Costume Quest 2 Brings Charm Back to Halloween

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Double Fine’s sequel is a bigger, prettier, and deeper version of what I fell in love with.

By Marty Sliva

With Costume Quest 2, Double Fine aims to give fans pretty much everything they asked for from a sequel: more, more, more. I absolutely adored the 2010 original, so the prospect of playing a bigger, prettier, and deeper homage to Halloween sounds lovely.
CQ2 picks up right where the Grubbins on Ice DLC left off. You still play as twins Reynold and Wren, although this time around you don’t need to choose between the two. The story revolves around a time traveling dentist named Kronoculus, whose goal is to rid the world of candy. Of course, your lovers of trick-or-treating will stop at nothing to but a wrench in the dentist’s time-altering plans.

The area we saw, which was about 20 minutes or so into the game, was a gorgeous Louisiana bayou and New Orleans facsimile. With the game releasing this Halloween on 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PC, and Wii U, Double Fine was able to take the charming Peanuts-inspiring visuals of the original and add a nice coat of paint onto them. Vibrant characters, memorable locales, and a colorful sense of whimsy go a long ways in games nowadays.
The core gameplay loop that Double Fine showed us was certainly an extension of the light exploration and Paper Mario-esque battles of the original, but with some noticeable improvements. We were still going from house to house looking for candy, but all characters now have the ability to boost along the ground extremely quickly, which was a trait that only a the Robot class in the original could use. We were also given a taste of some of the other quests, which included exploring a Bourbon Street-inspired area in an attempt to help street musicians find an audience. Of course, all of this was paired with Double Fine’s iconic humor and charm.

Double Fine paid attention to much of the criticism over the simple and repetitive battle system of the original, and it’s there that Costume Quest 2’s biggest improvements are found. They’ve truncated a lot of the animations, helping each encounter flow in a more fluid manner. While there’s still a timing-based nature to all attacks, it now makes more sense and occurs the moment you make contact with an enemy or vice versa. Other tweaks like having any damage you sustain in battle carry over into the field help create a deeper and slightly more challenging system for fans who were craving a bit more bite to the battles.
Of course, the wacky costume transformations are back with a whole slew of new options. So far we’ve spotted a superhero, a nightmarish clown, and a playable form of the candy corn costume from the original that is completely useless in battle and just complains the whole time. Think Ness’ dog from the beginning of EarthBound, and you’ll be on the right track. Double Fine told us that using this costume throughout the entire game is a way for hardcore players to really up the difficulty, and that those persistent enough might be rewarded for their efforts…oh, and the they’re calling this “hard-corn” mode, so there’s that.

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Another cute thing I noticed throughout the demo were the frequent nods to previous Double Fine games. In our short time with CQ2, we saw that the superhero costume was the same as the main character from their mobile game Middle Manager of Justice, and we spotted a tree-obsessed NPC who bore a striking resemblance to Curtis the lumberjack from Broken Age. More of this, please.The original Costume Quest is one of those games that has become a yearly tradition for me. For the past three Octobers, I’ve revisited Double Fine’s RPG right alongside It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and my favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories. Knowing that I’ll be able to continue that tradition in a few months with a brand new and much-improved adventure has me counting down the days until All Hallow’s Eve.