South Park: The Stick of Truth Review

Before I start this review off, let me just say that I absolutely ADORE RPG games. The first RPG game I've ever played was Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation 1. It absolutely amazed me with it's story, characters, and overall gameplay. After this game, I went on to play every other Final Fantasy game, as well as some other RPG games like Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, the Mario & Luigi series, Kingdom Hearts, Chrono Trigger, the list goes on. Anyways, on with the review.

South Park. What can you say? It's probably one of the best cartoons not intended for children. It happens to be one of the most controversial cartoons to date, it's been going for over 17 seasons since 1997. Almost every episode was great, with a few exceptions, the characters are very memorable and the writing is clever. As with every licensed TV show, there have to be games based off South Park. The South Park games in the past few years have been pretty mediocre. The first South Park game was a pretty bad first person shooter with cardboard cutout enemies, but with good multiplayer, Chef's Luv Shack was a mediocre collection of minigames and a trivia game thrown together, and South Park Rally was a very confusing racing game that has innovative features, but the gameplay falls flat on it's face. «South Park: Let's Go Tower Defense Play!» and «South Park: Tenorman's Revenge» were OK, but nothing amazing.  Right now I'm going to review South Park: The Stick of Truth, the most recently relased South Park game, released on March 4^th, 2014 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 & PC. It was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the same people who made Fallout:New Vegas & published by Ubisoft, initially THQ, before they went bankrupt and sold the rights to Ubisoft. I'll be talking about the PC version. I'm pretty sure the other versions are exactly the same, just with different controls. This game has seen numerous delays throughout it's development cycle. Matt Stone & Trey Parker have stated that they enjoy role-playing games and that they believe the genre is the best fit for bringing the South Park universe into the interactive medium. They also stated that the learning curve was greater than anything else they had done apart from their Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon".  I hope they didn't mess it up like the other games.  Let's start off with the story. Now I'm warning you guys, prepare for spoilers. You will have to skip to Gameplay & Other Stuff section if you don't want the story ruined for you.

Story:

The story takes place after the Black Friday 3-part story arc of Season 17. You begin the game as the New Kid, who has recently moved to the quiet little mountain town of South Park, along with his parents. He can't speak, not now at least. As he goes outside, Butters is seen being beaten up by an elf. After he gives the elf a beating to the head, Butters thanks the New Kid and adds him as a friend, and introduces him to the Wizard King, played by Cartman. Cartman welcomes the New Kid to the Kingdom of Kupa Keep or KKK for short, names him «Douchebag», and introduces him to the Stick of Truth, which has powers, where if someone was to own it, they would be able control the universe. Clyde Donovan was given the task to secure the Stick from the Elves, only to have it stolen, and therefore Clyde is banished from space & time. The New Kid helps out Cartman to find a team of people to join in his force, which includes Tweek Tweak, Token Black & Craig Tucker. After letting Tweek & Token to join the Kingdom of Kupa Keep, only Craig is left at school, in detention, for flipping off the principal. After the New Kid is taught the Dragonshout fart, Cartman & the KKK go to school to bust Craig out of school, but it's controlled by ginger hallway monitors from the inside. After busting Craig out, the KKK sets off tho find out that the Stick is owned by the Bard (Jimmy Valmer), a level 10 elf who has the powers of music. After teaching teaching Cup-a-Spell to the New Kid, Cartman & the KKK find him in the Inn of the Giggling Donkey & defeat him, then get the Stick back. Everyone goes to sleep, including the New Kid, who suddenly gets abducted by the Visitors the following night. Hey, sounds familiar? The aliens try to anally probe the New Kid, but the alien probe is broken, which is then automatically shoved up his butt. He gets the help from Randy Marsh, Stan's dad, who also happens to be abducted by the Visitors. They both break free and get back home, but the UFO is crashed into the South Park Mall, completely destroying it.

