Considering that it is still October, and I just did an analysis of the original Costume Quest, I figured I might as well analyze the sequel while I’m at it. So, let’s get to it.
Costume Quest 2 (CQ2) takes place immediately after the events of Grubbins on Ice (the DLC expansion of the original CQ), literally. In Grubbins on Ice, the game ends with Reynold, Wren, Everett, and Lucy, jumping through a portal, escaping from the monster world of Repugia, only to find themselves in some sort of limbo, with multiple portals. With confusion, one of the characters asks, “Now what?”
Cut to CQ2, after watching the opening logos, you are immediately taken to that portal limbo from Grubbins on Ice. Before you even start the game, you are there, looking at a bunch of portals, wondering what the heck you’re supposed to do. I guess the designers thought it would be clever to make these obnoxious portals, the main menu UI. An awful, obstructive, and confusing design choice. Main menus, and UI in general should be clear and concise. This was neither. You are left to wander until you figure it out. One portal does nothing. As you approach the middle portal, the word “Options” appears overhead. And as you approach the final portal, the words “Mysterious Portal” appear. Yeah… That’s clear. Turns out the “Mysterious Portal” is the dang save file selection screen. From the very beginning, CQ2 insists on making the experience more confusing than it needs to be.
And the confusion just continues from there. The plot is so convoluted it hurts. After figuring out which portal to go to, the kids are sent back in time to the Halloween night of the original CQ. Only there are some unique differences. Mainly, the kid’s creepy dentist is seen making a deal with a time wizard. He then goes back in time to steal an artifact that lets him control the monsters of Repugia and bring them into the real world. next thing you know, Everett from the future, now grown up, takes Reynold and Wren back to the future with him, where it’s revealed that the dentist, Orel White, is now supreme overlord of the world. He has banned all candy and Halloween. He brainwashes children into believing he’s some great ruler, and pretty much has turned the whole world into a dictatorship (oh, but he doesn’t actually hate Halloween, he just wants the holiday, and all the candy for himself, because he’s got severe childhood trauma). Humans live in squalor and the monsters live the high life, all within a futuristic dystopia. Reynold and Wren are then tasked with going back in time to the past to stop Dr. White from succeeding in taking over the world, which they fail to do so, so, they go back and forth between the past and future until they figure out a way to stop him and restore Halloween. Naturally, they do this by bringing Dr. White’s childhood self to the future to see what an unhinged lunatic he’s become.
Clear as mud.
I’m going into such detail on the plot on this one, because I need to make the point, that the original CQ was hardly a great game, mechanically, but it’s narrative and aesthetic were its saving graces. CQ was undeniably charming. It was simple. It was fun. It was enveloped in childhood innocence, and wonderment for Halloween. CQ2? It has none of that. It’s narrative is overly complex. It tries way too hard. And in a game that is supposed to celebrate all things Halloween, you spend a shocking amount of time in a horrible future where Halloween and all mentions of it are banned. That hardly lends to a fun aesthetic. Just a bunch of ugly, drab, gray buildings and ruined houses. I’ve always been against the obsession most of the world seems to have with the “apocalyptic/dystopian future” theme. And to see it invade a lighthearted series like CQ was very disappointing to me.
Okay, enough harping on the narrative. I think I’ve made my opinions clear on that topic. Let’s move on to the mechanics.
As I’ve said before, the mechanics in CQ were extremely simplistic. CQ2 attempted to correct that problem. And in some ways it succeeds, and actually makes for a more fun gameplay experience, but in other ways, it fails miserably.
