The game that I am going to review today is one that I waited a very, very long time for, It's called South Park: The Fractured but Whole. This game was released last month on October 17th, and I can't tell you how happy I was that it finally found it's way into my hands. It was pushed back several times, and the wait time from it's original release date went to be well over a year. So, it was just really nice to just finally have my copy which I pre-ordered a long, long time ago. The game was developed and published by Ubisoft, and was of course written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the guys who write and direct South Park.
This game was released for the PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4, and the version which I am reviewing is the Playstation 4 copy. The genre of this game is much like the first one, meaning that it's an RPG. It has turn based combat that is in a 3rd person view, much like what we've seen in past role playing games such as the Final Fantasy series or the X-COM series of late. Anyone who has watched South Park surely knows what they're getting into with this, it is a hilariously absurd game in just about every aspect. It constantly aims to one up itself, and is one of the most hilarious games I've touched in a long time.
The narrative of the game picks up pretty quickly from where the first game dropped off, taking place the day after the events that happened in The Stick of Truth. However, this time around we're ditching the fantasy style lord of the rings setting for the modern day superhero one. The reason being, well, the kids believe that they can launch their own superhero media franchise like what Marvel has done with their films, games, and other tie ins so that they can make billions of dollars. This idea is thought up by Cartman, who has a 3 phase plan thought up on how they can do it. However, not everyone agrees with his ideas which splits them up into two separate groups.
Of course the original group is still Coon and Friends, led by Cartman which I'm sure is no surprise, and the other group goes by the name of Freedom Pals, being led by the all powerful Timmy. Yes, you've heard me right. Timmy. Anyways, we found ourselves once again playing The New Kid who finds himself/herself stuck in between the rivalry of the two groups. Though, instead of being referred to as Douchebag like in the first game, we're not called Butthole. Quite obviously a much better improvement, right?
After making your way into the Coons lair, he quickly gives your character a tragic backstory so that you can join in on the fun. That backstory being that late one night you walked in on your father having sex with your mother. Quite tragic indeed. After getting filled in on the details and choosing which class of hero you want to be, you're then sent off to start looking for clues on the location of a missing cat who has a reward of $100 out for anyone who can return him to his owners. The reasoning being they believe the $100 can help get their franchises off the ground.
You'll find yourself being introduced to the side characters which will help you in combat, which consists of the other kids of South Park. Each has their own personal quest for you to complete before you can unlock the ability to have them join you in fights, as well as their own respective powers and abilities. Shortly after you begin the search for the cat, you start finding clues that lead to something bigger going on in South Park. Though, there's a lot of hilarious screwed up scenes and locations that you have to play through to find these things out.
Without spoiling too much of the story, you uncover a conspiracy going on with the crime of South Park. There's a new crime kingpin in town, who has united several different factions such as the Chinese, Russian, Italians and a few others groups underneath his banner. The basic concept of the game is to of course to battle against the factions and make your way up the crime ladder until you can take down the boss. However, there is so, so much ridiculous, insane and hilarious things going on in this game that I just can't talk about without spoiling some great moments.
Since the game is still set within the confines of South Park, you'll find that not too much has changed. Most of the locations and backdrops are the same as what they were in The Stick of Truth, though there has been a few additions of locations due to new things being introduced in the TV show. Locations such as Shi Pa Town, SoDoSoPa, a KFC which is now a marijuana dispensary, and a dark and gloomy looking mall which is still under construction and not available to look through yet. No doubt going to be something that is included for the next South Park game.
Now, just because a lot of the setting is familiar and the same doesn't mean it's not fun to go and re-explore and find the hidden items, characters and quests. You'll find tons of little easter eggs and nods that reference things from the show as well, which is always entertaining, especially since most of them are pretty funny when you encounter them or at least make you think of a fond memory from watching the show. I mean, there's been several hundred episodes of content for them to pull gags and references of. So, you can see that there's plenty of room for jokes to be brought back in. And, even when it's not doing that, we still get silly things like the MemberBerries to tide us over until the next gag is shown.
In addition to the new locations in the game, we've also got a plethora of throwback characters as well as new characters from the show which were not introduced in the previous game. For example, later on in this game we're introduced to the Gay Fish (A reference to the episode Fish Sticks) as well as Seaman, both being throwback characters, where we're tasked with doing a hilariously simple/weird quest for them. Then in another section of the game we're introduced to P.C. Principal who starts teaching our character all about the intricacies of microaggression's. So, there's a whole gaggle of jokes and content introduced through this as well.
Now, a lot of what you'll be doing between the main quests is pretty simple stuff. (Heck, even the main quests themselves are pretty simple with how their designed as well. I'd say generally most of the quests are fetch quests, which tend to get boring for the most part.) You can go around talking and interacting with citizens and characters of the show, taking selfies with those that agree with it to increase your follower count, and of course do side quests to unlock pieces of gear that you can equip and allow you to earn some extra exp for that next hero level that's just on the horizon.
While the fetch quests can become tedious at times, and perhaps going around and talking to all of the random characters around town to see if you can't get a selfie with them aren't really your thing, there's a lot more to the game than it's jokes and ludicrous narrative. The combat of the game is really one of the shining stars to this game, at least in my opinion. I think it was a big step up from The Stick of Truth's combat, and was definitely the biggest improvement overall between the games.