The next day, the New Kid goes to Cartman to find out that the Stick was stolen yet again. With no time to waste, unless you're doing one of the game's many side quests, the New Kid sets off to recruit the Goth Kids. Along the way, when recruiting the Goth Kids, the New Kid is interrupted by a PTA meeting at the community center, hosted by Principal Victoria, Mr.Garrison, Mr.Adler, Randy Marsh & Shelia Broflovski. Randy teaches the New Kid the Sneaky Squaker, a fart that can distract enemies. Once the New Kid goes to the UFO, it's revealed that the goverment is going to open up a new Taco Bell. Though once the New Kid gets inside, something far more sinister is planned. The goverment plans to fake a story about an earthquake, then destroy 3 blocks of South Park by planting bombs underneath the town, because inside the UFO, there is toxic waste that can turn anyone into a Nazi Zombie. It has spread all over town. After telling it to Randy via a recording device that the New Kid has found, Randy takes the picture and the New Kid takes it to the Goth Kids. Along the way trying to look Goth, the New Kid is interrupted by the Elves, then goes along with them, to reveal their leader, Kyle Broflovski. Among the members are Jimmy & Stan. Kyle needs to New Kid to prove his trust by smashing up the KKK banners all across town. So the New Kid has a choice to recruit the Goth Kids either for the KKK or the Elves. The game will play out the same, the only difference where you recruit the Goth Kids to is the enemy. If you recruit them to the KKK, the Elves become your enemies & vice versa. Either way, in the school, after you defeat either Kyle or Cartman, both the KKK & the Elves find a writing on Clyde's desk that says «Check my locker». It's revealed that Clyde is the one who took the Stick & Craig joins Clyde, betraying the KKK, & Clyde gets rid of both kingdoms, so the KKK & the Elves are forced to work together to defeat him, but it's bedtime, and so everyone is forced to go to bed. Later that night, New Kid's underpants are being stolen by the Underpants Gnomes. He attacks them, but gets shrunk and has to find the Gnome Warlock, who has the power to either shrink or grow humans. After the fight, the Warlock gives the New Kid the magic pixie dust that gives the New Kid the ability to shrink or grow at anytime.

The next day, the New Kid goes to Kyle's place & it's revealed that the Governons & the Pirates have been recruited to fight, only one more faction is left for them to join is the Girls. Kyle & Cartman ask the New Kid to get the Girls to join the alliance of the KKK & the Elves. Annie gets the New Kid to the conference room held at the Girls restroom at the playground. In order to get the Girls to join the team that Kyle & Cartman have made, they have to find the information who is the whore behind it, in three steps.

1. Pretend to be Bebe's boyfriend to one of the double-crossing girls.
2. Disguise as a girl to get an abortion, then get the files, with the help of Randy Marsh.
3. Give the information to the Girls, which needs to be translated from French to English.

After getting the information, the New Kid needs to translate it to English, by going into Canada. But before he could do that, he needs to get a photo for a passport that Cartman gives. After getting past the border, not to mention defeating a pedophile photographer, it's the matter of getting the information to be translated. After meeting the Prince of Canada & his wife in Ottawa, they see that the information can be translated only by the Minister of Montreal, who is stuck in a cave. So the New Kid kills the bishop of Banff and gives it to the prince, who cowardly runs away. The New Kid gives the information to the Duke of Winnipeg, who tells the New Kid that he needs to see the two monks in Vancouver, who turn out to be Terrance & Phillip, the most popular stars of Canada. They both teach him the most powerful fart move yet:Nagasaki, which can destroy walls that were impossible to break earlier and give you access to areas you've never been to before. After freeing the Minister, he translates the message, and the New Kid is declared the Hero of Canada. He goes back to the Girls at the U.S., gives them the translated message, and the Girls agree to join the fight. Once the team reaches Clyde's fortress, they fight through it, killing everyone in sight, including the traitorous Craig, and travel inside Mr.Slave in order to defuse a snuke that will destroy South Park, in addition to meeting the trio à la Lemmiwinks' journey through Mr.Slave, all accompanied by a song, similar to the Ballad of Lemmiwinks. After all this, the boys find Clyde, who uses the toxic waste found in the UFO to revive Chef (Even though Chef was ressurected by the Super Adventure Club as Darth Chef). After defeating Chef with the power of farts, the New Kid makes Clyde defenseless and Cartman sends Clyde falling to his doom. All is well, until the goverment shows up and gets the stick, and the leader tells some crap that you can't skip, literally. Even Cartman breaks the fourth wall by asking if they could skip this. After the leader tells one of the kids to get the Stick to get whatever they want, no one goes there, except for Princess Kenny, who ends up betraying Cartman. The New Kid fights off Kenny, who dies, but not for long after inhaling some toxic waste, making him a zombie. The good guys try to defeat Kenny, but he doesn't stop reviving himself. So the only option left is to fart on Kenny's balls, breaking the rule of not farting on a man's balls. Why? 'Cause after learning a new fart move, the person who taught it to you says to never fart on a a man's balls. But the New Kid does fart on Kenny's balls, getting rid of the virus, effectively killing Kenny, and saving the town. After this, Cartman throws the Stick into Stark's Pond and decides what to play next, but the New Kid finally says Cartman's trademark line «Screw you guys, I'm going home», then leaving, ending the story of South Park:The Stick of Truth. Holy crap, this story is quite long. Actually, it was written by Matt Stone & Trey Parker, the show's creators, and a damn fine job they did. There are some bad moments here and there, but all in all, it's a great story.

