Admittedly, it is rare that I find a sequel to a game I really like, that actually lives up to the original. I absolutely adored The Caligula Effect: Overdose when it was released on Switch back in 2019, so when I heard that the sequel was finally coming to the west on Nintendo Switch, I had to play it. The Caligula Effect 2 brings everything I enjoyed about the first game and creates a whole new world and storyline to indulge in.

In The Caligula Effect 2, you play a protagonist that is either male or female (of your choosing and naming), who meets the Virtuadoll X (pronounced Key) in the world of Redo. Redo is a virtual world much like Mobius from the first game. However, the Virtuadoll Regret has created Redo in order to allow people to get away from their past, and hopes to make a utopia where people can live their ideal lives.

In reality, people affected by this new virtual world are in comas and blame Mu, the antagonist of the first game, for the resurgence in afflicted people. In truth, X is the daughter (somehow) of Mu and wants to clear her mother’s name by freeing the people of Redo from Regret and her Obbligato Musicians, who brainwash the people of Redo via their music.

You will team up with other people at the Tatefushi Academy to form the Go-Home Club and find a way to stop Regret and make it back to the real world. As you can imagine, since the virtual world of Redo is a place where past mistakes are erased, this means that each of your party members has regrets and mistakes from their past. Even the visual form they take on is different from their real-world counterpart.

Because of that, as you travel and fight alongside them, you will unlock character stories that allow you to delve into their past and come to terms with the reason they wound up in Redo in the first place. Additionally, because of the psychological nature of the plot, you do not equip traditional weapons or armor onto your party members. Instead, you equip things called Stigmas, which serve as traits or ideals that your characters can equip which bestow stats on them.

In The Caligula Effect 2, if you equip Stigmas that have abilities attached, as you fight enemies your character will learn those abilities. Then you can equip them in your passive ability slots, that way even if you change your equipped Stigmas, you’ll still have access to them. This also comes in handy when doing side quests via the Causality Link, as certain traits are required for certain quests.

The Causality Link is a web-like skill tree that evolves as you meet and make friends with people in Redo. A lot of the quests involve fetch quests or doing various actions a certain number of times. However, some quests (called group quests) have a quest chain that usually gives you a humorous side story. Filling out the Causality Link gives your protagonist extra stat growth and upgrades, which adds to the already robust progression system.

Combat plays out similarly to the first game, in which you utilize the Imaginary Chain function in order to see what your enemy will do before you lock in your attack choices. It is turn-based, but the Imaginary Chain gives you a preview of what the outcome of your choice might be, so you can alter your strategy or coordinate the timing of each character’s attack to make combos or counterattacks. The timing element makes it feel like you are choreographing a dance or perhaps to fit the theme, setting the tempo of a song.

You can also time your defense to lessen damage from an attack or counter specific attacks from enemies in order to toss them into the air or slam them into the ground. Each character has their own unique abilities and role to play in the battle. You can carry 4 characters in your party at once, so balancing and swapping out party members to make sure they all level is important, especially if you want to unlock all the character stories and make sure they’re unlocking abilities.

A new mechanic in The Caligula Effect 2 is the X-Jack mechanic, which allows you to fill a voltage meter in order to use X’s ability to cause a party-wide buff for a period of time. You can enhance X’s abilities with X-Coins, which you can get from filling out the Causality Link and from breaking Rifts. Rifts are breakable items in the environment that give you consumables, money, and X-Coins.

There are so many things to do and experience in The Caligula Effect 2. The environments are colorful, the characters are interesting, and overall the experience is fantastic. They even built an entire soundtrack from the villains, which changes in theme and sound depending on the villain that created it. The villains are actually represented by actual Japanese Vocaloid artists too, so if you find a song or style you like, you can listen to more of their stuff if you wish.

The Caligula Effect 2 has so much content and care put into it, though I do have a few minor gripes. Aside from the majority of Causality Link quests being fetch quests, I also found that it was annoying having to find specific quest givers again because the characters move around. The Causality Link may tell you where they are, but it isn’t always accurate, which makes turning in quests sometimes frustrating. Plus, there can be a lot of back-and-forth in quest chains, going from one area to another, only to be told that you have to go back to the first place.

Overall, I really like the story though I am somewhat disappointed that we didn’t get English voice acting this time around. Perhaps if they re-release the game later on with extra content like the original then that will change. There is a lot to love about The Caligula Effect 2, and it really feels like a well-thought-out experience aside from a few minor gripes in questing.

The progression systems are interesting and varied, there are a lot of fun characters, and even the enemy characters are interesting to learn about. If you enjoyed the first game or you’re looking for a new RPG to sink your teeth into, then I don’t think you could go wrong with The Caligula Effect 2. With the variety of difficulty options, even people new to RPGs can get into it.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of The Caligula Effect 2 was provided by NIS America for this review.

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The Caligula Effect 2

$49.99

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Deep Combat and Progression Systems
• Variable Difficulty
• Fantastic Characters and Story
• Great Music and Visual Design
• 100+ Hours of Content

Cons

• Lots of Fetch Quests
• Finding Quest-Giving NPCs can be Annoying