South Park: The Stick of Truth
South Park: The Stick of Truth is an RPG set in the universe of the t.v. show South Park. South Park's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote the game and reprised their roles. It's a hilarious, offensive, and sometimes pretty freakin' disgusting romp through the quiet mountain town, capturing the feel of South Park perfectly and to top it all off, it's a pretty damn good RPG.
The game starts off with a character creation menu, yes, you get to make your own South Park character and have him interact with the main characters.
Gameplay:
The initial character customization felt somewhat limited in it's options, but there are all kinds of armor, weapons, wigs, glasses and makeup ingame to make up for that, plus you can go to the plastic surgeon if you want to change your appearance. Once you have all that down, you start, meeting up with Butters, who takes you to Cartman. Here, you pick your class, with four to choose from: Fighter, Mage, Thief and.......Jew? Yes, Jew is a playable class.
I forgot to take a screenshot of this part, so I'll just use this one
My Jew, level 11 at the time of this screenie
Each class gets a unique set of abilities, like the Jew class using the "CircumScythe" to cause bleeding damage, unlocking more moves as you progress. Combat is turn based, but with timing based moves, where you have to press a button or click the mouse at the right time to make your attacks more effective. Mana is present in the form of fart based attacks and like physical attacks and abilities, is also timing based and summons are available once you complete that character's side quest. Some enemies will change their stance to ones that can parry your melee attacks or reflect your ranged ones and some enemies get big shields that need to be broken down, forcing you to change up your strategy. You can also block an enemy attack, if timed right, and reduce the damage taken. You can also modify your weapons to up their damage or add effects like fire, freeze, lightning or gross out damage, other effects include health leeching and damaging multiple opponents. Armor can be modified as well to resist debuffs, to gain health every turn, to reduce damage taken or increase damage given. It's a pretty deep system.
Fighting alongside Stan
Summons include Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo
In between the story and combat, you're free to explore the small town of South Park, with all the major locations from the show, like the school, and the boy's houses. The map is kind of small as far as RPG or open world games go, but it's packed with references and gags from South Park episodes. Some characters will give you side quests in exchange for friending you. One of the major points in the game is, being the new kid, making friends. Reaching certain numbers of friends unlocks perks that can be used in combat. There are six party members available; Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Butters and Jimmy. You can only have one companion at a time for battle and exploration and in some situations, there's unique dialogue for each. Some areas contain context sensitive set pieces which you can hit, fart on, use a buddy command, teleport using an anal probe or shrink down to fit. Some of these can be used to take down enemies and bypass fighting.
Walking around with Butters
As far as RPGs go, it's fairly short. The main quest is about 10-15 hours, but there are fun/funny side quests and collectibles and it doesn't take away from the overall experience. It really feels like you're involved in a season of South Park. Other drawbacks include not being able to go back to replay events in the game, there's no new game + and you can't go back to certain areas once the campaign is done, so if you miss the collectibles there, you have to do another playthrough. All in all, it's a great game with lots of replay value.
Story:The central plot of the game is that you're the mute new kid who has just moved into South Park. His family's move comes at an opportune time, as Kyle, Cartman and the other boys in town have a massive LARP game going.
Kyle and Cartman are opposing factions vying for control over the titular Stick of Truth, the holder of which can control the universe. At the same time, there's government conspiracies, aliens, Underpants Gnomes and ManBearPig hunter Al Gore's shenanigans abound. Kyle and Cartman try to get The New Kid to woo other factions to their cause and ultimately it's up to you who to side with once the conflict comes to a head. I won't say much else about it so as not to spoil it, but it's packed with the trademark humor that is South Park, including some incredibly disgusting and offensive jokes, minigames and levels, some of which have been censored in other regions (an abortion minigame was cut out of the console release and Germany has censored Nazi images). But I'd expect nothing less from these guys and that's why I love it.
Perhaps the most epic LARP ever
The soundtrack consists of original score plus various songs from throughout the series playing on radios in shops and other interiors. One part of the original soundtrack I consider worth noting is the music inside the church, which I find pretty relaxing and nice
Chatting with Kyle
Soundtrack
Overworld music
Some battle music
Overall, this is a great game, a fun RPG with a good story that has all the humor and offensiveness you'd expect from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It gets a 9/10 from me.
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