South Park and I have a weird relationship. It's not one of my all time favorite shows. It's the sort of show that when it's on, I'll watch it and usually laugh but it's not something I follow religiously and like a lot of folks, I feel like more recent episodes haven't been as good as they used to be. Much like The Simpsons and Family Guy, I would be fine if they just ended the series already as it's been on way longer than it needed to be. My go to "adult" cartoon now is Archer. Seriously, if you're not watching Archer you should be.
But what caught my attention with Stick of Truth was the similar gameplay style to the Paper Mario series which makes sense given South Park was a show that used stop motion paper cut outs. Ask any fan of the Paper Mario series how they long for a traditional one again like the first two. Super Paper Mario removed the turn based RPG combat for a standard platformer and Sticker Star was just boring as hell removing the humorous story and characters and strange sticker based combat system. So as you already heard South Park: The Stick of Truth is essentially Paper Mario with R rated humor.
The story goes you're the new kid who just moved to South Park. So you get to customize yourself though you're stuck being a boy. As a girl, this sort of annoyed me but it makes sense later on in the context of the story when you have to go recruit the girls to your cause. So I just put on a pink tee and gave myself long hair and found glasses that looked like mine and dealt with occasionally being called "he" or "little boy." I just imagined I was a tomboy who liked playing with the boys because their LARPing game seemed way more interesting than the girls sitting around gossping and talking about sparkles and rainbows. Hey I just described myself as a kid.
So no sooner do you arrive but you meet up with Butters who takes you to the Kingdom of Kupa Keep or KKK to meet the Grand Wizard, Cartman. Cartman tells you of how they are in a war with the Elves (lead by Kyle) who are after their greatest treasure: The Stick of Truth and you're recruited to join the human alliance as Douchebag. You also get to pick one of four classes for yourself: Warrior, Mage, Theif or Jew (similar to a monk or druid) though honestly the class doesn't matter than much as the only unique thing about your class is the starting outfit you get as your special moves. You can use any weapon or wear any armor which kind of defeats the purpose of having a class system. I ended up choosing Mage only because I knew everyone who bought this probably picked the Jew class for shits and giggles. There's actually two overlapping stories. The first is the whole role playing adventure the boys are enjoying meanwhile there's a sort of government conspiracy involving aliens, zombies and a new Taco Bell being built.
As for the gameplay itself, once again, if you played either of the first two Paper Marios then you'll be able to play this. The game world for the most part keeps you in town with some sections that take you to an alien spaceship, the sewers and even to Canada where the game goes kind of retro as a homage to old school top down RPGs like Ultima. Early on you'll probably end up spending a good amount of time simply wandering around the town, finding all the side quests and Timmy's fast travel points. Talking to everyone in town is worth the time as people you meet will friend you on Facebook and the number of friends you get unlocks perks and abilities for your character. As well as doing some missions gets characters who will act as summons in battle. Butters, Kenny, Stan, Jimmy, Cartman and Kyle all can be chosen as the second party member and each one has a unique buddy ability that can be used to get past an obstacle. As well as you gain various abilities throughout the game including various uses for farts.
Battles are turn based and like the Mario RPGs used a timed hit system which I always liked as it added a bit more depth than simply than selecting an attack and hoping it works then hoping the enemy's attack doesn't kill you. But honestly, they made the battle system almost pitifully easy. Maybe they worried that a lot of South Park fans were just Call of Duty players and didn't play turn based RPGs and would get angry and frustrated. First off, when your turn starts, you can use a health item and still get to attack in the same turn meaning if you're well stocked on food and potions, you could get through this without dying in battle. Also if you get the right combination of weapons, armor and patches for yourself, you can get so overpowered that even the bosses seem like a walk in the park. Also you have the summons that will basically take out a whole group of non boss enemies though their restriction is you can only use them once a day (in game day not the internal clock in your game system), but honestly some of your partner's abilities like Butter's Professor Chaos are so overpowered, you won't need summons too often. Also after each battle your health and power points regenerate. So veteran players of turn based RPGs might find themselves a bit bored even on a higher difficulty.
Visually the game looks just like an episode of the cartoon and the world is scattered with little shout outs to various episodes and clichés the show established over the years like fighting waves of ginger kids to rescue Craig from detention, visiting the local movie theater and hearing the various fake trailers playing inside and even running into Al Gore to help him in his quest for Manbearpig. Though I will say many times after a load screen, I'd run into some serious slowdown and I'm surprised this wasn't fixed with a patch.
Also the game feels a bit on the short side. Even with doing most of the side missions, I beat this game in under 20 hours, but it's hard to complain too much. This is one of those rare games that's based on a licensed property that's actually good and will make fans of the show happy. Especially if you recall the crappy N64/PS1 era South Park games back in the day. If you like South Park and like turn based RPGs, then you'll enjoy it.
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