depending on the level of difficulty you play. Fortunately, on Normal I was able to put on car, so the party plays by itself (except our character, we always have to steer him), otherwise the fights would take longer. One should not be averse to the soundtrack, for a JRPG typical we also have corresponding fight music. We have an average JRPG here, otherwise I would not have spent more than 40 hours here.
Review in German | Read full review
When everything's said and done, however, I think fans of the genre will find something to like in the game. That noted, those who tried the Vita version may be less inclined to give it another chance, but those coming in fresh may find a mostly enjoyable title.
The Caligula Effect Overdose has some of the most inventive combat I have ever played in a turnbased JRPG. If you can get beyond the grind a lot of the dungeons feel like and the poorly implemented social systems, you will be treated to amazing combat, great music, wonderful character interactions and a story that will really make you think.
BAD - The most appealing aspect of The Caligula Effect: Overdose is the battle system which does a pretty good job at being fun for a few hours into the adventure. The game is bogged down by too many problems from boring interaction with NPCs and troublesome game mechanics to be considered something to invest your time or money into.