That’s on top of the nuances of the basic system: because positioning matters and everybody’s ability set works differently for range, direction, knockback, and other special effects, there’s a fair amount of depth to it.And, by the end, you have more than a dozen distinct characters to choose from. There are special battles where you’re forced to keep moving or to move enemies into specific spots, others where you have to target one enemy among many, and other conditions that keep things from getting stale. But unlike The Stick of Truth, which only got easier as it went on, The Fracture But Whole gets much more interesting in the second half as the scenarios become more ambitious and give us more things to deal with: telegraphed attacks, area denial, summoned-in enemies, and real-time timers that force you to move quickly or be hit, among others. The grid-based battle scenarios start easy – even on the highest “Mastermind” difficulty, it was around 10 hours in before I had to try anything other than a boss battle twice. “Of course, this being an RPG, the primary interaction you have in The Fractured But Whole is combat. It’s pleasant enough to stroll through this quiet mountain town and taking in the ambient dialogue and signage jokes, though I couldn’t help but notice that the frame rate takes a hit sometimes, dropping perceptively when you’re passing by a busy background like the gentlemen’s club and its flashing neon. There’s a fast-travel system courtesy of super-speedster Fastpass (AKA Jimmy), but those travel points rarely seemed to be near enough to where a quest wanted me to go to make getting there less of a hassle, which led to a significant amount of hoofing it through the streets. A scene with fourth graders in a strip club (gross for largely non-sexual reasons, surprisingly), a priest self-flagellating with a rosary made from anal beads, and some more-racist-than-racist cops stand out.The pace of the gags only really slows down while you’re walking from place to place, chasing down the many main story and sidequest objectives. That said, it still delivers its share of the “Wow, they went there” moments that have kept South Park relevant. There were just a handful of times where a throwaway racial stereotype joke didn’t quite feel clever enough to justify the sensitive subject matter.įor pure shock-value firepower, nothing in The Fractured But Whole had me reeling quite as much as The Stick of Truth’s zombie Nazi fetuses. It’s nice that there’s some positivity there among the obliviously racist (The Coon, The Human Kite) and sexual jokes, and much of it is genuinely hilarious. Jimmy, who walks with crutches, has super-speed powers, and the developmentally disabled Timmy’s Professor X-like mental abilities make him so overpowered you can’t play as him in battle. While it’s mostly absurd, the kids’ superhero fantasy is actually a little touching in places. This is South Park, so it’s not exactly constrained by realism, so it’s a bemusing question that’s constantly raised. Then adults get involved, and you have to start wondering what’s really happening. You’ll have kids shooting lasers out of kites and teleporting one moment, then pausing the fight to let a car go by the next. With the exception of Professor Chaos’ anime super-move intro, we always see their costumes as makeshift cosplay cobbled together from tinfoil, Tupperware, and cardboard, but their powers are shown with brightly colored energy blasts and feats of superhuman strength and speed. “Especially in the opening hours, it’s hard to tell what’s supposed to be real and what’s all in the kids’ collective imagination – and The Fractured But Whole delights in blurring that line. And sure, there’s some significant irony in the Memberberries appearing in a game so heavily based on callbacks to South Park’s 20-year history, especially now being a reference to a year-old joke themselves, but I’m going to let that slide. Exploring its expanded map of South Park and its densely-packed references to the show is a treat for fans, even though it’s quite similar to what we saw in The Stick of Truth. The emulation of the crude animation style is spot-on, the voice acting is all completely authentic, and the writing quality is up to the high expectations. This one’s gags are focused more on parodying the superhero movie franchise craze than RPG mechanics, which makes it feel a little less novel, but this time its turn-based tactical combat is also deep enough to stand on its own.Like The Stick of Truth, The Fractured But Whole looks and sounds so much like the show that at a glance it could easily be mistaken for a 20-hour episode when you’re not in combat. By a wide margin, South Park: The Fractured But Whole is the funniest roleplaying game since South Park: The Stick of Truth came out three years ago.
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