South Park The Fractured But Whole was a real roller-coaster for me. The game takes you on a wild journey of interruptions, a time-bending plot and laughs like any other random South Park episode. The thing I have always enjoyed while playing Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole is that you always felt like you’re in the show as ‘new kid’ and because of this the games have always turned out better than what I thought they could have been. The graphics are akin to the latest South Park animation style and it’s awesome because they were smoothed out, as well as improved for the highly active game-play for all the super powers you wind up getting to use. The music was intense in the battles and the over-world theme really fit both the day and night atmospheres.
As crime rates in South Park rise Scrabbles is missing and there is a great $100 dollar reward for finding and returning him. The Coon wants to find him and travel back in time to change what has happened to this once great city protected by superheroes.
The battle system was changed from just a turn-based RPG to a tactical turn-based RPG where you fight your enemies on a small or large grid while moving your superheroes to use different types of attacks that come in all shapes and sizes. As you attack/defend you get a larger meter for an Ultimate Attack! and this can happen once every-time you fill the bar. The catch however is that only one superhero can use it at a time, so choose wisely. The difficulty wasn’t all that harsh even in the later parts of The Fractured But Whole, but I didn’t find this to be too much of an issue. As the game went on there were a few uncommon moments where the battle would pause due to either a car passing or Kyle’s cousin wanting to join in only to waste time.
For classes: you start out with only 3 options, however, this does change as the story progresses and you can change them at will by talking to Cartman. They are Speedster, Brutalist, and Blaster — All of which are great classes to start with but I found the later ones like Assassin to be better. Like last time in the Stick of Truth, you get to select your party members from the cast you play with and that grows as the plot progresses. Overall I found the game-play to be greater than the Stick of Truth because the battle system of quick time presses was more defined; plus we also got more room and options for combat.
I found the story of The Fractured But Whole to be that of what a South Park episode would be… except that you have literally become a part of the story — bringing the experience to a personal level meaning: I played with my favorite kids whom I found that I related to most. The Fractured But Whole brings the silly game to life with its actions and humor, countless references to other games and the show itself. That aside, the story behind the New Kid was enhanced this time around with more focus on how he can gain friends and followers so easily. I did find however the full back story of New Kid to leave a bad aftertaste due to some plot points and twists that I won’t bring up for spoiler reasons. Overall the story was solid all the way through until it… just ends… like another South Park episode.
Despite a few flaws here and there story-wise, The Fractured But Whole was an amazing experience to play — just as much as the Stick of Truth was. It was funny, exciting and at times frustrating because of how some of the characters are — I’m looking at you Wendy and Stan!
Rating: [star rating=”4″]