Spotlight on the developer: AQURIA

[Newby24]

In preparation for the game's Steam release, I am making this topic in order to shine a spotlight on this title's developer, AQURIA
---
(from Wikipedia)
AQURIA Co., Ltd. is a Japanese game developer based in Yokohama, Japan. The company is mainly engaged in software development of console games.

The company is known for developing Sword Art Online titles. They are also known for their development assistance in the mainline and portable titles of the Boku no Natsuyasumi series by Millennium Kitchen.

Founded: January 8, 2002
Number of employees: 48 (2018)
Website: aquria.co.jp
---
Notable titles (picked by me):

The Caligula Effect (PlayStation Vita) (2016)
Built on top of the engine of Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment, this hybrid turn based/action RPG title features a group of characters trapped in a virtual world, known as Mobius. They form a club known as the Go-Home Club and their objective is get back from the virtual world, they were trapped in unwillingly.

This title showcases AQURIA's mastery of anime aesthetics on a budget (the game looks beautiful, with great lighting and shadows), as well as their player centric approach when it comes to gameplay.

The game features a skill system, which you as the player gather skill points (by leveling up or picking up points of interest on the map) and you use this skill system to learn skills, the more powerful skill is the more costly it is to learn.
Skill points are global, meaning you are free to spend them on characters as you like.
The game also features a combo system, which augments the EXP you learn overall as well as influences randomly dropped equipment, which can have additional skills attached to them.
The game also has risk vs reward system imbued in its skills, meaning a big reward has an additional downside to them (full heal, but your HP is halved for a time for the caster)

Quality of life features, like sorting of skills is also present, as well as menu memory and rolling over in dialogue menus and selecting skills, making the game a joy to experience.
The game also features chasing enemies and NPCs talking with one another, using text bubbles, in order to make the world seem more alive and threatening

Only negative was the poor performance on occasion, caused by the hardware not being powerful enough at times to handle all of the visuals.

The game received a remake and a sequel, which was made by different developers (historia) and you can tell when comparing the two titles (the original and the remake), as the game design, visuals and even game structure are different.

Sword Art Online Infinity Moment (Playstation Portable) (2013)
A game which was an inspiration for The Caligula Effect (mentioned above), first in the gameverse of Sword Art Online, featuring the story of Kirito and his friends during the Aincrad Arc. The game is more of a what if scenario, rather than accurate retelling as it features characters not originally present (Leafa and Shinon), as well as Shinon in particular having a vastly different design and role

The game features a lot of the gameplay aspects mentioned above for The Caligula Effect, such as the beautiful anime visuals, which were also hand-drawn for the textures, making them very vibrant and popping. The CGs were also hand drawn featuring moving mouths and blinking eyes, as well as great shading and coloring.

As for the gameplay, unlike the later Sword Art Online titles (after Hollow Fragment), the game plays more like The Caligula Effect, mixing turn based combat with an action RPG, though the game does not pause when selecting a skill, the overal game speed is slower, allowing for more tactical approach, with focusing on using skills you have per weapon in tandem to get an advantage in battle.
Additionally, you only control Kirito, while your other partner is controlled by telling them commands, taking inspiration from Persona 3.
It is also a dungeon crawler through and through, and it also features a weapon upgrade system. The main dungeon, Aincrad, is similar to climbing Tartarus in a way - climb to the top, fighting bosses and minibosses along the way.
The Ui is digenic, making it look like it comes from the game itself, and the game autosaves so you can fully immerse yourself in the experience
The story also features a Character event system and multiple endings, along with NG+.
---
Kind of a lengthy post, but hopefully a nice showcase of developer's game design philosophy, which you can also see in CRYMACHINA and its "sister" title: Sword Art Online Last Recollection (both games are extremely similar, as I mentioned in my previous posts. If you like CRYMACHINA, feel free to check out Sword Art Online Last Recollection)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1566880/SWORD_ART_ONLINE_Last_Recollection/

[Αη Ιnτellecτual Tsiραr]

I appreciate the write up. So the Caligula Effect Overdose was made by different developers?

[Newby24]

Originally posted by Αη Ιnτellecτual Tsiραr:

I appreciate the write up. So the Caligula Effect Overdose was made by different developers?

That is correct.

Both the Caligula Effect Overdose and its sequel, The Caligula Effect 2, were made by historia, the same developers, who had made the (from what I heard) very good Live-A-Live remake together with Square Enix (who provided cash as a publisher and a guidance). The L-A-L remake had been done with care, getting the time and budget necessary to make it good.

That sadly was not done by FuRyu in the case of The Caligula Effect Overdose. In fact, they took the original devs' project, The Caligula Effect 1, from them, before they could even finish patching it, so historia had an incomplete, buggy build as a reference for the remake, because they also weren't given any of the original game's game design philosophy, leading them (and the game's director too) making changes to the remake, which went against the original "risk vs. reward" and "careful planning of your actions" design.

If that wasn't bad enough, the remake was not even given the budget to make good looking anime cutscenes by even a small experienced anime studio. The original game's anime cutscenes were made by drop inc (now defunct) which looked way better, even if you could tell it was a budget production (the character expressions and poses were great). The remake instead had the cutscenes be drawn by 32 college students (who are all individually listed in the credits). The cutscenes took a hit for the worse (unsurprisingly) with bad looking expressions, stiff movement and even animation errors.

Sure the remake has extra content, but even that was awkwardly implemented, with one character they added going against the game's design entirely (game is about building a combo chain, said character breaks combo chains with their attacks)
The extra content isn't even mentioned in the sequel, the postgame took a turn for the worse (because it wasn't implemented by the time historia began working on the project), resulting it to be underwhelming as well (the original game had full fledged dungeons, with one having a plot relevance to the story. This was not implemented in the remake.)

In fact, both games were released, due to deadlines, unfinished, with game breaking bugs, requiring multiple patches (5) to add the missing content (up to 700MBs in the remake's case) and fix them.
historia was really enthusiastic when they took the project, unaware of the circumstances FuRyu left behind and what would await them. They said so as such in one interview "We were very happy when FuRyu approached us with The Caligula Effect; they remembered and were impressed by what we had shown them previously." They took the project for their portfolio and money, since they were a very young game dev studio.
They did not even know how to use the engine well when they took the project, requiring assistance.

And those were the circumstances of The Caligula Effect 1 remake, which obviously resulted in a very subpar experience, with some extremely slight improvements (cutscene skip, better framerate on PC), but otherwise a complete downgrade, with the exception of the extra content (which isn't even used in the game's sequel in any capacity, both in narrative and gameplay feature wise).
It is the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: The Definitive Edition, low budget, niche RPG edition.

The Caligula Effect 2 has none of the original AQURIA game design language at all, alongisde other things, and while it is somewhat better than the TCE1 remake and mostly beloved by its fans, it is the complete opposite of what AQURIA was going for, with none of the risk vs. reward system featured in The Caligula Effect 1, resulting in a very different experience overall, with its design making it clear, that the game was originally designed with very different goals in mind and the system, as it is featured, is barely resembling what it once was.

[cagrıyılmaz]

bencede