South Park: The Fractured But Whole is a spectacular experience. It is masterfully crafted with the right amount of South Park driving it. It certainly has a few minor faults here and there, but it is built to entertain and it doesn’t falter in that area. It’s a big game with a properly built turn-based personalty and it all works beautifully within its humorous South Park wrapper.
My last interaction with anything South Park was back when Jesus vs. Santa was snuck into PGA Tour and distributed via EA to unsuspecting golf enthusiasts. Since then, the success of the South Park franchise has been on the up and up, and while I don’t necessarily love the humor (goes against my comedy taste at times), I can understand why others do. It’s a show that goes against the grain (hard against it sometimes) and no one is exempt from its comedy grasp, which is something I can very much respect.
Anyway, color me surprised when South Park: The Stick of Truth, a game that, at least on the outside when announced, seemed like a cash grab on a big license, turned out to be one of the strongest Ubisoft titles to come out of 2014. It was huge, folks, and it was everything the television show was and is, plus a little more when the player was able to control it. It ended up selling 1.6 million copies by 2015 and would end up shipping five million by 2016. It was also censored in a few territories due to content, which isn’t surprising considering once you’re labeled M for mature, pretty much anything can go (see GTA V for details), and with South Park there was nothing holding it back.
Following that success, Ubisoft announced the development of South Park: The Fractured But Whole, a new adventure that brought together the familiar faces of the show once again and included a turn-based RPG backbone to lead it. Today is the day it is released and we’ve had it for a good week to give it the proper go. We can tell you, without a doubt, that this game is a damn good sequel to the first. The structure of how it works has been improved and the story, world and girth of in-game adventures have been increased. In short, it’s going to be worth your time and effort to give this one a play through.
For those of you who have never played any game in the South Park series let me explain the structure of this one. Like stated above, the backbone of the title is a turn-based RPG. You play as a customized character (you put him/her together from head to toes) that fights alongside Cartman’s The Coon, a Batman rip-offf, as well as other superheroes in the show, such as The Kite. Anyway, when your character, and fellow superheroes you gather along the way, get into fights, the story shifts to a turn-based structure. You attack, your enemy counters and things go back and forth until someone wins. During a fight, you can use 1-3 attack/defense moves, which are interchangeable outside of combat, as well as a special move you have to build up to in order to perform. It’s a structure that is quite simple to understand, though at times the game will blatantly cheat and give an enemy an extra turn randomly to throw you off a bit (it’s frustrating, but it actually tells you that might happen during the initial tutorial). Again, it’s a simple structure for fighting and it works great within the context of the game, plus it works well with the humor, which is VERY present during in-fight dialogue.
As for the RPG aspect of the title, you are given tasks and goals to achieve during the game, which equal out to more experience points. Earned XP opens up different abilities and allows for your character to become stronger through artifacts collected during your adventure. Artifacts slots are opened through upping your rank as you gain XP. The artifacts you collect, such as a candy cane shaped ram rod (user your imagination), can be placed in these slots and improve the abilities of your character. That particular artifact increases your character’s ‘might’, which helps to make him/her stronger during a fight. Gaining XP presents opportunities to make the gameplay a bit more fun and engaging. Plus, the upgrades motivate the gamer to keep going, which is typical of an RPG structure.
In addition to finding and inserting artifacts into your artifact slot, as dirty as that sounds, there are items you can collect and goals you can meet to earn additional XP. For example, there is an ongoing quest in the game to collect erotic gay manga posted randomly throughout the town. You can earn XP by acquiring a certain amount of manga art. It’s simple stuff that adds up to eventual big upgrades to your character through upped ranking. The more you rank up, the better opportunities arise to make your character more powerful.
Outside of tasks/goals and artifacts, there are also side quests you can complete to gain more XP. For example, during exploration you will run into Randy, who is trying to figure out what a-hole is scratching the hood of his truck. He charges you with a quest to discover what ruffian is doing this dastardly deed. The catch is that the crime only happens at night and you can only catch the perpetrator during the night time. While I won’t reveal to you the person at large for this crime, I will say it’s quite humorous and not very surprising. Anyway, you can take on such side quests to continual earn XP and make your character stronger.
