The Caligula Effect 2 Review – No Regrets!

History [ano, je to narážka na tvůrce hry – pozn. autora] The Caligula Effect series began to be written many years ago. It may seem a little strange when I say “the history of the series”, because you are only reading the review for the second part, and Hostoria has almost the third game on its account. The first The Caligula Effect appeared on PS Vita already in 2016, and a year later in the West, but since Vita was already fizzling out at that time, the game had no chance to reach a wider audience and thus succeed. .

So two years later, we saw an extended remake using the more powerful hardware of the PlayStation 4 consoles and the Switch and PC platforms in the form of the not-so-successful The Caligula Effect: Overdose (our review here). Accompanied and helped to achieve the success of the anime Caligula with an excellent soundtrack, which also did not quite succeed according to the ideas of the creators, but rather a matter of pure average. Therefore, the announcement of the “two” was a big surprise for me and I really began to look for references to the “Caligula 2 Effect”. I was wondering if the studio avoids mistakes. We already have the game and the universe has been expanded with new mechanics and characters. But you can find out below how it has benefited the brand.

• Platform: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch (peer-reviewed version)
• Publication date: October 22, 2021
• Producer: History Inc.
• Distribution: NIS America
• Genre: japanese role playing game,
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 6.6 GB (Switch version)
• Game time: 40+ hours
• Availability: 12+
• Sales version: box and digital
• Price: 1,399 CZK

Real or virtual?

The Caligula Effect 2 offers, as in the first part, an unnamed protagonist who, without explanation, is drawn into a virtual world called Redo. You will find yourself in something that can be compared to the iconic Matrix, and the reason for your presence here is that you regret something in real reality. The pull-in is done through virtuadoll songs called Regret, which are mostly similar to Vocaloids like Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Len or Akita Neru.

When you then define a character (gender, name, and some character traits), your new virtual life is interrupted by the invasion of another virtual doll. This time it’s called χ [vyslovuje se Key – pozn. autora] and at first glance a little “shot”. She is trying to destroy Redo, and therefore the efforts of Regret to keep as many people in it as possible, but since one χ cannot do anything at all, she will ask you for help, so to speak. From the very beginning, you are just a passerby for her, but, fortunately, she reacted in accordance with her expectations and, thus, can be an effective tool.

You will find yourself in something that can be compared to the iconic Matrix.

Of course, it doesn’t take long, and the old known organization of villains Obligato Musicians enter the scene, who, as allies of Regret, compose music for her. Their songs make people carefree and dreamy, and thanks to this, Regret can use them, for example, to turn into monsters. These monsters sometimes even attack people around you and you can use χ to balance the powers a little. You won’t be alone (or alone, depending on your avatar’s gender), because those who can spot bugs in the virtual world are able to awaken powers and fight the Cathartic Effect.

Dirty duel

If you played the first part of The Caligula Effect or the Overdose remake, then you understand that the combat system works in the same pseudo-drawn style. You can have up to four members in your party at the same time, and each of them has their own set of skills and other types of attacks, depending on the weapons they can control. You choose from commands something that can be compared to pseudo-real time. Your allies can then move across the battlefield and attack in such a way that you can hit multiple targets at once. If you focus on enemies and another target is accidentally in the path of the attack, that other enemy will also take damage. Of course, it also works the other way around.

This coincidence can be influenced to some extent. The most important, at least from the start, part of this combat system is the Imaginary Chain feature. This allows you to view the progress of your attacks and their effect, as well as look at the actions of your enemies. This allows you to effectively set them up to block, dodge attacks, or choose better/more profitable counterattacks. So to some extent, you can reduce the risk, break the defense and maximize the damage you deal. Of course, this depends on the level of you and your enemy, as well as the action you choose. For each advance, you see the percentage of success, and the better the enemies you face, the lower your chances of success. But there is nothing more satisfying than when you select attacks, watch their animations, throw buffs on allies, debuffs on enemies, and combine it all into one crazy action that works great.

The Imaginary Chain feature allows you to preview the progress of your attacks and their effect.

