South Park: Fractured But Whole released October, 17th after being delayed by developers. It is the sequel to the 2014 original Stick of Truth (SOT)
In the Fractured But Whole (FBW) you play the returning character of The New Kid. A fourth grader with powerful farts that can turn the tides of battles, and is incredible gifted at obtaining Facebook and Instagram followers.
This game runs parallel to the Coon and Friends series. Wwhich appears numerous times in the franchises TV show. This game follows after the new episode of South Park where Coon and Friends split over Netflix and movie contract issues. Creating the Civil War between Freedom Pals and Coon and Friends.
Review:
Combat: The SOT was very easy to manipulate and dominate making the later minion fights annoying. All it took was Kyle’s arrow attack and the fight was over. In the FBW game it takes a bit more strategy and combat toughness can be changed as desired. With more characters to use in battles, it makes it more fun to mix and match as you want.
In addition, maneuverability in combat board plays a factor. Characters who are brutes like Super Craig or Captain Diabetes move very slow while Mosquito can move almost anywhere. Setting up a team is all based on what skills you need at the time.
It could still use less attacks that only go forward or backwards, and allow for more flank hitting or an point build up system that only allows certain attacks after so many points are gathered, but it is still an upgrade from the SOT.
Storyline and Pace: The storyline, like most things South Park, has incredible complexity when it comes to explaining what is going on. Often I had my roommate walk by and had to explain things like fighting old people or fighting Christmas Critters with Santa.
For a game about a farting kid, they tackle the PC Culture with things like making difficulty of the game based on skin color (though I never figured out how that worked) or when you say you’re gender rednecks attack you for it. another thing they make fun if is the police hire you to arrest black people, and I won’t say why because that’s a spoiler if I do.
While SOT was very easy to get and laugh at if you were not a big South Park follower. Fractured But Whole required knowing the show better to get a lot of the jokes.
Also, side missions don’t offer much to the tale this time around. They don’t take away nor add much except much needed experience points to be able to move on in the story. Though it was rare that needed to happen.
The Stick of Truth took about 12-gameplay hours to beat including side missions. Fractured But Whole took nearly 20-hours. But still lacked in development of the New Kid.
Replay Value: There are so many classes to mix and match from it would be interesting to see how to mix and match them all. While a fun game and it has more DLC on the way, the stand alone game may not offer the same lore as the second time around.
Overall: The game is an upgrade in almost every category for the RPG style it is. Better combat, better characters, more things to do. Could use a little more of the New Kid talking instead of just being there it’s 2017. If Dragon Age can have a main character speak, so can South Park. Worth picking up this holiday season.
Tips and Tricks: The best Characters to use overall in my opinion are: Call Girl, and Wonder Tweek. Tweek is a healer who can freeze people and his special is the best by far. Call Girl has the ability to hit anyone from anywhere, and her melee is very strong.
Mysterion has the ability when he uses his special to become a ghost after blowing himself up. I didn’t know this until very late in the game.
If you cheat the game, Cartman yells at you calling you Tom Brady.
