The Caligula Effect: Overdose Reviews
The Caligula Effect Overdose is plagued by strange design choices, poor performances and uninspired story and art direction, but is saved from a below-average mark by a good combat system.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The lack of practical map can put you in a dead end. Initially, I wanted to give The Caligula Effect: Overdose a highter score because of an interesting combat system and nice graphics, but boring labyrinths, monotony side-quests and easy battles with ordinary opponents didn't let me do it.
Review in Russian | Read full review
The Caligula Effect: Overdose offers an RPG experience that pulls out a lot of great ideas but struggles to build upon dull storytelling and forgetful setpieces.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose has a great combat system and an entertaining story, but poor visuals, a lack of meaningful choices, repetitive music, and a lackluster social system means this is a high school reunion you probably want to skip.
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.
It's worth giving The Caligula Effect: Overdose a chance to get into full bloom.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose is an RPG with a fun combat system, fantastic J-POP soundtrack, and wonderful audio design. Unfortunately, the story feels rote, the characters are cliche, and the Causality Link system is largely superficial. Kudos are given for allowing you to take on the role of a villain and sympathize with the antagonists.
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...
Overdose is certainly the strongest and most improved version of Caligula Effect out there, but I still have a hard time recommending it.
In the end, there isn't much here that feels fully developed. While The Caligula Effect: Overdose has some interesting ideas, none of them really work. I suspect that after some time with The Go-Home Club, players will be longing to go home to the cozy comfort of a classic JRPG. Better to avoid this simulation from the start.
The Caligula Effect : Overdose is a decent RPG, with a lot of social link and an original combat system, but the exploration is poor and the global design is pretty weak and generic.
Review in French | Read full review
Despite being remade in a new engine in an attempt to adress its problems, The Caligula Effect: Overdose still fails to deliver a good experience
The Caligula Effect Overdose is a mixed bag, a Japanese RPG filled with potentially awesome ideas and concepts that don't quite work or need fleshing out more.
The most irritating thing about Caligula Effect: Overdose is that in spite of me having been critical of it in my review, the fact that I did not enjoy it, or that I struggle to think of any positives, the game feels so middle-of-the-road that giving it any lower of a score would just feel unfair.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose is an okay RPG that will last you quite a while if you like the themes and concept presented. It certainly isn't the Persona-like game we were expecting so you may want to skip this if you were under the same impression as me.
There’s enough cleaned up here for really hardcore JRPG fans to take a look, and I can’t really say that this is a bad game not worth experiencing anymore. If anything, it’s stepped up to “aggressively mediocre.”
The Caligula Effect: Overdose is so saturated with bland content that the meaningful moments get buried. Attempts to perk things up with a new engine and extra content just end up on top of the pile instead of actually fixing anything.
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.
In its entirety, The Caligula Effect: Overdose is an underwhelming and mediocre experience from beginning to end.