The overall combat experience is much improved over the original. Combat is still turn based, but gone are the random button presses involved with horrid Quick Time Events. Instead, combat takes a more traditional approach making use of the “timed hit” system. I’m most familiar with this type of combat in games like Mario RPG and Paper Mario, but I’m sure there are other games that use it as well. Using this new combat style, the player selects their attack, and then their opponent. As the animation plays out, the player must hit a corresponding button, just before hitting the enemy. Doing so will result in hitting the enemy for more damage. The button to press is unique to each character (I played on a PS4, so for me it was Reynold: Triangle, Wren: Square, and the third party member: Cross [X]). The same system works for defending. Just before the enemy lands a hit, if the player presses the corresponding button, they will defend, taking less damage. All timing is displayed by way of an easy to read set of circles. When the large circle shrinks to meet the small circle, you press the button. Easy.
This new combat is taught by way of a much improved tutorial. A Crestwailer named Corvus, who is sick of “Overlord White,” teaches the kids these new combat techniques. Narratively teaching the player how to play the game is much better, in my opinion, compared to the first game, in which the player was just bombarded by giant black text boxes for the first part of the game.
Corvus also teaches the players new moves, as they level up. Those moves being a combo, which is basically just a second attack after the first, if you timed it successfully. And a counter, in which the player can hold the block button of a character before the enemy attacks, countering the move, causing the enemy to take damage, itself.
Both of these moves work fairly well. The combo can be difficult, because there is often massive amounts of screen shake after the first hit, and it can be difficult to time the second hit properly. Thankfully, that’s all the screen does. The camera mostly stays put during combat, unlike the original where it flew around so furiously I often couldn’t tell what was going on.
The counter can be tricky, because if you misread an enemy, and hold down the button for the wrong character, you leave the character that’s actually getting attacked wide open for a hit. I have found, though, that if you’re quick enough, you can still block normally.
Special attacks are back in this game. Their usefulness varies from costume to costume, as in the previous game. However, they charge differently. In CQ, special attacks were always charged after three turns. In CQ2, special attacks have a meter, that fills when you hit and when you get hit. This meter transfers from one battle to the next, so there lies some strategy in when to use them, because you don’t want to needlessly waste a meter.
If the developers had left the combat at this, the game would have been better for it. But just as CQ suffered from combat that was too simplistic. CQ2 suffers from a far greater design sin, needless complexity.
I mentioned that I liked the Battle Stamps in CQ. Well, they’re gone now! In their place are creepy treat cards (which were nothing more than collectibles in the first game). The player can collect these cards throughout the game. They can then select up to three to use in combat. These cards are one time use actions that do very specific things (reward bonus candy after a match, refill super meters, revive a fallen ally, increase power, poison an enemy, etc.). Once used, the card goes on a cool down of 2-3 battles (not turns). To have such a severe limitation, I almost never used the cards, not knowing when I might actually need them. Yep, nothing like having an item you’re too afraid to use, because you might need it sometime down the line.
And finally, I need to address the most glaring combat issue of all, the “types.” Each monster you fight is assigned a specific type: Monster, Tech, and Magic. Each type has a strength and weakness. Sort of like Rock-Paper-Scissors. So, if you used an attack that was strong against a tech type, you would deal more damage than usual, and vice versa. This would almost work as a concept if not for a few glaring flaws.
Although the monsters all have specific types, your costumes do not. Each costume has a strength and weakness. But they are not uniform. One costume might be strong against magic, but weak against tech. And another might be strong against magic, but weak against monster. No uniformity. Both have the same strength, but different weaknesses. Which means there are no true “types.” Just randomly assigned strengths and weaknesses. Think of it in a game like Pokemon. You’re fighting a fire type, so you select a water type, but all of it’s moves are bug type. You wont take much damage, but you’ll also not deal much damage. Also, you can’t swap out different pokemon. It’s an exercise in futility. And that’s how I often felt trying to discern these random typings.
