RPG Talk: The Caligula Effect: Overdose

In which I talk (write) about RPGs from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: PS4 (also on Switch and Windows)
Release: 2019

I was interested in the original The Caligula Effect from the day I first heard about it, when it was still a Japan-only title that might never be localized. I liked the idea of characters trying to escape a virtual world that they originally arrived at in order to avoid the pain and trauma in their real lives. And the game had a pedigree, having been written by one of the original Persona writers, from before Persona 3.

However, Caligula Effect was plagued with gameplay and loading issues so I ultimately decided to pass on it.

Then The Caligula Effect: Overdose was announced with additional content, a new game engine to go with the new consoles it would be releasing on, and perhaps the best form of advertising; an anime series. I ended up reviewing the anime at Diabolical Plots and while it was flawed, I really liked the core of it. So when Overdose released, I bought it.

Though the loading issues are gone, The Caligula Effect: Overdose is still a flawed game with a flawed story that I think otherwise had so much potential.

What I liked about the game is that it pulls from a wide range of reasons that a person in pain might withdraw from the world. Every playable character suffers from a personal trauma. Some of the traumas are definitely in the vein of "Yes, that's a problem!" and it's easy to see why someone suffering from bereavement or body dysmorphia could find solace in another reality. But even the more "mundane" issues can still mean a lot to the right person, and I'll get to specifics after I lay out how the story is arranged.

Much like the Persona series, Caligula has your band of high schoolers with issues who come together for a purpose. Only they're not actually high schoolers. The only people in the virtual world of Mobius who are "real" appear as high school kids, but could be any range of ages in the real world.

All of them have realized that Mobius is fake and decided that they want to go back to reality. As with Persona 4 and on, the cast delves into one dungeon after another that focuses on individual characters and gradually more people join the party as we run into more dungeons.

The problem with Caligula Effect and particularly with Overdose is that there are too many damn characters! Our heroes are part of the Go-Home Club, and for every one of them, there is a Musician on the antagonist side, who is fighting to preserve Mobius. Each dungeon beyond the first focuses on a duo, one member of the Go-Home Club and one Musician, who are thematically linked in some fashion. For instance, Mifue has body dysmorphia that makes her starve herself, and she shares a focus dungeon with Sweet-P, who likes to eat but hates being fat.

This gives us a cast of twenty humans plus two virtual idols, μ and Aria, who are the ones responsible for creating Mobius in the first place. With few exceptions, when the plot demands it, there is no time in the main game to do more than touch on the problems these characters are facing, leaving their personal stories for the optional Character Scenarios.

Persona does this as well, but it's much better integrated because Caligula does not have an in-game calendar. Instead, new scenarios are unlocked by dungeon progression, and because there are only so many dungeons in the game (even with the four new characters original to Overdose) this usually means you'll end up doing scenarios back to back.

You also can only do scenarios after having done their dungeon (with the exception of Shogo and Thorn, being the final duo), so with late game characters, this creates an unfortunate logjam where you'll end up doing six or more scenarios in a row because the game is ending and you literally could not start sooner, but the scenarios themselves treat the story as happening over several days, which is frankly baffling.

And this is too bad, because with room to breathe, these characters really could have been something. This cast is broken and it is absolutely no surprise when their secrets come out why they could have been seduced into leading a virtual life where they don't have the problems they have in the real one; whether it is a lack of self worth, grief, or fear. No problem, whether society would consider it big or small, is beneath μ's desire to help.

Suzuna's trauma is referred to as "lunchmate syndrome" where she ate lunch by herself in the bathroom because she didn't want to be seen as having no friends to eat with. It sounds like a nothing problem, high school angst that she'll eventually get over. But it was traumatic for her and that's enough reason for μ to want to give her a better life in Mobius.

And Sweet-P's trauma, if handled with more time and sensitivity could have been amazing (cw: transphobia).

Unsurprisingly, Sweet-P would like a world where she looks like her ideal self, which is physically a far cry from her real world body (not just in terms of gender), and because of that she's one of the Musicians, the game's antagonists. Her character scenarios focus on her dissatisfaction with her real world life, being in middle age and considering gender reassignment surgery, and what it's like being assigned male but liking stereotypically feminine things (especially as an older person with a masculine appearance). In more capable hands her story really could have been good!

