Persona is the king of the social RPG. That, of course, doesn’t mean that other games shouldn’t take a stab at the genre. The main problem is that there aren’t enough competitors in the scene to really make it challenge anyone. Thankfully Caligula Effect has come out with a revamp of their game, dubbed Overdose, to try and broaden our minds a little. For that, at least, they should be applauded.
One of the bigger draws to the game is that almost every NPC that can be spoken to has a social gauge that be modified. This means that the standard background characters have the chance of becoming the best friends of the player through sheer interaction alone. While this approach is novel and interesting, the drawback can instantly be pointed out in the fact that there are literally hundreds of characters to interact with, making as nearly as powerful as any one in a Persona game nearly impossible.
Another minor drawback is that it is kind of a barebones port to the PC. The basic options of screen resolution, etc, are present; but almost nothing else. If something needs to be adjusted the player needs to go all the way out to the menu to do so, then load the most recent save file to see if that fixed the issue. For games on the PC, that will randomly have problems running on various hardware, this can be an annoyance as it increases the amount of time the player doesn’t know if enabling or disabling something fixed whatever random issue was happening.
Aside from the two aforementioned odd missteps, the game is overall very solid. While the social aspect of the game in novel and adds some flavor to the game to set it apart from the rest, what comes across is a very by the number JRPG. For some people that might not be the best thing in the world. Some people might find fault with that. For the rest of us that is exactly what they are looking for since not that many of them seem to be coming out anymore.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose is a neat game, although no one probably thought that it was going to get a remix type version released. The game isn’t without issues, but those are easily pushed to the side for anyone who enjoys any type of game in this genre. For everyone else, they are free to play those games. For those of us who long for when the next random genre RPG is coming out, this is simply a gift. The best part is that it is on Steam, and that means all the good things that that platform entails.