Beat on hardest difficulty (Diabolic) during free trial of Ubisoft +. This game was better than Stick of Truth, though I found the story to be a little less engaging. Maybe because I am more interested in medieval fantasy than super heroes, and the story took a bit longer to get hilarious. The slower movement speed and fewer fast travel points did not help. I was not sure what kind of super power to have. I wanted to be a difficult to kill tank, and settled on speedster instead of brutalist. I got wrecked the first few fights and even wondered if I should lower the difficulty, but it was doable once I got the hang of the battle system. The combat was much better in this game; tactical with range and position instead of the simple Jrpg style. I certainly appreciated the option to turn off QTEs so I could focus on the brutally difficult turn based combat. I also used the minigame helpers for outside combat, because otherwise that shit would have gotten on my nerves. The artifact system was less engaging than weapons and armor though. There didn't seem to be much choice involved, just use the biggest number. I used 3 artifacts from the ubisoft club that I upgraded to 100 over the course of the game. The last basic slot was for something I found, and I crafted 105 stuff for the purple slots. The best gold slot artifacts were the one from the detective comedian side quest because it gave +1 to movement, and the camp sash though I did not pay attention to the special effects of these artifacts. I did not bother to find all of Big Gay Al's cats though, so no idea what that reward was. I also did not get the final time fart nor fight Morgan Freeman. For the DNA slot I went for strength boost without any health penalty. I went from mutant strength, to pimp strength, to ungodly strength, to gorilla toughness to psychotic rage.

I used the Assassin's Creed outfit but switched the gloves to red because it matched better. Later I switched to the tank armor with spiked gloves, all painted gold and purple. I did not like the speedster dash attack because it often left me in a bad position behind enemy lines, so when I could choose a second class I went cyborg and swapped in the taunt block. I loved using double action to attack followed by blocking. The block lasted 2 turns so I was still being useful and protected during my missed turn. Later for my third class I chose assassin and swapped in the ultimate. That move had good range and made me invisible for 2 turns, so it was the same deal around using double action. There were also times where I only did 1 action, or used double action on revive and healing items. I liked all of the party members and found them all useful. The game design here and with the enemies was excellent. Call girl was my favorite because of her long range attack. I could keep her at a safe distance and put out reliable damage plus defense down. Her ultimate hit all enemies, which was good but I preferred to focus fire with single target ultimates. I only used her melee abilities a couple times. Professor chaos was great for crowd control because of his decent range confuse with no cooldown. I could reliably make an enemy attack another enemy for big damage while also preventing that enemy from advancing on me. That enemy could also restrict other enemies from moving. His other abilities were not so useful; decent damage and the minion could take a couple hits at least. My last party member that I took for the hardest non boss fights was Wonder Tweek, because of his ice crowd control. He had a good heal but not the best damage and defense. For close range tank I liked Captain Diabetes for his versatile moveset. He did not have a block but with 2 moves giving protection and the ability to hit in all directions, he proved incredibly useful. I used his ultimate a lot simply because he was usually in position for it. Super Craig was a good tank early on but I stopped using him because he sometimes could not attack because he did not have any moves to hit vertical. Tupperware had a good main attack that hit in all directions but his other abilities were a bit dubious. The gun turret could be useful for damage, decoy and blocking, but it could also easily end up useless. His swapping ability was good but very situational. It would pair well with Fastpass and his swap heal, as long as Tups went before the enemies. I liked Fastpass for his invisibility, initiative and mid ranged attacks, though he often went down when exposed. Him, Diabetes and Kite were my team for most of the game. Kite was a great ranged attacker with useful support, but could only attack horizontal. He worked best when paired with a tank and I liked the large area on his ultimate. Mosquito was one of the worst heroes because of his high risk high reward fighting style. If he managed not to die in a single hit he could inflict a lot of damage and restore his health at the same time. Plus he was fast and could try playing it safe with the vertical gross attack. Toolshed had a cool double direction long range knockback, which could keep multiple enemies at bay with correct choke points, but the damage was not great. His standard attack was awkward V shaped, so I did not use him unless I had to. The Coon and Mysterion were very similar as melee dps that had trouble staying alive. The Coon's ultimate was pretty good for hitting all enemies, and his position swap with an enemy at least gave options. Mysterion was more useful dead because of chill and confusion. With a good choke point he could block it and make the enemies kill each other. I beat the blood fountain battle by repeatedly confusing a random tank enemy to beat the birthday vampire for slightly more damage than the fountain could heal. I pretty much only used those 2 characters in the Casa vampire dlc because there was no option otherwise. Henrietta was the best support character with healing, protection, lifesteal buff, curing, and ultimate that hurt all enemies while healing all allies. Her offense was not great but she really helped keep the others alive. The final character Mintberry was very weird. He was another support with minimal offense. His 2 turn cooldown ability could make any ally a tank for an adjacent enemy and his ultimate could negate all enemy damage. Otherwise he had to spend 2 turns alternating between his knockback and flying buff to keep that damage block up. A very gimmicky character that is incredibly useful for the hardest difficulty.

I did not use a lot of consumables though made sure to have a healthy supply. I would have used a lot more if item use was a free action like in the previous game. I crafted costumes just to get my skill up and made a ton of revives, antidotes and tacos to get my skill high enough to make 100 power artifacts. I was above the recommended power level for most of the game, which helped offset the difficulty. Things changed at the end as I lost to the genetics lab boss, satanic animals and past self final boss, and had to adjust my strategy to win the next time around. Big boss fights benefited more from straight up damage, defense and healing, while fights with greater numbers benefited more from crowd control. The fights in the vampire dlc were especially difficult and I even missed the Coon until after beating the ape fight. The final battle vs Michael Jackson took several tries to beat as I figured out not to damage him too much while killing off the kids to avoid being overrun. Then it was a matter of staying out of his resurrection area and keeping the kids to a manageable number while throwing what damage I could at him. The Coon and Mysterion spent most of the fight dead, and I used each summon. I rushed through the camp ground dlc on Casual because I was out of time on my free trial, so the battles were largely trivial. The fight against the killers on the docks was very annoying because I lacked any vertical knockback to get the villain into the other guy's attack. Should have used that final girl class vertical knockback, but I managed to get him using time fart to skip his turn. The final alien fight was even pretty difficult on casual so I imagine it would be brutal on highest difficulty. It seemed to be more about surviving in the few safe spaces while the boss damaged himself, so the mintberry damage shield was key. I did 1 battle in the danger deck when I first got there during the story, but it was super hard because it scaled up to my 800+ power level. I barely scraped by and had to use multiple consumables. I do not feel I missed much by not completing that dlc.

This game was clearly made to a higher level of quality than Stick of Truth, with significantly more content. Even though some of the extra content stretched out the time between the excellent writing and combat gameplay. I thank the Jesus that they put in auto win options for the many QTEs and minigames for people like myself that can't stand that sort of "gameplay". The puzzles and minigames were otherwise pretty good and helped with the humor. The only one I did not like was the water level because there was no vertical control. It was hilarious but it should have controlled like Mario. This game is definitely worth experiencing again by watching a let's play, but the ability to freely change classes ironically reduces the gameplay replayability. Still the excellence of the combat, character and encounter design would make multiple playthroughs fun.

8.3/10