But! It will entertain you from the very beginning. You can also choose automatic actions for allies, and I can’t help but admit that I use them almost constantly in the later stages. And having the ability to turn them off at any time during the fight, I only managed low-level characters or faced strong enemies.

Let the decibels roar

I mentioned several times that the overdose failed me. But we didn’t say that about the game’s soundtrack, and I still support it. Although my focus is solely on Japanese metal, rock metal or punk and roll, I still have the OST in the car and sometimes I play it. And the fight in The Caligula Effect 2 is clearly supported by great songs. I dare say that some of them can claim the best songs from video games. [a to mám opravdu rád třeba soundtrack z Chrono trigger nebo cokoli od Nobua Uematsy – pozn. autora].

Some songs can claim to be the best video game songs.

Each dungeon and each Obligato Musician has its own central melody. It was written by various artists known from the already mentioned Vocaloid, and each of them was performed by Regret. These melodies you only hear instrumentally during the interrogation, but once the duel begins, the music makes incredible use of singing. They work as the duel theme of every chapter, and if you clear the dungeon, you can save this battle tune as χ-Jack. This feature allows you to summon χ during a duel and pump your team with various buffs for a limited time in accordance with the selected song. These songs have already been sung by drummer χ and due to this they have a slightly different arrangement.

The Three Wizards Labyrinth!

My worst memories of Overdose are dungeons/mazes. In the first game, their design was definitely bad. They were created by constantly copying and pasting parts of them, which resulted in constant encounters with enemies and relatively fast leveling, but it wasn’t fun at all. Anything else you’d play would be a few classes higher, the dungeons in The Caligula Effect 2 are visually pleasing and somewhat fun, but mostly not tiring.

An example is one of the first locations, where you run through a train station, jump across rails, and jump from train to train. Or the academy buildings themselves suddenly became memorable and people walked through them without looking at the map. I probably couldn’t do it in Overdose until the end of the game. In addition, when going through the dungeons, other members of the group sometimes change places, and sometimes there are also short conversations that complete the whole picture of the scene.

2021?

Another huge plus in The Caligula Effect 2 is the cast. Each of them exudes their own personality, it only spoils their models and animations a little. Sometimes it happens that in a conversation a character is liked as in visual novels, but in 3D he suddenly loses his appeal. But you will easily miss all this and you will have one of the other reasons.

The Caligula 2 effect can beautifully break the stereotypes of other JRPGs.

The way their characters are written and the way the dubbers are chosen gives everyone the flexibility and opportunity to really shine at least once in a game. Perhaps besides yourself, because while you sometimes see your answers in conversations, you have the same booming voice as the iconic Gordon Freeman. At the same time, The Caligula Effect 2 can beautifully break the established stereotypes of other JRPGs. For some reason, you expect the Hot-tempered to use powerful attacks or fire magic, but here the coolest figure might be a little girl with a katana in her hand. So everywhere you will probably choose the members of the group by their popularity, appearance or abilities, but here you will really think a lot to find out which character you want to take with you at the moment. You just don’t want someone sitting in an imaginary corner.

In addition, the game “forces” you to experience a short personal episode with each member, thereby reluctantly deepening your bonds not as the game’s protagonist but as the player, and because they each have their own reasons for finding themselves in the virtual world. they can be pitied without remorse [anglicky regret – pozn. autora].

Predictability is not a mistake

While you can probably guess most of the reasons why your group members continue the story, you don’t mind at all. You’re here to help them, and it’s incredibly important in the game that the individual storylines focus not only on recruiting into the Go-Home Club, but also on “rescuing” them. Most of them are quite intense in the finale, and you might like some of them. I believe that some of you will not forget even after the end credits.

Finally, one more answer. You don’t need to have the first part to play The Caligula Effect 2, and you don’t need to know its history. Even if you come across various links, the plot is strong enough and designed to give you a comprehensive view of the game world. It’s just made for fans or newbies. At worst, it doesn’t require a few details, but it isn’t dramatic enough to change your overall understanding of the story either.

Thanks to NIS America for providing the game for review. You can buy the Caligula Effect 2 in the Xzone.cz shop.