Hey there everyone, hope you're having a good day, and welcome to my review of South Park The Fractured But Whole! The latest game by South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone has finally arrived for PS4, Xbox One and PC. This highly anticipated sequel, based on the long time running TV series, was released on October 17th, 2017. It's a role-playing game, infused with the shows signature brand of humor, developed by Ubisoft, as well as South Park Digital Studios.
After playing their first game on the Xbox 360, The Stick of Truth, and thoroughly enjoying it, I've been really looking forward to getting my hands on this new one. It was supposed to come out a while ago, but after a few delays the game went gold on September 22, meaning development had finished. I generally don't mind when games get delayed because it means the team creating them is making it the best they possibly can, and you can tell a lot of work went into making this as funny as the show. If you're familiar with the show, you'll know what kind of subject matter the game will have, and you'll most likely enjoy it just as much. If you're not that familiar with the show, some of this game might be a little disturbing for you. All the jokes are very raunchy and they don't hold anything back.
The Fractured But Whole picks up right where The Stick Of Truth left off, in fact the cardboard castle is still in Cartman's backyard. You play as The New Kid still, but you can customize the look of your character at the beginning of the game. As you progress through the story, you'll find a great deal of different costumes to wear, each with interchangeable head, body and hands. As well as hairstyles, facial wear, and face paints, giving you a lot of options on how you want to look. The only thing that bothered me about playing as The New Kid, is that you never speak. It's not really a big deal, they even make it into a joke a few times, but it feels strange. Other than that though it's fun to play around with your character and interact with all the different townsfolk.
There's a crime wave hitting South Park that requires the help of Coon and Friends. Cats are going missing, and one in particular gets Cartman's attention. Scrambles the cat has missing posters all over town, with a reward for $100 if found. Eric, aka The Coon, wants this reward money so that he can start up his movie franchise, and in order to find it he needs your help. When you start the game you get to pick from one of three super hero archetypes that determines what moves and abilities you will have. Eventually you get more than one type, and you can cherry pick what moves and abilities you want from multiple classes, to create the kind of hero you want to play as. I really liked the freedom it gives you to customize everything from how you look, to what moves you have, and all of this is done right in your menu at any time.
As you level up from successful battles, you will unlock more classes to choose from, and more slots to place artifacts in. You can find or craft many different artifacts that can be equipped in your menu, the higher your level the more artifacts you can equip. These all have different stat bonuses that can be helpful in battle, and they raise your overall might level, or how strong you are. As you explore around the town you might notice items high up where you can't reach, or maybe a locked door you can't get past. Well as you level up you get help from different members of the Coon and Friends team, and each one will allow you to get into these places. That was something that I liked as well, calling in members of the team to help you solve a puzzle as you explore South Park.
The game map is fairly big, probably a little bigger than the last game, with a lot of signature landmarks from the show. You can go in the school, around Stark's Pond, Jimbo's gun shop, and most of the kids houses too. The map is packed with items to find, and people to talk to, just walking around taking it all in was a lot of fun. It feels like you're playing a really epic episode of the show that you have control over. There are fast travel points to open up if you don't feel like walking, but usually the placement of these was not near where I needed to go, so I would end up walking anyway. There's also sixth grade bullies and Professor Chaos minions all over the place that act as random encounters, but they're easily avoidable if you don't want to fight them.
Speaking of the fighting, the combat system has been greatly improved upon this time around with more features added to it. When you start a battle it shows you who you're up against, and who's on your team. Here you can make changes to select different party members, and even change your moves or abilities. Once the fight begins everyone is placed on a fighting grid, consisting of a bunch of squares like a chess board. This is a turned based system like old school RPG's, and when it's one of your party members turn, you can decide what move you want to use. You can't just sit back and watch it all play out though, because there is always a button prompt of some kind to hit. If you successfully hit it, your move will do much more damage. This keeps you even more engaged in battles and is kind of like a mini game in itself.
You can only move so many squares when it's your turn, and sometimes your enemy will be out of reach. Luckily a lot of the moves you get have a wide area of attack, so you can strategize and move party members to certain squares, where they will be out of reach of enemy attack, but able to attack them. You get so many different characters and moves to choose from, that the possibilities are endless. Every time your enemy gets their turn you have to pay attention because there will be a button prompt when they attack. If done right this will add to your special meter, and when it fills up you get to use a special attack. Each character has their own special attack complete with a unique animation that goes with it. Sometimes I would purposely use a character just to see what their special looked like.
As you can probably tell from the name, there's a lot of attention given to your butt, specifically your farts. You have the ability to use farts in a number of useful ways. You can throw a fart at an enemy and gross them out, poison them, but as you progress you unlock all kinds of farts. One can pause time, allowing you to cross dangerous obstacles without getting hurt, or catch a fast moving cat or hamster. Another can rewind time, allowing you to make an enemy lose their turn in battle, or bring back a fallen party member. It's pretty juvenile, but that about sums up the humor in general, if it's not your thing you maybe should pass on this.
I've been a big fan of the show for a long time, so I'm used to this kind of thing, and would expect nothing less from a South Park game. Not only is it on par with the show in terms of voice acting and comedy, but major improvements have been made to the combat, and exploration as well. You can tell a lot of work went into making this as good as possible, and I have to say they did an awesome job. If you like the show then you'll notice little references to episodes all over the place, randomly throughout the town or as part of a mission. Almost all of the characters make an appearance at some point or another, and they're all done to the same quality of the show.
If you don't like classic turn based RPG combat then you might get annoyed with the battles, but there's more than just choosing a move and watching it all play out to keep you entertained. This is a quality, well done game that kept me engaged all the way through, and I would definitely recommend it to anybody who's a fan. I give South Park, The Fractured But Whole an..................................
85
Thanks for checking out my review, I hope you enjoyed it!
Great review. I found the game funny with the classic South Park humor, however the storyline towards the end was a little disappointing. I felt that the Stick of Truth held it's story better. Nonetheless it was fun to play and experience South Park first hand.
quite detailed and how you can use fart as a weapon to revive, give damage to enemy haha, nice review once again.
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Thank you, I'm glad you liked it!
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Great review. I found the game funny with the classic South Park humor, however the storyline towards the end was a little disappointing. I felt that the Stick of Truth held it's story better. Nonetheless it was fun to play and experience South Park first hand.
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