Balan Wonderworld - All Costumes

An exhibition of all unlockable costumes in Balan Wonderworld.

The costumes can generally be put in 4 categories - platforming, combat, puzzle specific and other (read useless). Given that they were supposedly the main selling point of the game most of those are really poorly designed. They don't look too bad, but functionally you'd stick to only a couple which are not terrible to use. The best platforming costumes are Air Cat which gives you the ability to cross large gaps and Triple Jumper, which gives you a good elevation. Air Unicorn is a supposed better version of the former, but it was the last costume I found, so there's that. This brings up the point that quite a few costumes render other completely useless - you won't use the Double Jumper once you find the Triple Jumper (or the incredibly hard to obtain Balan costume). If there was some sort of an upgrade system this wouldn't feel so insulting. You also tend to grind the good costumes so that you can use them, but then this time becomes wasted when you discover a better version of said costume. The combat ones are pretty interchangeable since combat is not challenging, so I pick Lethal Laser Launcher, which has an auto-lock projectile and even though it fires at certain intervals and it's out of your control, you can jump, which is not the case for most combat costumes. X-Ray Ape is another useful one since it lets you see through walls and thus find hidden Balan statues. The issue is that it has a limited view so you have to be physically close to the statue in order to see it. Key Mouse automatically unlocks costume crystals without the need for a key (which should've been the case in the first place), so it's useful for grinding the good costumes. There are 4 musical costumes which perform a song on a stage for an insultingly low amount of yellow crystals, so I would call them a waste of time.

For the supposed selling feature of the game this is the ultimate example of quantity over quality. 90% of those costumes could've been removed and it would've made the game less frustrating to play. A game like Super Mario 3D World does this the right way, where you can instantly pick new costumes and change them immediately on the go. Do yourself a favour and play that game instead.