Best South Park game yet! Not that THAT says much, but really! It's great!
The Rad
- Captures the look of the show perfectly.
- Easy to grasp combat mechanics.
- Hilarity! If you like South Park.
The Bad
- A fair bit shorter than your average RPG.
- Censorship is a little bit of a bummer.
I couldn’t give you a concise reason as to why, but in general I’m not that big on JRPGs. So when it turned out they were turning South Park into one I was weary. But coming out of it now I gotta say this is probably the best JRPG I’ve played in probably over a decade. To be fair I haven’t played THAT many, as I said I soured on the genre some time ago.
But the combination of the simplified mechanics, the ease of the gameplay in general and that it’s frickin’ South Park puts this over anything else in the genre I’ve played recently.
Combat is turn based in typical JRPG fashion.
And you have a myriad of different attacks and abilities pending on your class. Once you execute these attacks you’ll get a bonus if you time your button presses with the on-screen indicator. The Mario RPG games work similarly to give you an idea, it’s a good way to keep you engaged in combat rather than just blindly mashing attack until you need to use a potion or whatever.
Though on the default difficulty you probably won’t be doing too much of it.
It’s a pretty easy game, at least on the default difficulty.
I never saw the game over screen and only on boss battles would I ever break out healing potions or feel inclined to focus on buffing my party and debuffing them.
Personally I enjoyed the ease.
I didn’t pick up South Park: The Stick of Truth with the intention of being challenged, I picked it up primarily for the laughs and was pleasantly surprised to find there’s an actually decent game hidden among all the South Park fan service and humor.
In addition to the JRPG combat you’ll spend a decent amount of time exploring the overworld, finding loot, doing side quests and collecting collectibles. Progress in exploration is gated by needing to unlock abilities as you get further in the main story thread, in a metroidvania-esque fashion. It encourages going back to areas you’ve already explored, just in case you missed a thing you didn’t have access to at that previous point.
If you could levy a complaint against it, it would be the brevity.
The game comes and goes, it’s not lengthy as an RPG typically is.
It’s not a big complaint, I have mixed feelings on it really.
On the one hand it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome, no matter how much you love South Park there’s only so many times you can be made to cause explosions with your farts before it gets a little grating.
On the other there’s at least one quest line that seemed like it should’ve been bigger than it was and it could’ve padded the game out to a more reasonable level if they did - but it kind of finds resolution quicker than you’d expect which personally I found disappointing.
Also hey - censorship!
Aussies and certain European regions will find segments of their game cut out. On the one hand I’m pretty tired of this sort of thing, on the other at least with this game they handled it well with a few humorous splash screens that explain in comical manner what we’re missing out on. Not a Saints Row IV situation where they just hack shit out without putting anything back in.
Anyway if you’re a South Park fan you’ll find plenty to love about the Stick of Truth. If you like JRPGs then all the better, but you certainly don’t need to love ‘em to love this game. Was great fun from beginning to end.