As I briefly mentioned before, the combat system of the game is turn based this time around, but it also has a strategy element to it and is grid based as well. Meaning that you have to move your characters into position around the combat zone before you can attack, which gives the hint of a strategy game as well considering you have to decide where you can utilize your abilities and battle partners the most effectively. Even being able to heal or revive your teammates requires you to make sure you're in the correct position and not too far away from them for the most part.
Speaking of your teammates, I believe they are utilized quite well in comparison to the previous game. At the very least, there is a lot more going on with them and diversifying their abilities, not to mention increasing the amount of different teammates for you to choose from. There's right around a dozen different battle buddies from you to choose from, all with their separate abilities and powers which tend to fall in with the typical embodiment's of RPG style characters. So, of course you have your healers, brawlers, ranged fighters and so on. Each of the 12 has their own set of moves which vary enough where nothing feels too repetitive, and they all have their own animations and rules as well.
Of course, another interesting aspect of the games combat system is your butt powers. Yes, as I'm sure most of you could tell the title of the game is a play on the fact that your character has powers that come forth from his butt. Again, what were you expecting? Anyways, as you play through the game you unlock more and more abilities, all centered around the power and strength of your farts. The main usage of your abilities though is to alter time during combat. This comes in the form of using time to skip an enemy turn, pausing time to attack an enemy rendering them defenseless as well as skipping their turn, and turning the day into night and vise versa. There's a limit to how often you can do this, however, and you'll have to wait several turns before initiating the power yet again.
You'll also find that your butt works for other things in the game besides altering time, such as conquering all of the toilets in town for extra crafting supplies. You do this through a mini game of button mashing, with each toilet having its own difficulty level. You can also solve puzzles using your butt powers, although you'll more often than not have to unlock a battle buddy to help you accomplish this. There is a different use with each battle buddy, providing some entertaining animations and dialogue with each of their different uses in the environment. But, let's get back to the combat for a second.
Not all of the combat is centered around beating your opponents down until they can't move, whether that be from injuries or from the smell of your flatulence. Occasionally in the game you'll get into combat the revolves around you having to complete special objectives, instead of outright trying to attack the enemy on the grid. For example, one section of the game wants you to set fire to 4 certain objects each scattered on the 4 corners of the grid if you want to come out on top. Another section has you trying to shuffle all of the enemies that are on the grid with you to one side, while you occupy the other. These moments really breath a breathe of fresh air into the combat system, and give you a break from the typical "fighting until everyone's dead" style of combat. Though, I do enjoy beating crazy rednecks, pedophiles, and crab people into the ground.
Some other fun elements of the gameplay that definitely takes from the RPG roots of the game is the amount of customization you can do with your character on this game. This isn't limited to only choosing what items you want equipped for battle, but your overall appearance as well. The amount of costumes you can find in this game is a pleasant surprise, and allows for heavy customization which also influences some of the dialogue which you get in game. They also put a joke into the skin color selection of the game, with white being the super easy mode and dark skin being the hardest mode. I couldn't find any differences in difficulty really between choosing either, and believe the game was just making a silly joke with this.
Besides altering your appearance with the costume pieces which you can either find, or create yourself via blueprints and materials, there's another section of customizing and powering your character up for battle. You can do this via artifacts, which you can buy, find hidden throughout the world, create yourself via components and blueprints, or win after you've beaten enemies in battle. These are how you boost your characters stats up, as well as get status effects and other bonus abilities like extra healing when you take a consumable healing item, or extra bleed damage when you use a move which causes bleeding. You can definitely tell the game sticks with the archtypes of an RPG, and it does it quite well.
Another way you can customize your character is by filling out your character spreadsheet. This includes a few different things such as gender, sexuality, race, alignment, religion, power source, weakness (kryptonite), and economic level. You'll fill this out as you play through the game via quests that are related to it, though I really never felt that it had much impact on combat or the way things happened in game besides a few funny cutscenes referencing it. While it didn't seem to be the most impactful thing in the game, it was still something that helped provide entertainment and pushed for a small little extra bit of customizing which I appreciated.
I honestly feel like some of the elements in this game involving how you design your character and what choices you make for their sheet and the story are just there to mimic and poke fun of the issues we deal with in this day and age. Things like how people handle transgender individuals, or having a president such as D. Trump, and even the darker issues like emotional and domestic abuse in the home. There are quite a few real life issues the game touches upon just like in the show, taking things that anger people or seem tragic and making something we can laugh about out of it by parodying it.
This game to me definitely just feels like an extended episode of South Park, as it sticks with the mindset that the TV series has always had. It puts everything out on display, and while not all of it hits and makes you crack up with laughter, it definitely isn't scared of trying anything and doesn't spare an expense at trying to make a joke out of any situation. The game overall is a huge step in the right direction, and is heaps better than the Stick of Truth not only in combat, but in the pacing of the narrative as well as the story itself. There is a lot more content here than in the first game, and plenty of it is laughter inducing. I'd definitely recommend anyone who is a fan of the show or previous game to grab this and try it out.
Thanks for checking out my review! Hope you've enjoyed it!