Done with Caligula 2, clocked in at 32 hours.
I even did a lot of the mostly pointless mini-quests that require a lot of back and forth.
Playing through the first Caligula Effect felt a bit like mainlining mental illness. Thankfully, this one was much better and straightforward.
Plot-wise, it's, sadly, utter nonsense. A bunch of people have some problems or 'regrets' in real-life, so they're isekai'd into a perfect virtual world where a manufactured idol rules as goddess, even though they still get to suffer in various ways (I'm serious). For example, this supposedly perfect world features young delinquent gangs that beat people up and having to go through high school.
I dislike the game's artstyle. It's too blocky, bright and colorful. The school is a good example of this.
The characters look like crap, same as Monark, although a slight upgrade from Caligula 1, I guess. You have a choice between male and female PC, but that's it. Everyone wears pretty much the same garbage outfit, with your team having alternative combat outfits, which are not really an improvement. The villains actually look much better!
Voiceacting was pretty good, although they really needed to work with more combat lines. Japanese-only, unlike Monark.
The music is passable. Monark had a lot more interesting pieces. There are still quite a few good vocal tracks in CE2, but while going through a dungeon, the same piece will play over and over (with a combat variation). With how long dungeons are, this gets frustrating. The game has a lot of tracks that are just under-utilized/never heard outside of χ's special ability. Essentially, the way they've made it work is that through the dungeon an instrumental track plays and once you jump into combat it smoothly switches to the vocal version.
This is some cool music.
Combat-wise, you control the MC and three other team members of your choice. The system has to grow on you. Be prepared to persevere through at least the first 4 hours of only having a couple skills to use. When you get more skills, the game and possibilities open up. Normal difficulty is a bit of a joke, aside from a couple of fights, you should be at all points able to take on enemies up to 10 levels ahead.
The battle system revolves around timing. You can get a preview of what the enemies will do before each move and adjust the timing of your move before you do it. It's not a bad system, but, like I said, you have to get a lot of abilities for it to be fun. Until then, it feels pointless. Being able to see enemies' attacks before they execute them allows you to use counters and combos, which can be cool.
There's no way to speed up combat or animations, but thankfully there's no shitty grinding involved, unlike Monark.
I remember reading a review that said Monark has character development, but the same environments over and over and that this is the exact opposite. That take is 100% true. This game is full of different areas/dungeons, but most of the characters are and remain surface-level deep, even if you do all the interactions (aside from VN character skits, there's also an SMS-like chat system where you use prewritten choices to find out more about the person you're interacting with).
The game has A SHITTON of NPCs. That makes the world feel alive, but all of them, with little to no exception are throwaways.
The writing of quests and dialogue... where to even begin with this? Do you like going through a multi-fold quest trying to unveil a conspiracy about a teacher being a sexual harasser (yep...) or finding out whether the hottest couple on campus are actually dating or not?
I take issue with the writers' interpretation of isekai and their idea of 'who's actually the person in the real world?'.
For example, you find out that your second team member (your spry, high-school age-looking tank) is actually an 80 year old grandma, who actually has zero regrets, unlike everyone else. That wasn't a detail that needed to be explicitly revealed and merely hinting at it would have been fine. This is pretty basic stuff- you don't want to detach relatability from your main characters.
This brings me onto the following important point. The game has pozz. It's possible some of it is localization-fuckery, but not all of it.
Your team member admits to having trouble with her (him, whatever, it's a girl IRL, but a boy in the virtual world) gender, and only choosing the right support action during the VN character episodes allows for progress.
Look at this trash.
On the other hand, the game doesn't push anything else that's weird and, in general, seems fairly traditional. Boys like girls, girls like boys. Perhaps this particular character was written by some gaijin retard they picked up off the street?
Observe the words of these based trad-villains and make your own assumptions about why they're portrayed as the villains in the game:
So, to conclude, this is my summary for Caligula Effect 2.
- Much better than Caligula 1, combat can be fun, decent music. Expect a very shallow game, and only pick up if you're okay with that.
I don't think it exists, unfortunately.
