The Caligula Effect: Overdose & 2 Announced for PS5 in Japan; New Art Shared

Developer FuRyu has announced that their turn-based JRPGs, The Caligula Effect: Overdose and The Caligula Effect 2, will launch for PlayStation 5 in Japan on October 12, 2023. Unfortunately, upgrading from the PlayStation 4 version of the game will not be possible.

This news follows publisher NIS America launching The Caligula Effect: Overdose on PlayStation 5 in the West and announcing The Caligula Effect 2 for the PlayStation 5 in the West for Fall 2023.

To commemorate this news, the official Japanese account for The Caligula Effect series shared new artwork, viewable via our gallery below:

The Caligula Effect tells the story of a group of students trying to escape the false security and happiness a virtual reality provides. After the protagonist realizes the truth, he and others create the Go-Home Club and try to gather other friends under their banner.

As a turn-based RPG, the game features a unique “Imaginary Chain” system of coordinating characters’ actions and respective timings and predicting trajectories and combo effects before making a move. As the player helps others break free from the falsity of the world, several characters can be recruited and used in battles.

The Overdose edition also included the option to betray the Go-Home Club, doing extra stories focused on the Ostinato Musicians (the game’s villains) and siding with them during the story’s final moments. The female version of the protagonist wasn’t available in the Vita version either.

The Caligula Effect 2 introduces players to a virtuadoll named Regret, who has created the world of Redo to save people from their past regrets by unknowingly imprisoning them in a simulation.

However, this “paradise” is shaken to the core when a virtual idol named χ breaks into Regret’s virtual reality and restores a high school student’s memories of the real world. In order to escape Redo, they re-establish the Go-Home Club, a resistance group that seeks to fight against Regret and her enforcers, the Obbligato Musicians.

Knowledge of the first game is not required to enjoy and understand this ambitious sequel.

Check out the NIS America’s official translations of the game’s vocal soundtrack.