The Caligula Effect: Overdose

Having taken plenty of time to play through the game and all the character episodes, I can safely say that this is one of the most in-depth games I have played.
Character wise: I would tie the character development fairly close to Persona level as far as the development of backstories and the information involved. It was interesting to see that most of the characters are related to one another through a specific incident, which they are unaware of. That being said, each character has their own motivations and intentions, as well as their own disorders. It's easy with the diversity in issues to find at least one or more characters here to relate to. Whether it be loss, guilt over something you felt you could have stopped, eating disorders, or simply running from the past. The true question gets brought up multiple times if the Musicians are truly bad, or just by-products of the pain of their past. It all comes together in the end and is one of the best games I've played.

Story-wise: It's a great story, though at times mildly predictable (like THAT one musician....). All in all though it deeply develops the characters and really shines with the music ensemble throughout. The game does a great job at accurately portraying traumas to the extent that it seems one truly did their research developing it. It allows a fair bit of choice, including a bad ending if you want it.

Battle wise: It's turn based progression that allows you movement around a small board to use various abilities. I found early on that learning when to use healing and the emergency barrier are key to harder fights. The battles aren't difficult, but fighting same or lower level enemies takes less skill and sometimes I would just find myself spamming all the characters basic attacks. The game has a battle forecast function similar to Fire Emblem and others that allows you to see the hit chance, as well as what the enemy is likely to do next. This comes in handy for combo moves. Speaking of, a lot of the game involves juggling to increase the enemies' "risk meter" which just ups the damage similar to criticals. Higher risk meter makes some moves use better combos, and most of the ultimate moves from completing character episodes relies on them. Though some like Kotono rely instead on hitting airborne enemies.

All in all, solid gameplay, great character work, and top notch music. I'd play but again, but my backlog is full.

Get this game if you want a JRPG with unique battle system, amazing character design, lovable cast of characters (even the antagonists!) and banger OSTs.
There are a some downsides that I encountered, such as stiff animations, repetitive dungeon design and I feel like some of the story lacks the resolution that it deserve.
My mind has been occupied by this game for weeks now, you can say it's all the effect of overdosing on caligula, heh.

Bought this on sale with no clue what it was and was pleasantly surprised by how interesting the cast and story were.
JRPG with the premise of what if The Matrix was run by Vocaloids
The battle system is... ok. It incentives juggling enemies to not allow them to get their turns but the lack of a battle timeline scrub control makes it far more time consuming that it should be.
MC stat improvements outside of levels is tied to the Causality Link which is a sidequest tree. Cool the first few times you try it, but with how much the sidequests repeat, gets really tedious.
I'd honestly recommend this game at lowest difficulty just to be able to speed along the story because that really is where it shines.

HONESTLY!!! Ive been fairly biased towards this game... but its still really fun!! Like, its fun but OBJECTIVELY speaking its not that good. The problem is that it had really good baseline but it just didn't execute it that well... I don't think thats the best way to describe it but for example: The characters are really interesting HOWEVER their development (and how they live with/solve the issue with their life) feels rushed and incomplete sometimes not even resolving the character's development ending when the protagonist learns of their issue. Again this isn't that bad because the characters are geniuenly interesting and when their arc is actually pulled off well it's really cool just that most of the characters' often feel off. This isn't the only thing like this in the game... The main story can feel rushed too in a similar way and the way the characters act feels very off... The thing is that if you can look past things like this the game is very fun but not mentioning these just because you CAN look past them wouldnt be a very good review....

Although I haven't played it from what I hear the second game pretty much fixes those issues... The game does have other problems like the dungeon design being pretty repetitive in the later areas because HONESTLY the first 4 areas we're cool cuz there was like some degree of interactiveness with the dungeon with different objectives to do... after the library all the dungeons are pretty much just going to the end (unless you wanna count looking for two keys in the construction site). Other than that, there's the combat, which is a masterpiece probably up there with my favorite combat systems. Seriously, this combat is really good...

Anyways, I really like the game. I do recommend you play it even with these shortcomings because its still honestly a great game that I find really fun, just expect things like this... Also this is the first time I've tried writing an honest to goodness review so like yknow fr fr fr....

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.

You'll spend more time completing the mystery of the 21-class leader than the story itself. Thoughts and prayers

It's a recommend if you enjoy JRPGs.
I can say that I genuinely enjoyed the story and the characters, it seems stereotypical at first but it breaks the mold and becomes something of its own. The characters that I didn't like were written to be despicable and the team behind game did so successfully.
The graphics are decent considering it was originally a PS Vita game (albeit in the very few instances of pre-rendered backgrounds resized to 1080p can be jarring). There are anime cutscenes that, while low-budget, are serviceable.
The gameplay is fun and strategic, with you inputing your moves and watching it unfold in a preview that you can go back to before letting it play for real and see if unfolds as planned. That said, the challenge is severely reduced after you reach level 50 on Normal (which should be halfway thorugh the game if you aren't avoiding enemies - there's no random battles - and clear the maps, as well some side-questing) so if you're an experienced player (i.e. the kind that actually uses buffs and debuffs instead of just mashing attack) then Hard should be more exciting.
There's three things that bring this game down to 7/10:
1) The dungeon design is nice when you go through them for the first time, but revisiting them feels repetitive, boring and unspired. Also, on a second playthorugh the Library and the Aquarium are genuinely annoying dungeons to go through again due to their gimmicks.
2) There are side-quests through the Causality Link system that raise your base stats - a grand total 524 of them, which means they're not unique and very repetitive. Hunting NPCs becomes annoying over time, involving revisiting dungeons after every story event, then clearing the quests available at that point can easily take an extra 5 hours or more between dungeons (and that's fast-forwarding the text or using the game's option to skip all of it). Also, you'll have a bunch of NPCs whose quests can only be done in the final dungeon, which annoying since you can't use warp points (or at least not before you fight the final boss and save afterwards) and running round the dungeons mechanically through the same path over and over again is just mind-numbing. I'm glad they carry over on New Game+ because I plan on never doing it again.
3) The Ostinato Musicians are very interesting and complex characters, but revisiting dungeons and having to fight mobs in order to raise their friendship level is just annoying and everything that isn't their story events feels like padding to justify the remake. Also, the alternative ending not only felt force but made me feel the biggest jerk in the universe (which would be fine if it earned it, but it didn't).
Finally, the highlight of the game: the music. It's simply excellent. The songs are made by famous vocaloid producers, but this time they had an actual singer (Reina Ueda, μ's voice actress) to work with and it's just amazing - the way it integrates with combat is very good too.
After 119 hours later and unlocking all the achievements (almost everything can be done in one playthrough, with the major decision that splits the two endings becoming available only right at the end; only two achievements require a second playthrough and New Game+ is available for that), I recommend it with the caveat that if you don't have tolerance for NPC hunting and fetch quests, stick to the main story (+musician's route).