Review: Costume Quest 2

Posted by Curtis H on November 7th, 2014 | 1 Comment | Tags: Costume Quest 2

In Costume Quest 2 an evil dentist has enlisted the help of a time wizard in order to manipulate time and put an end to Halloween forever. Once again it is up to brother-sister duo Wren and Reynold to suit up in a variety of costumes and save Halloween. While Costume Quest 2 doesn’t do much to change things up the time travel storyline and new costumes will be enough to leave fans of original game pleased.

The time travel storyline in Costume Quest 2 is goofy and fun. In a dystopian future with no Halloween kids are now forced to go to school that teaches how terrible candy is and the virtues of flossing. Everett and Lucy, the two kids who join you in the first game, are now married and have traveled back in time to make sure Wren and Reynold can save Halloween. Throughout the game you’ll travel to the past and future multiple times in order to right the wrongs made by the dentist. While it’s not used as a mechanic to solve puzzles very often there is one specific case that you’ll need to use time travel to unlock a costume that I felt was done very well. There’s also the whole prohibition of candy angle that the future takes which I found really funny. There are literal candy speakeasies that you’ll visit in the game.

There are very few changes to the gameplay this time around. This time your characters will not be healed after each battle, Creepy Treat Cards have now replaced battle stamps, and elemental strengths and weaknesses have been introduced. (Unfortunately the elemental stuff isn’t used to it’s full potential.) Battles will play out in the same way that they did in the original game. Timed button presses will result in a stronger attack, less damage taken, and if you’re good you can now charge a counter attack. Thanks to the new costumes it’s still fun to discover the special moves associated with each costume as well as come up with the best costume lineup for your party. Much like the first game however the battles start to drag as you get further into the game. This isn’t too much of an issue though as the game is wrapping up right around the time that you’ll start tiring of combat.

Creepy Treat Cards can be found hidden in the environment or purchased with candy that you’ve acquired through trick-or-treating. These can be used during battle to add buffs to your characters, debuff enemies, or straight up eliminate any monster of your choosing. With 45 to choose from I had a lot of fun mixing and matching the cards I had equipped to my three available slots. To that note I’d even recommend that you go out of your way to use these cards (it’s very easy to forget that these cards exist considering how easy the game is overall) as it makes the battle system a little more interesting.

Hot dog costumes, door-to-door trick-or-treating, a dystopian future, and plenty of bad candy corn jokes are all just a small piece of what makes Costume Quest 2 another worthy game that should grab your attention during the month of October. The only thing that holds it back from being better is that Costume Quest 2 doesn’t expand upon what made the original so great. It’s still a great game, but an updated battle system could have gone a very long way.

A copy of this game was purchased for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here.