Now, the quests expand when you start switching between night and day. Both timeframes have different things going on, such as more side questing and goals, which means the overall adventure time with the game is much bigger. You will find a lot of content in both times of a day, which makes the gameplay so much nicer. Having said this, you can’t simply just jump into night/day times, so don’t start planning that from the get-go in the game. You have to unlock the ability to go to sleep (insert ‘WHAT?’ gif here), but it does open up further opportunities to keep the gameplay going outside of the main quest. The fact that it brings about different adventures to go on is impressive. It adds depth to the experience and more fun when exploring the South Park world.
Beyond these things, you also have a crafting component in the game. Crafting works by gathering objects you find in houses, stores and randomly placed bags, and putting them together to create a single object. Sometimes it’s a one-off quest object, such as a dirty glass of gin (you don’t want to know), while others can be as simple as creating a burrito to heal a character during battle. The crafting system isn’t complicated and objects/material can be gathered everywhere, which includes inside homes and structures you find during your journey. You want to look for any handle/knob/etc. that is yellow. This is an indicator that something can be opened and material can be acquired. Again, you’re never short of material, which makes crafting less of a chore and more of a viable gaming option.
Related to gathering, you can also change the costume of your character as you gather new items. You can change headgear, outfits and even gloves. This mixed with crafting equals out to more exploration and value to the gameplay design. You will want to go into places, interact with things/people and gather as much as you can to make your character better or at least keep them safe during battles. This was the most surprisingly enjoyable part of The Fractured But Whole for me. I didn’t think I would want to tour the town and try to find things, but that ended up not being the case. I mean, that’s not exactly the first thing you think of when you’re imaging yourself playing a South Park game, but It works and it makes the experience fun as hell. It also helps to sell the RPG part of the gameplay package.
As for the actual adventure, you will find a lot of familiar faces along the way and an incredible amount of offensive content as you go. You will not be short of offensive content. As I mentioned previously, when you don’t have a censor looking over your shoulder and you are set to make a rated M for Mature game title, then you can pretty much (almost) do what you want with the game. And that is exactly what Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Ubisoft San Francisco did with it. From fighting children-hungry Catholic priests to taking down angry strippers, the game will throw enough material to make even our President of the United States blush. The content is risky and not at all safe for children. If you have a kid that is begging you for this game, just simply say no. It’s not safe for anyone under the age of 18. This is South Park at its best by delivering its worst, which is actually at its best (I couldn’t stop that sentence, but you’ll figure it out).
Anyway, probably the brightest spot to this entire game is how it is presented. This has the best presentation value I have seen in a game related to a license. I mean, it’s not going to beat the beauty of a Horizon Zero Dawn, but if you’re judging a game on how it compares to its television counterpart, then you’re going to see a seamless transition with animation, attitude and ambience. In short, if you love the show, then this game will make you feel like you’re absolutely controlling it. It’s beautiful in this way and it works when trying to convey to the viewer that they’re getting a top shelf shot of South Park in video game format. It will definitely keep the adventure going.
So, what is the downside of the title? Outside of its purposeful cheating ways and at times frustrating fights (see the stripper fight for details), the only downside I can see is the offensive content. People who love and breath South Park will be completely unaffected by it, but those coming in blind or assuming there are limits will probably be surprised with how far it goes for a laugh. It could also get really bad if parents don’t know anything about South Park and end up purchasing this for their kids. This is the only downside to the game that I can see, but this is a downside that lies squarely on the shoulders of the purchaser. I’m not going to knock the game’s score for this downside, as Ubisoft, its developers and the creators of the series have been open/honest about why it is rated M. Researching how offensive a game can get lies within the parental unit. It’s on them.
That said, the game is a spectacular experience. It is masterfully crafted with the right amount of South Park driving it. It certainly has a few minor faults here and there, but it is built to entertain and it doesn’t falter in that area. It’s a big game with a properly built turn-based personalty and it all works beautifully within its humorous South Park wrapper.
