The Caligula Effect: Overdose

While this is a recommendation, it's a rather careful one.
Admittedly, the game is not that good. The low(er) budget is painfully obvious, the dungeons consist of rather bland corridors, basically no characters outside of the main two groups exist, the Causality Link quest system is a nice idea implemented poorly, the equipment system makes no sense and feels almost pointless, there is almost no meaningful mechanical progression outside from a handful of unlockable skills, and the combat eventually starts getting frustratingly repetitive.
Why is this a recommendation then? Predominantly for the story. Sure, the setting and premise are rather generic, but it really lets its characters shine. Most of them, while undeniably tropey, are written very well and have some really satisfying development both in the main story and in the optional character events. This goes both for the heroes of the story and the antagonists. And it's elevated greatly by the very emotional, sometimes even raw-feeling, voice acting. In part this has to do with the voice direction being strong too, I'd say.
While the combat does get repetitive in frequent encounters, when it works it works very well. The unusual battle system was part of the reason I checked the game out in the first place and ultimately it did not disappoint. The main mechanic is a "prediction" system that allows you to see what the enemies intend to do in the near future and the effects any attacks would have, and plan ahead up to 3 actions per character. It suits boss fights and scripted encounters well, but the battle system being more involved means that the chaff encounters get rather annoying. You can skip most regular enemies given that they will only "notice" you and initiate the fight if they're at your level or higher (and even then you can dodge most of them or run from battle), but you really don't want to fall behind on XP since being underleveled incurs rather big accuracy penalties.
The music certainly deserves a mention as well, every dungeon has a unique theme seamlessly switching between the vocal and instrumental versions when going in and out of combat, capping off with a remix of it during the boss fight, and pretty much all of the tracks are quite good.
Ultimately, if you can handle some jank and slogginess (honestly I wouldn't mind the game being 10-20 hours shorter, though the long playtime is mostly on me here), it's a unique and somewhat fresh-feeling JRPG that's worth checking out on sale.

Played through the original release on my beloved PS Vita.
Going through Overdose now so I can see the new content, pretty hyped for experiencing the PinocchioP song in context (seriously this shit rips
If you're unfamiliar with Furyu-developed games, you can generally expect the following:
_ solid writing overall and good character writing
_ presentation punching above its weight class, there's not a ton of money involved but art direction, music are on par with much more ambitious productions
_ intriguing-on-paper but frustrating-in-practice systems, in particular battles are often a slog
The Caligula series is no exception.
Due to its creator's pedigree, there are some obvious parallels to be made with Persona. It's far less enjoyable to play, but IMO much tighter when it comes to writing. In particular, I can't say the Phantom Thieves from P5 make a particularly strong impression compared to either iteration of the kitaku-bu (your homies in Caligula 1 and 2), which is insane given I've spent 100+ hours with them. In Caligula, both friends and foes just have a lot more to work with, and are much more memorable.
Music-wise, they've plucked popular vocalo-Ps and the (human) singer does show impressive range adapting to various styles of singing. The songs themselves are an integral part of the story and do a great job at elevating the experience.
The fighting system is based on the idea that your character has some form of pre-cognition and can plan a string of moves accordingly. In practice it's not nearly as cool as it sounds, it doesn't feel great. My recommendation is to play in easy mode so the hassle is kept to a minimum.
Likewise the concept for sub-quests sound interesting but they're not especially high quality.
IMO though the sum is much greater than its parts and this is a must-play, and the sequel even more so. I look back to my time with Caligula 1 & 2 much more fondly than the time I spent with Persona 5 (which I didn't hate by any means, I liked it a lot -- it's just that Caligula does the things I care about better).

Good game with turn-based system that let you forecast your moves before it happen