So it's terrible that the Go-Home Club, despite being the heroes, frequently says things like "she's actually a man" and outs her status to other characters who otherwise wouldn't know. Worse, the game pulls stupid crap like having everyone pause before the gendered doors in the sauna dungeon so one of the characters can wonder which door she used. Though only the group's meathead thinks Sweet-P would have gone into the men's sauna, showing that most of the characters are aware she thinks of herself as female, they clearly don't agree with her assessment of herself from their behavior elsewhere.

And then the game does things like walk back whether Sweet-P is actually transgender and maybe she's really just a middle-aged man who likes cute things, which could be fine if not for the fact it feels more like the writer got cold feet. I mean, that earlier scene in the sauna where Sweet-P is approached by Ayana felt like serious transgender fear of being attacked for not having the right body type and not the fear of a man being caught in the wrong bath.

My one consolation is that if the player wants to do her character scenarios, they have to be supportive, as expressing disgust or hate towards her gender results in the player being locked out of her stories. So even if the rest of the party behaves poorly, the player is encouraged not to.

Characters aside, Caligula suffers a lot from the same new enemy, new dungeon scenario that Persona 5 does. The Go-Home Club needs to get to μ to force her to let them go home, and μ is working with the Musicians to keep Mobius running, so each dungeon is basically "Hey, we're chasing down another Musician!" culminating in a fight with said Musician, and after a few dungeons the formula starts to get stale. That Overdose actually adds another two dungeons does not help.

What Overdose does add that kind of works is allowing the player to join the Musicians as a covert operative, unlocking the Musician character scenarios, so the characters are not as flat as they were in the original game, and allowing the player character to unlock another ending.

This addition is not all that clean, and in fact results in even more dungeon running as you now revisit dungeons with Musician party members and fight the Go-Home Club, but if you're going to play anyway, it's worth it for the character scenarios. It's not for the added plot.

Ostensibly Thorn is trying to convince the player as the Go-Home Club president to side with the Musicians by seeing the story from their side, but ultimately she ends up brainwashing most of the Musicians to force them to continue fighting for Mobius, and she doesn't do this with the player protagonist. Obviously this is because removing player control would be bad, but this could have been handled with an ultimatum where the player stays or leaves when faced with the brainwashing, so at least Thorn would know that an unbrainwashed player agreed with her. It doesn't seem right that she would have let the player do as they please as a loose cannon.

Thorn as the lead villain is all right. Her ultimate goal is completely insane, destroying the world because her deceased friend no longer exists in it, but that's fine given that this is the game for characters with issues. What I disliked about her was actually added in the Overdose route.

The whole reason the Musicians are fighting the Go-Home club instead of kicking out the people who want to go home anyway, is that denying Mobius's reality as authentic actually causes Mobius to become unstable. The Musicians are trying to preserve the status quo, and for many of them, going back to the real world would be unbearable. Even for someone as unpleasant as Mirei, staying in Mobius means spending time with a loved one who is dying and otherwise confined to a bed. For Kuchinashi, it means living with the family she lost to an arson fire.

But in the Musician route, Thorn oddly threatens the Musicians with sending them back home to keep them in line, which completely contradicts why the Go-Home Club is a problem to begin with. There's no reason to keep this a secret as sending them home would solve everyone's problems and be a win-win for all around. Even if Thorn was keeping this secret on purpose to keep Shogo around for torment, the other Musicians should have said something.

Sadly, this feels par for the course for this game. It's got a lot of interesting ideas, fits and starts of something cool, but it just can't pull it together into the exceptional experience it could have been. I liked the bits I found, and seriously, if the character traumas had been given the proper room to breathe this could have been a highly memorable cast, but this is a case of where the parts are better than the whole.

VN Talk: My Vow to My Liege - Part 5: Wu Zixu

This is the last installment of my My Vow to My Liege VN Talk series. As mentioned before, beware of spoilers since I will cover plot points up until the end of his route.

