Caligula Effect Overdose (CEO) is a remake of the earlier PS Vita release back in 2016. The game plays like a standard JRPG with some fun mechanics and has a decent soundtrack but is also hindered by poor design choices. While I understand the appeal for some it is not a game I could personally recommend to others as I find there are many better options within the genre. I would also like to preface that I have not played the Persona games and as such I will not be comparing CEO to them.

CEO features a unique combat system that allows the player to time moves by linking up to three actions together, move the start of the action around in time, and see up to 15 seconds into the future to plan said actions to enemy moves. It did take a little getting used to at first but didn’t ever feel like I was getting the true use out of it despite playing the game on Normal. I often found myself just spamming and linking 3 basic attacks one after another and having little trouble with enemies. If an enemy was higher level I simply used two status boosting moves for damage, critical, and accuracy, and never had much of a problem.

The music of the game was catchy at best, and forgettable at worst. There were few themes I actually liked and found myself quickly tuning out the music of many of the dungeons. I did prefer themes like Lucid’s, Shadow Knife’s, and Shounen-dolls’. The lighter theme’s I didn’t care for as much and I would say I disliked Papiko’s theme overall the most. The art of the game followed a similar trend where I preferred the unique designs of the musicians to the go-home club who at times looked very similar to npcs. The texture’s in the game are also objectively pretty awful, and don’t always appear to be scaled to characters correctly.

When it came to the character stories themselves I actually found myself favoring more of the musician’s storylines rather than the go-home clubs. I did like how a few of the stories intertwined together, but overall found the musician’s to have better pacing. That being said I did still enjoy the majority of the go-home club member’s stories. In terms of the side quests however, I found them lackluster, and incredibly repetitive considering there were 500+ of them. I completed all but the last batch that required objects or fights in the final dungeon with the exception of class leader npcs. I do think that the actual story of the game if you opt to also view the musician’s side is only about 30-40 hours. Doing the NPC quest line can easily double this due to the tedious nature of having to add npcs to the party to equip them with something, take them to another enigma or other npc, or call another specific npc to talk to them.

The ending of the game felt lackluster to me, culminating into a boss rush of all previous defeated bosses to then unlock the final battle which was 3 more battles. The big finale with the good ending was fine, nothing I wouldn’t expect from a typical JRPG. The “bad” ending however was what felt the most unrewarding. It was a true boss rush but even on normal and only having a single party member I never once got close to dying.

Overall CEO isn’t a bad game by any stretch. It completes what it sets out to do, but doesn’t provide enough to make it stand out from other JRPG’s that I’ve played to be something I would recommend to others to play. If a neutral review option did exist, I would give the game that instead but due to the many factors I didn’t care for will have to go with a not recommended instead. If the game does sound interesting and you do think that despite the few objective flaws the game has you’d enjoy it, I would purchase on a discount but nothing more.

This game is kinda middling and mediocre in some areas, but the story was great. This version also gives you an option to side with the bad guys and I loved it. You end up fighting your party members and I've never see a game do it. That alone made this one worth playing.