I don't understand why this game isn't rated way higher, like... at least 85%. For me it's easily 100%, it just has so much great stuff. It's compared to the Persona games a lot - well, I'll just say that I liked Persona 4 enough to do all the achievements there (even that completely ridiculous one with getting 400 unique voiced lines from Rise), but I love this game so much more.
1) Combat is great. There's a planning phase for your characters' moves (where you also see what the enemies will do during that time), and then everyone's moves are executed at the same time (similar to Transistor, or a less extreme/more accessible version of Frozen Synapse).
* Characters can be launched into air, downed, or stunned - it works great for coordinated team action (I think that alone made the combat deeper than in Persona)
* Positioning characters is generally important - even if enemies are, say, 20 levels above you, you can either avoid their attacks instead of tanking them, or use shield to block them which would also stun the enemy
* Stat-modifying abilities are actually important for harder fights, AND they don't wear off in just a couple of turns like in so many other games
* There are NO items or shops - instead, all characters are fully restored after each battle, and for any in-battle healing there are character skills. So there's no need to stock up on items or have to backtrack because you ran out of healing, etc.
* The difficulty is VERY flexible. If you want challenging combat, the Hard or Extreme option is great - but if you don't care about it, Normal or Easy is the way to go. This can be changed at any time (well, except in mid-combat) with no penalty. Also, enemy encounters stop being forced on you once MC is 5+ levels above the enemies, so you can fight as much or as little as you want.
* They actually made sensible use of the mouse wheel for choosing menu options, making it often faster than using mouse AND keyboard. It's a relatively small detail, but I sure appreciated it.
2) I really, REALLY enjoyed the story.
* Plenty of lovable characters, and a couple of easy to hate ones, tons of funny interactions - seriously, it's great.
* The Musician route felt amazing. It was the closest I got to feeling like the MC of Eminence in Shadows - specifically, the arc where he works with another group against his own organisation, and they all think "wow, I wonder who this really strong person fighting against us is". They give you a bad4ss look and theme music, too. Interactions with other Musicians (and Go-Home club members) are very fun, the ending of the route is properly gut-wrenching - and you are not forced to replay the entire game to see the different ending, either. .
* I can't believe this even needs to be pointed out, but - I've seen some claims online like "this game condones/excuses <problematic behavior>", and after playing the game I found those claims to be as credible as saying "detective stories condone/excuse murder". Like, seriously, this game is VERY, ridiculously clearly on the side of empathy/compassion/etc.
3) Music, of course, deserves a special mention. The in-game setup is that there is one singer, Mu, who has different Musicians (each with their own background/personality) create the music and lyrics for her songs. Mu then performs each song according to the corresponding Musician's feelings (basically, she's taking on a different persona for each song). In real life, the songs were actually created by different people and performed by the same singer.
* Mu's voice actress (Reina Ueda) does an absolutely phenomenal job of it - she actually managed to make ALL songs really sound like different characters were singing them. E.g. someone who doesn't ever want to grow up, or someone who wants to break everything, or someone who just wants to be cooler - very different personalities, and all come through very distinct, through just her voice (though music style and lyrics/vocabulary for each song are also very distinct).
* Pretty much all songs are bangers as a result
4) This game has an *insane* amount of extra details that are completely optional - but they're still available if you want to seek them out.
* Each character has something unique they can say to MC or *any* other character the in the party once battle starts, and something else when it ends (and what they say to MC changes based on whether the link with them is maxed out). Moreover, after finishing the game, it's possible to put both the Go-Home club members AND Musicians into the party together - and see what they have to say to each other! Given some characters' histories together, this can be super fun. The only downside is that this is Japanese voice only, without any subtitles.
* The in-game messaging app lets you ask ANY of the 500+ students how they feel on a variety of topics. For example, maybe you know that "The moon is beautiful" in Japanese has the meaning of "I love you" (for historical reasons - google it), and you're curious to see how different party members would react to the confession (or indeed, whether they even know that meaning)? Well, you absolutely can. Or try asking some of the more eccentric characters "What is important in battle?" - some of the replies are hilarious.
* The Causality Link system is mostly a way to gradually make MC more powerful through stat increases and extra skills - but it also has random bits about each of the 500+ students. Uncovering those bits feels a bit like Return of the Obra Dinn - it tells you bits of stories of what happened in each class, with some jokes and secrets. For example, one class is labelled as "Class Trial" on the chart, with some students on the prosecution side and some on the defence side... and if you explore this you'll find out that the trial was about who ate someone else's lunch.
I just love this game so much.

I like that this game has hints of Persona. It's also very imaginative. Nice graphics. I'm still not terribly fond of the nav or battle system, but they're growing on me. This game has a bizarre knack for occasionally hitting upon raw spots in my psyche. Definitely not everything is as it seems in Mobius.

I love me a good RPG with and intriguing story. The music and aesthetic really appealed to me as well, however I wish the in game models and animations were as good, they leave a lot to be desired. Admittedly it does take awhile for the game to rope you in with the good story and mechanics roughly about 10 hours? So it does have a bit of a slow start. Majority of the characters were well written and relatable which carried a lot of my interest in the game. The character episode were fun however the side quests with NPCs were some of the worst implemented I've ever seen I only did about 3 of them and needed a guide since a majority of them were so convoluted. Some of the dungeons went a little longer than I would have liked. Other than that it was a fun game that I was happy to play :)

Very good game. I was looking for a game with a timeline mechanic that wasnt very limiting and I got what I wanted. But because of the fact that it wasnt very limiting, if you know what you are doing, you just might kill the final boss without seeing its attacks. Still, one of my new favorite games :)