If there is any character that the title My Vow to My Liege applies to, it's Wu Zixu. Though all the love interests are loyal (or not) to Fuchai, Wu Zixu's vow is front and center from the common route on. He clearly states that his goal in life is to see his king and country prosper. Though he and Fuchai disagree a lot, particularly on the common route, it feels like constructive disagreement. He's there to point out the things she can't or won't see, and there's no doubt that he will never abandon her, no matter what decisions she makes. Zixu dies on half the routes, protecting her kingdom in her absence after getting her to safety.

It was really hard not to like the guy after that, and I was glad I saved his route for last as it let me end the game on a high note. Not only is his route the most unique out of the four (the march to Qi doesn't happen at all), but it's replaced with palace intrigue and more nods to history than any other route, including Goujian's. He even quotes the classic poem Young Reeds Before Flowering (蒹葭) that is used as the lyrics for the ending credits song.

My only disappointment was that his bad ending didn't include his historical line to Fuchai that his eyes be posthumously hung on the gates of Gusu so he could watch the capital's capture. I guess that wouldn't have made for a tragically romantic ending, and I did like his actual bad ending, which flips an earlier question Fuchai had about what the king would be without her prime minister, making it clear that neither of them are anything without the other.

I suppose that was a dismal note to start things off with, so let's get to the meat of his route.

Getting Zixu's route involves pissing off Goujian (by being willing to kill him as a scapegoat), which I was all for, and results in a much more contentious king of Yue for the rest of the story. I found I liked it when Fuchai stops backing him up so much. And the thing is, even though Zixu's warnings about Goujian seem overly much during the common route, he's absolutely right about him.

Once the naval battle happens, Fuchai returns to the capital after hearing about a possible coup, only to find out that Wu Zixu is being dunked on by the rest of the palace ministers, led by Bo Pi (who historically was bribed by Goujian). Because Gusu's granaries were damaged on his watch, Zixu temporarily exiles himself from court.

This eventually leads to Zixu being framed for treason once mind-controlled Chenfeng "confesses" to setting the city on fire on Zixu's orders. And Goujian, who is providing much needed food aid to Ng, lets Fuchai know that he was shot during the naval battle by Ng forces (which we know from Goujian's route was done on Zixu's orders).

Fuchai's ministers push for her to execute Zixu and she's furious that she seems to be the only one who trusts him. She demands to see the room in the palace where he's being held and her ministers are clearly afraid that allowing her a private conversation with him will convince her to spare him, but she's so upset that no one dares deny her.

What happens next is one of my favorite scenes. She wants to convince Zixu to become her husband (and even tries to undress before he stops her) because, she reasons, the father of the future king would be above reproach. But Zixu, being the guy that he is, tells her that she should execute him, even if the charges are false (mostly, he did give the order to kill Goujian). He tells her that she can't run a country without her ministers, and in aggregate she needs them. If his dying preserves the peace, so be it.

Fuchai does not take this very well. And to the player it looks like she angrily respects his wishes when she tosses a sword at him and tells him to stab himself, leaving her to fly solo for much of the remainder of his route. We even see his "corpse" hauled out after said stabbing.

While I was not surprised he would come back later in the story, since it was far too early to be either a good or bad ending, I wasn't sure how that would happen. And I definitely did not think that faking his death (by not quite stabbing himself lethally enough) would be the case.

Apparently "stab yourself to end things once and for all" is code for "fake your death and escape the city with a bunch of loyal followers" so Zixu can save the day when Goujian and the Kingdom of Qi try sacking Gusu. I am hoping something was just lost in translation (perhaps a reference to a historical event?) because I couldn't read into the exchange so Zixu's return came out of left field. I thought it would be more likely that the dream world (when Fuchai is trying to become master of the Ding of Virtue) would revive him somehow, since she's able to influence the past in it.

Still, Zixu's route ended up being my favorite of the bunch. I really liked how forward Fuchai was, from initially suggesting the marriage as an off the cuff method of getting Zixu back in court, to seriously trying to get him to marry her to save his life, to actually marrying him in the epilogue. Having all the palace intrigue didn't hurt either.

Fuchai remains king in Zixu's good ending and they have a daughter, who will inherit the throne since Fuchai has since made amendments to the law to allow a woman to become king. The implication is that Fuchai herself still presents as male at court though (likely to make sure that the law has teeth) and her marriage to Zixu is a secret.

