Coming just out of E3, Atlus U.S.A has announced that they plan to release upcoming PlayStation Vita exclusive Caligula as a digital download in both North America and Europe. Looking at the wording of the email—as well as the lack of a press release portion attached to it—it seems that the details surrounding the decision were just finalized over the last few days. Despite the lack of details, the company plans to release the title with Japanese audio in Spring of 2017.
Caligula was announced earlier this year for a Japanese release by FuRyu, the same publisher that handled both Legend of Legacy and Lost Dimension in Japan. The title's concept revolves around a group of individuals that realize they are trapped in a virtual reality world where everyone lives an idealized high school life on repeat forever and decide to find a way to escape it.
The game heavily revolves around themes of Vocaloid music and psychology, with various characters having suffered in the real world—before entering Mobius and forgetting their memories—leaving them unable to open up to others about their experiences. Characters are trapped in Mobius thanks to the power of the man-made Vocaloid program μ. Created by mankind to save its creators from despair, anyone that listened to her song were drawn in and had all their greatest dreams come true.
The game is being written by Persona and Persona 2 scenario writer Tadashi Satomi. Combat is thematically tied to the personalities of characters, as their over-confidence and ego sometimes causes their prediction on how much damage an ability will do to do less damage. You can hope for the best, but it doesn't always happen.
Quick Take
Personally, I didn't expect this title to be localized, and especially not so soon. I'm probably going to import the game anyway since it has some seriously nice pre-order bonuses in Japan, but it's really nice to see such a unique-looking JRPG coming to a wider audience. Shame it's going to be digital only.
