Dress for This Quest
Costume Quest is kind of a trick-or-treat situation. The trick is that at it’s core, it’s little more than a stripped-down turn-based RPG in the same vein as any classic Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. The treat is that this gameplay is wrapped up in a charming and funny package that can be appreciated by both families with young kids as well as seasoned gamers. Costume Quest represents the best of DoubleFine Productions: humourous writing in a charming package and engaging play mechanics that draw one into the experience. If Brütal Legend left you doubting the abilities of Tim Schafer and company, prepare to have your doubts pleasantly dismissed.
The premise of Costume Quest is something most people’s inner child can relate to: on Hallowe’en, you can become whatever crazy thing you may be dressed as. Empowered by their costumes, a group of kids battle against some very real monsters intent on cleaning out their neighbourhood’s candy and kidnapping the main character’s sibling. The overworld is filled with sidequests and random encounters disguised as trick-or-treating. There are three “worlds” to conquer and unfortunately, they all feature the same sidequests. I wish I didn’t have to play the same apple-bobbing game three times in each world; there are plenty of other Hallowe’en-ish activities that could have become minigames, like pumpkin carving. Still, the writing carries the more repetitive tasks and and makes the main quest a joy to play. I had some genuine chuckles reading the dialogue, which could have benefitted from player-controlled advancement rather than scrolling at its own pace. It was possible to miss some of the lines that moved at their own pace rather than waiting for a button press to advance.
When the characters enter combat, they literally become an embodiment of their costume. Imagine a ninja, the Statue of Liberty, and a monster made of french fries fighting a group of goblin mages, and you’ll get a pretty good mental picture of a typical Costume Quest combat. It plays like a standard turn-based console RPG, but it’s very streamlined. Characters have only two statistics: health and attack power. They each have a basic attack, plus a special attack that is unique to each to costume and charges every three turns. There are no complicated equipment screens or in-battle items like health potions. Characters are fully healed after each battle. The only consequence to losing a battle is failing to defeat the enemy and losing a bit of candy, the game’s currency. This may appear boring on paper, but in execution it works very well. Every battle action (like attacking and defending) is a quicktime event requiring different button presses to increase that action’s effectiveness. The battles become very engaging despite their simplicity. The combat gains a bit of depth from the battle stamp system, which modify character stats or give them new abilities to use in combat.
The game’s style is embodied by its graphics. Everything is bright and colourful, even when the game is dark and gloomy. The chibi-esque overworld character design plays a neat contrast to the awesome combat animations. On the PS3, the game did take some framerate dips in the overworld. It didn’t interfere with gameplay, but it was a mild annoyance.
The game took me roughly 10 hours to complete to 100%, and I earned all trophies on the first playthrough. There isn’t much incentive to replay the game, but I might give it another go next year when Hallowe’en rolls back around. On the whole, I was very glad to have purchased Costume Quest. It is definitely worth the $15 asking price.