Gameplay & Other Stuff:
Now that the plot is out of the way, let's get into the gameplay. South Park:The Stick of Truth is an RPG game, much like Final Fantasy & other similar games. you can select your difficulty in the options menu at any time,  from Casual, which is the easiest, to Hardcore, which is the hardest difficulty. You can customize your character at the beginning of the game to your liking, skin, hair, clothes, etc.. You can also find some customization items along the way, like wigs, makeup, glasses, headgear, body clothes & gloves. Thing is, you cannot customize your facial features. If you put on that skin you wanted, you're staying with it. Granted, everyone's face in the show kinda looked the same, but I would have liked a few more features to customize my character with. Other than that, I love the character customization in this game. It's not as deep as, say, Saints Row, but it still gets the job done. At the beginning of the game you can choose between 4 classes:Fighter, Mage, Thief & Jew. I'm gonna assume you're familiar with Fighter, Mage & Thief classes. The Jew class works like this:the more you're hurt, the more damage you do to your enemies. You can use the Dreidel & few other Jewish style weapons to your advantage. Each class has their own set of weapons. You can also find different weapons to add into your arsenal and also equip certain trinkets to make your attacks stronger. There's melee weapons & the weapons that you can shoot at your enemies, out of battle, it stuns some of them, but in battle, it damages enemies. I'll talk about the battle system later down the road. The enemies in the mountain town of South Park are completely visible on the field. As such, you could fight them, or ignore them completely, though, being an RPG game, you have to fight them and eventually level up. You can also take a dump at any toilet. I'm dead serious. I've beaten the game once as a Fighter and now I'm playing as a Thief. I also beat the game as a Jew. And with each class, you'll find new items that normally cannot be found as a Fighter, but can be found as someone else, like a Mage or a Thief.

That's an example of where you can go in the quiet little mountain town of South Park.

The headgear, body armor, and gloves will give you extra armor, depending on which ones you equip. The makeup, glasses & wigs are just there for decoration, although you need to wear some of them to progess further down the story. You can find Timmy flags located all around South Park. With it, you can use Sir Timmy's Fast Travel Service to travel from one part of town to another incase you don't feel like travelling around on foot. Once you find one, you can use it free of charge. Throughout the game, you can find familiar faces of South Park, most of which can become friends on Facebook. Sometimes, it's simple to add them as a friend by simply talking to them. Other times, however, you need to have a sufficient amount of friends, or do one of the side quests that they offer you.

Controls: You use the W,A,S,D keys to move and Left Shift to run. I never let go of that key because regular walking feels very slow. You use the Q key to switch between Shoot, Buddy Command, Anal Probe & Gnome Dust. press the F key to use that function. As for farts, you use the E key to switch between Dragonshout, Cup-a-Spell, Sneaky Squeaker & Nagasaki. Then press the G key to fart that power. Speaking of farting, you can do that with the Right Mouse button, and melee attack using the Left Mouse Button.

An example of a battle as Mage. Speaking of which, the battle system is turn based. As for the enemies, you have Elves at the beginning of the game, in the middle & at the end of the game there are Nazi Zombies to fight, and occassionally giant rats, Visitors, underpants gnomes & even Nazi Zombie fetuses. No, I'm not kidding, you can actually fight Nazi Zombie fetuses. The New Kid & your partner have different types of attacks.

There are 6 Buddies that you can unlock:Butters, Kenny, Stan, Jimmy, Kyle & Cartman. Each buddy has a special move that can be used once per turn. For example, Butters, the paladin, can heal you if you're really hurt. Kenny can flash his boobs to enemies to decrease their attack rate, except to those who are immune to this. Stan can use his dog, Sparky, to bite an enemy and decrease his defence rate. Jimmy can use his flute to gain PP for everyone, and also get the New Kid to places that he's never been to before outside of the battle. Kyle rallies the party for combat and Cartman throws a powerful magic missile at his target to gross it out. There are certain items that can help you during the battle. This includes Shock, Bleed, Poison, Fire & Ice abilities, similar to Final Fantasy VII. The shock ability can slow down enemies & decrease their defence, same goes for Ice. Bleed, Poison & Fire items can decrease health of the enemies as the fight goes. If you see light blue text saying «WEAK!» over the enemy, it means that he has a weakness to that weapon. You mainly use the mouse buttons for regular attacks, but for the PP attacks, there is most likely a quick-time event where you have to press the right key at the right time, or just mash it repeatedely. You also have to time your button presses, even when doing regular attacks, similar to the likes of Paper Mario.