The best case scenario I could come up with, was to just ensure I had a costume that was strong against each type (one that was strong vs magic, and so on). This threw all other strategy out the window. Gone are the days of dps/tank/healer. While I did bemoan that in the original because it was so simple, at least it worked. This system was even worse, though. Because even though I had a party that was strong against each type (and weak against random types), I still had no guarantee that each of those types would be present. Most combat was still behind closed doors by way of trick or treating (although, in the future, it wasn’t really that, so much as it was collecting candy for the revolution against Overlord White, while avoiding sting operations… sigh…). And combat through open world encounter still had no way of telling what you would encounter. All enemies were just displayed by generic character models. It wasn’t until the thick of battle that you’d realize that you were fighting an all tech team, or whatever. And because of that, no strategy really worked. You can’t swap costumes mid battle, so having one of each was the best plan I could make, which left no room for variety or strategy, really. In other words, CQ’s lack of variety and strategy was just replaced with CQ2’s even worse version of lack of variety or strategy.
So many different costumes. So many useless, unused costumes…
And that is truly a shame, because most of the costume designs (aesthetically) were clever and fun. What’s more, you could buy upgrades to these costumes making them even more fun. You could buy a set of sunglasses and a letterman jacket to turn the werewolf costume into the “Teen Wolf” costume. You could buy some multicolored felt squares to turn the hotdog into the “Chicago Style Cerberus.” And so on. You could see glimpses of the old CQ charm at work in some of these costumes, I just wish more of them were actually useful. But with the “type” design, it rendered most of them moot.
Before moving away from combat, I need to address one more glaring flaw. The health system. In the original game, your health refilled after every fight. In a normal game, this would be absurd, but in a game like CQ, it made sense. Especially considering how the encounters were laid out. In CQ2, your health does not refill automatically. You need to go drink water from a fountain. I found my characters whining for water after pretty much every fight. And as most combat was still behind doors, and therefore up to me when I fought, running back to the fountain after every door was a colossal pain. I grew to hate it. It was the very definition of unnecessary design.
Outside of combat, CQ2 played mostly the same as CQ. You go from door to door trick or treating, and encountering some random enemies out in the open. It’s clear that the designers wanted the player to grind more, due to the increase of random enemies wandering the areas and the cost of those costume upgrades and creepy treat cards. But, in my experience, there are really only two places to efficiently grind. And grinding added absolutely nothing to my enjoyment of the game.
The environments themselves were severely lacking. The past was set in some bayou/french quarter (the french quarter being the only area that held any remote charm). And the future (which is where you spend most of the game) was a series of drab building rooftops, ruined neighborhoods, and Overlord White’s personal complex. The future lacked a whole lot of charm. There were some minor efforts here and there, but nothing compared to the original.
Thankfully, navigating these areas was made easier by making the original CQ’s Robot environmental ability (the roller skate shoes) a default ability for your characters, regardless of costume. Some costumes had their own unique abilities, but like the original, they were used for simple puzzles and not much more. Some, like the pharaoh, just re-skinned the abilities of costumes from previous games.
Finally, I need to address the ending. Mainly because it is just as confusing as the beginning. After all is said and done, Reynold and Wren return to their own time, to find that everything is okay, and there’s a big Halloween party going on in the neighborhood. During this time, the credits roll at the bottom of the screen, and you’re free to wander around, talking to the various characters of the game. It’s all just for fun, I get that, but when the credits stop, you’re still wandering. There is no real end. The game “ends” when you turn the thing off. And this irks me to no end. During my first playthrough, I waited for way longer than I should have, talking to every character multiple times to get past this screen and back to the main menu, expecting something to happen after the credits. But no, it’s just as poorly designed as the main menu.
As you can tell, I’ve little love for CQ2. It took a cute, fun concept, and crammed in as many half baked design ideas as it could, in an attempt to make a simple game more complex. But more isn’t always better. They were on the right track with the combat, but then they needed to add more. They had the perfect narrative in the first game, but the sequel needed more. It just didn’t work. And that saddens me. Because I still love the original, and will probably play it every year around this time, because it does such a great job of putting me in the Halloween spirit. CQ2, on the other hand, will probably stay on the proverbial shelf for some time.