I'm not surprised by that, since it's likely something he would have been in favor of, but I'm a wee bit disappointed that we find out he's stepped down as prime minister in his good ending, since it's not clear what he's doing with his time anymore. Their daughter is recognized as the legitimate heir, so she's probably being taken care of by palace nursemaids (if not Chenfeng, who is babysitting in this ending), so Zixu probably has lots of time on his hands now.

VN Talk: My Vow to My Liege - Part 4: Yiguang

I was probably the most ambivalent going into Yiguang's route because there isn't much to his story aside from being a mage. Though Wu Zixu distrusts both him and Goujian, Yiguang is in less precarious a position. The only black mark against him is that he faked his death five years ago when the rest of the Shi clan sacrificed itself instead of continuing his family's service to the king. Unlike Goujian, he never raised arms against the kingdom.

We meet Yiguang living as a simple village doctor, with the respect of the people around him, and given the flashbacks we have through Fuchai, there's no reason to doubt that he's anything other than the kind-hearted soul he appears to be. The question really is why he never came back after the sacrifice, and it turns out to be a very mundane but relatable reason. He was afraid that Fuchai would have changed over the years and she'd no longer be the childhood friend he remembered.

Considering that was the one element of the unknown going into his route, it was harder to get excited about it. Yiguang is continually himself, with few ups and downs, and we don't end up seeing any new sides of him.

What makes his route markedly different from the others though, is that we get to visit two places that he otherwise visits alone in other routes. So we get to be with him when retrieves the Azure Dragon Sword from the hidden palace of the Shi family and when he goes to Haojing to find the Body of the Ding of Virtue. Both trips make for a nice change of pace from the march to attack Qi, though they don't sync up with the rest of the story very well.

For instance, Yiguang and Fuchai leave the army after the naval battle to go to the hidden palace, with an agreement to meet up with everyone else at Han City afterward, but when they come back, they apparently don't meet up with the army after all and head back to the capital of Gusu where they find out that the army has been sent north to attack Qi by a fake Fuchai (actually the Dragon God, though apparently without needing her blood to maintain the disguise as he did on Chenfeng's route). This sends the two of them right back out of the city to catch up with the army so everyone can head south again.

Though this happens to some degree on most routes, since there's usually a march to Qi, and sometimes a GuSu visit between the naval battle and the march, it feels particularly needless given how quickly they turn around. Yiguang is already tied for the shortest route in the game despite being the poster boy since his route skips having a chapter in Linzi, the capital of Qi.

As a love interest, Yiguang does all right as the unwavering childhood friend, and I suspect the reason Chenfeng ends up mind controlled is to mark a clearer difference between the two. There's little romantic angst on Yiguang's route save that Fuchai is aware she is likely to die before achieving any kind of happy ending with him, and unlike Chenfeng, Yiguang is not shy about letting her know his feelings.

Despite that, I felt a little let down. His Jade Fish talisman saves Fuchai many times over, and it's something he gave her years ago even though (or perhaps because) it's intended only for his soulmate. But I just felt the romance wasn't earned. They've been apart for most of their teenage years, but there's very little sorting out their feelings and getting reacquainted before they suddenly exchange marriage vows before the final battle.

I did like the climax of his route better than the others though, because the Dragon God is actually active around the ritual site where they prepare to kill him, and because Fuchai ends up doing it on her own without the ritual while Goujian is completely freaking out because she's discovered the Dragon God's hidden weakness. (She really hates Goujian for his betrayal on this route, which I'm all for.)

I'm less keen on the death fake-out though, because it's fairly obvious on Yiguang's route which are the good vs the bad choices, so the fact that it looks like Fuchai's dying in the good ending is pretty cheap. Much like in Chenfeng's ending she ends up faking her death, leaving the kingdom to her cousin, and this time leaves on a journey to see the world with Yiguang.

VN Talk: My Vow to My Liege - Part 3: Goujian

Even though Yiguang is the poster boy of My Vow to My Liege, I feel like the game may have been created with Goujian in mind as his route is the longest out of all of them.

