The Caligula Effect: Overdose - Preview of the Aquaria JRPG

The original The Caligula Effect saw the light in Europe in the now distant May 2018, a branded JRPG Aquaria which in its original ideas aimed to offer an adventure that could somehow rival the splendid Persona 5 of Atlus. A thick narrative, well-characterized characters, a high-level play experience and a high-level technical sector represented the promises made by the development team, dreams and hopes that however materialized in a production that proved unable to conquer critics. and public. Serious ludic and technical deficiencies in fact ended up heavily penalizing the title, which was quickly forgotten by most gamers. In spite of this, a small niche of faithful still formed, a reason enough to start the development of The Caligula Effect: Overdose, revised and improved version of the original title coming to Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC. New playable environments, new endings, improved graphics quality, the presence of a new impersonable female protagonist with unique characteristics, the "Forbidden Musician Route" and much more, these are the trump cards of the production, a decidedly rich additional content package and potentially capable of giving new life to the IP. We at Resources4Gaming were able to play the first hours of the title in its Switch version and now we are ready to give you some preliminary judgment about it.

The pursuit of happiness

Life is a bottomless abyss of pain and despair, a cruel and unjust place where the dreams of young people are trampled in favor of a life as unsatisfactory as it is devoid of liveliness and color. Just to try to escape the greyness of a meaningless existence, a strange girl called Mu - and defined as virtualdoll - creates a huge digital world in which those who have suffered horrific trauma can find refuge to live a daydream. from which you will never wake up again. Mobius, this is the name of the universe in which we will move, is in fact represented as an idyllic place where every desire can become reality, but in fact the situation is very different. The fascinating digitized environment is in fact kept under control by Mu herself, which has deprived all its residents of any negative feeling, depriving them of the very awareness of being in nothing more than a "program". The unsuspecting inhabitants of Mobius have thus slowly allowed themselves to become addicted to the bewitching promises of Mu, becoming in effect prisoners unaware of a fictitious reality, forced to live an eternal school reality in total carefree. However, when a group of students suddenly wakes up from the enchantment - also thanks to the help of Aria, another virtualdoll who resides within Mobius - a dark handful of individuals will do everything in their power to remove them from truth and stop him from returning to the real world. The narrative context of The Caligula Effect: Overdose starts from extremely interesting premises, all characterized by themes potentially capable of giving a rich and varied narrative plot. In this sense, the cast of supporting actors with whom we will be able to interact immediately seemed to us well characterized and diversified.

Playfully speaking, the work showcases a very interesting turn-based combat system. While we move between the different game environments, we will be able to run into various enemies who, if they get too close to us, will start the battle. Once you have taken the field together with three other of our trusted companions it will be possible to carefully calculate the different actions to be performed, all taking advantage of the Imaginary Chain function, which will show not only the success rate of your attack but will also show what will be the opponent's response. In this way, the user on duty will always have a clear picture of events that he can exploit to his advantage by chaining various moves in quick succession without leaving the enemy even time to respond. To all we must then also add various unlockable skills as we level up and numerous items that can be equipped to improve your stats. An excellent job placed in the character design and a level design to be discovered, make show a The Caligula Effect: Overdose has its own personality and several undoubtedly interesting characteristics, with the real showdown which, however, will come only once you reach the end credits, in view of the final release set for March 12. Stay tuned to read our review!