Though there are some powerups that the enemies will use:

Reflecting — The enemies reflect your projectiles.

Riposting — Same as Reflect, only with melee attacks.

Immune — The enemy is immune to that attack.

Regeneration — The enemy regenerates some of it's health.

Cloning — Only Craig does this in battle. The clones are weaker than the real Craig.

There are also PP moves, which are special moves that do more damage than regular attacks. Though they waste your power points, or PP as it's called in the game. Depending on the class you've chosen at the start of the game, the New Kid is going to have a different set of PP moves. Butters & Kyle are probably my favorite characters to use, because Butters' hammer attack is quite powerful and the PP attacks are just as strong, if not stronger. I love Kyle's Arrow Rain move especially. Princess Kenny is my least favorite of the 6, because Kenny's arrow shot is pathetically weak towards the end of the game, but his PP attacks more than make up for it. My favorite power moves are Professor Chaos & Rain of Arrows, because 1. You can choose either to drain your foes' health somehow or give you and Butters a shield; and 2. The perfect attack of the Rain of Arrows can cause a lot of damage to all enemies in sight, in addition to making them bleed.

There are items that will help you in battle, like the Cure Potion, which will, as the name implies, cure everything hazardous, except Dire AIDS, which can be cured at the Canadian Hospital & regular AIDS, the Power Lotion & the Health Lotion, which will heal your PP & health, respectively. Most of these potions can be bought from a shop.

One thing that I like about the Stick of Truth, is that whenever you end, all your health & PP automatically refill to 100% in the next battle, so this makes it easier than most RPG's. The bosses are also a sight to behold. They are all fun, except for Al Gore, who takes forever to die and his goons are too strong to take down, even with the proper weapon combination, though I did manage to beat him  with ease using Jimmy as a partner. This game has a lot of sidequests to complete. If you complete them, you unlock friends for Facebook, and by getting a large amount of friends you also get perks, which can be used to upgrade your battle performance. There's also a lot of collectibles, from junk to Chinpokomon. The game can take up from 13 to 15 hours to complete, depending on where you complete side quests or not, and 15 hours is good enough for me.

Do I even need to say anything about the graphics? They are great, for the show that it tries to represent. This game, like «Let's Go Tower Defense Play!» & «Scott Tenoman's Revenge», uses simplistic South Park animation as opposed to 3D models. It really fits the style of the show. The presentation is also great, with authentic voices from Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Mona Marshall & April Stewart, just to name a few. It actually makes you feel like you're a part of a South Park episode. The music itself is great, but it gets a bit repetitive after a while. The more you hear the music tracks in worlds & battles, the more you wish this game had an option for custom soundtracks. I have to give them credit for using the original music composer from the cartoon. Also, I wish I could replay the cutscenes, because a lot of them are pretty amusing. And I have to applaud Matt & Trey for adding almost every piece of South Park mythology when making this game. You'll be seeing lots of familiar characters, landmarks, and hear some songs from seasons 1-17, like «Montage», «Kyle's Mom is a Bitch», and even «Let's Fighting Love». Also, most of the quotes you will hear in the game are ripped right from the episodes of the show. You can also hear the trailers for movies playing in theaters. Also, you can hear a part of «Not Without My Anus» on Cartman's TV. The other TV's in the neighborhood have episodes of Terrance & Phillip, the pilot episode of «Queef Sisters», or the Martha Stewart Show. This is a minor nitpick, but where did all of the content in the promotional screenshots go? We were supposed to see the school in mint condition at some point, but even after finding out that Clyde stole the Stick of Truth, it remains to be an utter mess for the rest of the game. I hope Matt & Trey will release DLC that will expand the story even further. Speaking of DLC, people who pre-ordered the game received the Ultimate Fellowship Pack or the Super Samurai Spaceman Pack, both of which come with exclusive costumes, each with a range of bonus abilities. The Ultimate Fellowship Pack was a pre-order bonus at selected retailers, while the Super Samurai Spaceman Pack is a pre-order bonus at other retailers. Pre-ordering on Ubishop grants both DLC packs. They are not really exciting, though.

Overall, I do think it's the best South Park game yet, and RPG fans are in for a treat. If you're just getting into the RPG genre, give this game a try. The story is great, the gameplay is great, the battle system & the boss fights are great, minus Al Gore. I'm warning you though, anything South Park related is absolutely, no questions asked, without a doubt, NOT intended for kids. The Stick of Truth is rated M for a reason! It has abortion scenes, anal probing, and a lot of bad language, though most of the scenes were censored in the European & Australian console releases. If you haven't played this game as of now, do it! It's a great game.