The Caligula Effect: Overdose

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WayTooManyGamesLeo Faria

7.5/10

Some of you must have had a nightmare consisting on being trapped on an endless high school cycle for the rest of your life. Have you ever imagined that this could have been caused by a rogue virtual pop diva who wanted to save people from the hardships of real life, and the only way to escape this theoretical hell is to embrace the darkest pieces of your personality to the point they literally become weapons you can use to defend yourself? No, I swear I’m not on drugs. That’s the premise...

Attack of the FanboyJelani James

The Caligula Effect: Overdose has great ideas that are often marred by uneven execution. But with its unique combat system, as well as exemplary music and illustrations, the negatives are outweighed by the positives.

VGChartzThomas Froehlicher

7/10

A superbly enhanced remake that both newcomers and old fans can enjoy.Having shipped 50,000 copies of The Caligula Effect on PSVita in Japan, Furyu realized it had finally created [...]

GameGrinSimone Brown

6.5/10

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.

Nintendo World ReportDavid Lloyd

6/10

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.

Playstation LifestyleAndrew King

5/10

Early on into my playthrough of The Caligula Effect: Overdose—the new PS4 remake of the Atlus published Vita game released in 2017— I approached a character to strike up a conversation. The character yelled at me, informing me that he hated being accosted. A tooltip popped up, telling me that certain characters would only warm up to me after I had ingratiated myself with a close friend of theirs. There was even a map in the menu where I could see how these relationships linked up.

RPGSiteLucas Rivarola

5/10

Despite being remade in a new engine in an attempt to address its problems, The Caligula Effect: Overdose still fails to deliver a good experience

Gamer EscapeJosh McGrath

5/10

If you were intrigued by the Vita version but held off on playing it, Overdose is obviously the best way to go about it. 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.

RPGamerAlex Fuller

Getting a second lease on life, The Caligula Effect returns with an updated remake for multiple platforms. Does the game leave players overdosing with joy or scrambling to find an antidote?

DualShockersZack Potter

Unscored

Overall, The Caligula Effect: Overdose does give the player some things to enjoy through their 30+ hour experience. Even with an engaging combat system to some fun side characters, it just doesn't have enough to carry all the dullness it brings with it in its story and environments. And with other games like Persona 5 that do almost everything Caligula Effect: Overdose has done but better, it's a little tough to recommend. Despite the competition, The Caligula Effect: Overdose offers a solid experience that has some features that make it worth trying it out at the very least.

Checkpoint GamingEdie W-K

Unscored

The Caligula Effect, first released in the West in 2017, had the misfortune to come out the same year as Persona 5,  making it hard not to compare the two. They are very similar games, both featuring maze-like dungeon levels and social simulations. The lead writer, Tadashi Satomi, even worked on the first three Persona games, so it’s not surprising to see a lot of overlap. It probably also didn’t help that it was released exclusively on the PS Vita.