I had a difficult time with Goujian's route, not because of the being on opposite sides thing (star-crossed lovers from feuding nations is all right with me), but because both he and Fuchai keep running hot and cold throughout the entire run. In the beginning of Goujian's route, when he's trying to figure out whether Fuchai actually trusts him, it was understandable, but as it wore on, I kept wanting them to make up their minds whether they loved or hated each other, and one or the other or both would keep bouncing between love, hate, and more rarely ambivalence (that wouldn't last).

I suppose, being a romance game, the answer is ultimately yes, even in the bad ending, but it's a long conflicting road with a fair bit of mood whiplash. The changing feelings are more understandable when prompted by something, but sometimes they aren't, so it's frustrating when they won't commit.

Like other routes, Goujian's story diverges following the naval battle with the Kingdom of Qi, during which Ng's supply ships were attacked. Given that the ships were traveling through a hidden route through the river tributaries that few knew about, there had to be a mole on the Ng side of the battle. If the player has gone through any other route first, it's pretty obvious that the mole is Goujian, but Fuchai at this point in time is still fully trusting of him. She and Goujian just swore a hundred years of friendship between their kingdoms and she released him to go back to his people.

Following the battle Goujian is prickly with her because it's obvious there was a mole, and he's the most glaring suspect. She says she trusts him, but he finds that difficult to believe given the circumstances, and when he pushes her to swear that she does not suspect him, she refuses on account of him acting so defensive.

What can be difficult to see, particularly in the early chapters of his route, is that Goujian has been getting mixed signals from Fuchai for a long time and his anger is nothing recent. We know they met before he realized that she was actually the king of Ng, which is why they use the affectionate nicknames Ahyu and Ahjiu, but we don't get the circumstances until his route when Fuchai enters the Spiritual Realm and lives out a mirror version of his circumstances, where Ng is defeated and Fuchai is the one enslaved.

This lets us see how Goujian came to care about the one person in Ng who was kind to him, while also feeling betrayed upon learning that his "friend" was also the king holding him prisoner and demanding his people pay tribute. While Goujian did not know who Fuchai was at first, it was impossible for Fuchai to not have known Goujian's identity, making the sincerity of her friendship suspect. Unfortunately for Goujian, he'd already started crushing on her by then, which made him extremely conflicted and understandably upset, leading him to forging an alliance with the Dragon God and his followers.

This revelation comes very late in his route though, leaving his behavior bewildering for most of it. He betrays Fuchai at the naval battle, but then he's mushy with her on the road to war with the Kingdom of Qi. A short while later he betrays her again at the conference with the Kingdom of Jin by ripping open her clothes to expose her chest and gender to the other kings, and then he's… sorry about it (or not, depending on choices made).

From Goujian's point of view I understand why he backstabbed Fuchai at the conference. He swore his revenge would not come without Fuchai suffering the ultimate humiliation, and his action, aside from being devastatingly personal, theoretically put the entire Kingdom of Ng on the backfoot. Being her lover at the time probably helped wedge the knife in, and I'm fine with that if Goujian's decided that his commitment is to his revenge, but being apologetic while exposing her didn't work for me. He can't have it both ways.

I'm less surprised that Fuchai's feelings bounce around after his second betrayal, but she seems surprisingly forgiving of it. Even in the bad ending when she's reconciled herself to the fact that they're enemies, it feels more like she's lamenting that their relationship can never be because they're the kings of two nations at war rather than because he placed his desire for revenge over her.

The good ending also felt a little… easy, considering what Goujian has done. Despite what happened at the conference, Ng having an openly female king turns out to be a non-issue and Fuchai gets to marry Goujian. I don't know exactly how that leaves things in his home nation of Yue, but Wu Zixu makes it clear that Goujian is marrying into Fuchai's family, and not the other way around. Goujian is a little put out, but that didn't bother me. If nothing else, I'm glad Fuchai didn't step down and/or run off with him.

But this made the conference chapter very irritating to me. Literally the only reason it exists is for that scene where Goujian humiliates Fuchai, because it doesn't appear on other routes, and has no bearing on the remaining story beats, not even the Goujian specific endings. It doesn't even bother to show the reactions of the other kings before putting Fuchai back on a boat for her capital, further cementing the fact everything about the conference was irrelevant except for Goujian.

I think if not for the conference scene, and if Fuchai had just been a little more suspicious of him, I would have liked Goujian's route better, but I just can't forgive him.