The Caligula Effect: Overdose

Things To Praise:
Unique RPG combat system that does allow combo potential.
Pretty solid soundtrack, there's definitely some vocal songs that didn't get tiresome to hear and I even added a couple of them to a playlist.
LOTS of sidequests based on the entirety of the students in the school.
Two different paths you can go down for different endings, the Go Home Club and the Musicians.
Things to Mark Off:
Even though the soundtrack is great at first listen, there can be LONG stretches in dungeons where the music will become less of an earworm and more of an irritating ringing in your ears.
Even though the combat system is set-up for complex recipes of tactical planning, it never feels like it's actually working for you beyond the "Limit Break" abilities that have their own cutscenes (which you will see a lot).
Those sidequests get really repetitive really quickly.
The story is a cool idea, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired; characters often feel like offensive stereotypes that pretend to have more depth than they actually do.
Overall:
If you do want it, get it cheap. It's an alright RPG filled with content, but it can often feel very copy-paste and formulaic.

the main character's theme came with a whole game and complimentary album this is awesome

Very unique game.
One of the best soundtracks in any game.
Genuinely good writing that stays compelling throughout.
Obvious flaws in the presentation and level design.
Most battles aren't very difficult.
Side quests aren't worth it, in any sense.
Caligula 2 works to fix these flaws a lot, but you should play this one first to appreciate it to the fullest extent.

Waiting for npcs to enter areas was numbing my brain...
+Visually this game didn't appeal to me at first because of the character's 3d models but if we look past that, this game does look nice. The art is good, the dungeons look look nice, the arena you battle in looks cool and the UI looks super clean. Definitely a bit dated when you look at the 3d models tho.
+The soundtrack of this game is so good. There are different musicians and mu herself who all have different tracks and are all so dam good. Mirei's track is super good for one but Kuchinashi's track is some loop on spotify good. The way the lyrics seamlessly come in the track when you enter battles is so delicious.
+The voice acting for this game is phenomenal. You are a silent protag so don't expect your character to be speaking a lot outside battle but dam the voice acting for both the club members and the musicians was good. Bonus points that they got Rie Takahashi to voice Mihue.
+I will go against most people and say I liked the dungeon design. There were a lot of fights with enemies that all look the same while you go around hearing the same track while backtracking a lot. Wait this sounds terrible... Actually, it fits the game thematically. You are stuck there with your character trying to get out of Mobius with them. The enemies being all the same is just a product of Mobius only having high schoolers. All this being said, I genuinely enjoyed running around the dungeons despite the backtracking and the enemies being repetitive because the story carried the dungeon traversal and the map design itself wasn't bad.
+When you are too strong for the opponents, they just ignore you which is nice. This probably was the biggest reason I was enjoying the dungeons as I didn't flee from fights and with enough fights, I just ended up running through all the opponents I didn't want to fight.
+It is nice that there is no power creep at all in this game so you can invest your resources how you want on whichever character you want and you won't feel weak. It is also nice that your characters not in your party still get xp (even tho it's just half). You can even invest your resources in npcs if you want to as you can add them to your party. You can do this but why would you...
+The story was so good. At first I was annoyed by it but it really picks up and dam it goes dark fast. It also picks up because you get to see the story from both the club's side and the musicians' side. It was slow at first but the pace picks up but not abruptly. I am happy this game touched some dark themes and they tackled them very well. The character arcs were also all good and definitely add to the story. It did a really good job at portraying the trauma of all the individual characters and we really start to understand why they are the way they are.
+The characters of this game is truly where the game shines. Each of the club members and musicians have 9 episodes worth of character arcs so we get to know them better. Looking at the characters on surface value they all seem cliche and annoying but these characters really add depth and they aren't bad at all. I think the character arcs of the musicians is much much better than the club members. Surprisingly enough, I think Stork had the best character arc despite being the man he is.
+Kotonoha
-I really enjoyed the combat at first but wow there is no depth at all. The combat is the same from start to end with not much strategy needed. Characters unique strengths don't matter at all and it gets a bit annoying to fight things. It doesn't help that it is super easy because you fully regen between battles and your dead allies get xp so you can just dump every resource you have the moment you go into a fight.
-The equipment system is just boring. You just get equipment from the treasures and drops and it doesn't even make sense how strong some equipment is in the early parts of the game and how weak some of the drops are later in the game. Whenever I got something new, I didn't even bother looking to change my equipment until right before a boss and even then, I didn't need to swap equipment.
-The 3d models are so dated. The Overdose skill of the protagonist is super ugly and I feel bad when I have to use it cause I have to look at it.
-This game has one of the worst subquest systems I have ever seen. They have 500 npcs which are all bland and you can't even tell them apart from each other without their nametag. These npcs each have a subquest. There is also the causality link where you can only start talking with certain npcs when you befriend adjacent npcs on the tree. This is honestly such a good concept but there is just so many npcs and they just have no depth. It is also frustrating to find the npcs needed for a tree as they are just running around with in the most random places beside someone who you will accidentally talk to 5 times before you get to talk to the npc you want. Did I mention you have to talk to an npc THRICE to befriend them... It does not make any sense why they don't just make it once and they just drop their subquest instantly. So you have to talk to them thrice then open a submenu to tell them to drop their subquest like it is so annoying to get the subquest which can be so simple to do. I can't believe it is more frustrating to get subquests in this game than to do it.
Despite the flaws which I just said, this game was still really really fun. A bit difficult to recommend to those who don't already play JRPGs tho.

Ignore my Steam gameplay hours, I've played this game elsewhere.
A game that seems unassuming at first, but will quickly charm you with its cool gameplay and wonderful music-- just wonderful! It's a highlight of this game, and a big part of the character expression in the story. Apart from a decision made towards the end that I felt was a bit silly, the story itself is fantastic, and absolutely worth experiencing the unique battle system. Even if you only play this game once, the soundtrack will stick with you for a long time, bursting with emotion.
Definitely one of my favourite anime RPGs ever, maybe even up there with Persona 3 FES.

screw GHC , the musicians are true homies