South Park: The Stick of Truth (2014)

Earthbound R rated version

Beat on Hardcore as a fighter during free trial of ubisoft +. This was the most hilarious video game I have ever played, with so much ridiculous content that made me burst out laughing. The scenarios became more and more absurd as the game went on, and I was extremely impressed with the quality of writing and design. I mostly liked the gameplay with its old school jrpg vibe, but I was not a fan of the timing, QTEs and other input minigames for pulling off attacks and blocking damage. I would rather sit back and just make tactical choices from the menus. Though I can appreciate that it kind of meshed with the absurd nature of the game, that the inputs were fairly easy and that success was not that important given the overall ease of the game. I got game over several times but messing up inputs still did damage and I could always recover from missed blocks using the multitude of healing items. I found way more consumables than I needed, and was quite liberal with strength and speed potions. I even started to sell pp potions because I was leaving so many behind.

The biggest problems I had were the saving and selling systems. Early on I went to Jimbo's to buy that gas mask and sell a ton of junk and cosmetics. Then I died twice in the tower of peace and the game froze after I beat the security guard. I had to resell all of that crap 3 times using the awful click to sell 1 item at a time. While I appreciated that the junk items had joke flavor text, the game desperately needed a sell all junk button, or at least a bound key to sell all in a stack without moving the cursor back and forth each time. I had been saving manually and wondering why the hell I was losing progress, so I looked up online that the game only had checkpoint saving and that manual saves just copied the last checkpoint. Stupid. At least the story checkpoints were good, and I could trigger a checkpoint by using fast travel, so of course I used the Mr Slave summon to auto win that tower of peace fight to get the sweet mongorian bow, then ran out to save between each fight. Same with the sewers later, though not after every single fight. I was cheap and did not buy anything for the early game, so that bow was a huge upgrade. Despite being only level 3 I kept using it until level 10 when I bought the elven longbow, then the battle bow at level 11. I used the wood elf gloves and ranged damage boosts until near the end game. I found the triple burning attacks to be extremely effective and later on did fart magic weapon attacks on burning opponents for bonus damage. I died several times to the alien cockpit boss. I even tried switching to the level 4 alien gun socketed with lightning damage to exploit their weakness, but the bow was better. It just came down to mastering blocks and chugging potions. My armor changed from swat, to barbarian, to valkyrie, to knight. I really liked the bonus attack on kill from the swat helm, but it had no stats or slots so I eventually moved on. At late game when I was max level I bought the sweet katana and switched to a melee build. No other melee weapon up till that point was better than my battle bow.

I did the silly dress up game with the girls but they did not let me go with the style I wanted; sexy red hair with everything else purple. Then the abortion clinic was the most funny and interesting part of the game. It was going survival horror, for the soldiers at least. The boys did not have trouble beating nazi zombie aborted fetuses, the best enemy design ever lol. Then 8 bit retro Canada was hilarious. I tried to beat Al Gore a few times but the fight was too tough until I got back from Canada at max level. The entire end game was a breeze. The only other summon I used was Jesus on the 5 animal battle in Canada. Didn't need to use more. I missed 1 hide and seek kid, 2 homeless groups, the nazi zombie police quest, the forest animals, quite a few pokemon, and most of the backtracking stuff that required shrinking and ultimate fart. I did not want to spend time searching for unnecessary stuff. My perks were: health, melee, ranged, sucker punch, pyro, fart of war, healing wind, bloodlust. I was 1 friend away from the next perk so probably could have gotten 2 more perks. I maxed out assault and battery but I did not find it useful. The damage was crap compared to the bow, and the healing was miniscule. I never put points into roshambo and the couple of times I tried the skill I failed. It didn't seem worth using, let alone upgrading. Bull rush was my most used skill. It was easy to perform and halving the ridiculous armor numbers of the enemies was a massive boon. I did find it odd that my armor, even in the knights set, never even came close to that of the enemies. I maxed out ground stomp and found it amazing for groups of enemies. The last 2 points I put into horn of irritation, even though I only used that skill a couple times. My favorite party member was Kyle, and I used him for most of the late game. I liked his rally buff, and the easy to perform summon elemental that did big damage. The holy damage on that and his regular attack were very useful against zombies. I tried the wind attack once but it did not seem great. Arrow barrage was great for groups even if I only managed to succeed on the QTEs one time. I didn't get much chance to try Cartman but he seemed pretty good for enemies that were strong vs holy. I used Jimmy for most of the mid game to put enemies to sleep and buff me while I killed then 1 by 1. I only used brown note once, on the final boss. He was great for offsetting the difficulty, but his songs took too much time and effort to use. I used Stan the least because 2 warriors was not the best combo. And then there was Butters. If he didn't have that trait that made enemies more likely to attack him then he would have been far more useful. He was not a tank and died a lot. His moves were pretty good though, and I liked getting the random shield from chaos. I preferred Kenny for the early game because it did not matter that much when he died. He had the most hilarious moves but was not great against armor or gross immunes. I usually used charm and kiss. The unicorn was better for damage but had QTEs, and the mice were a good hit all that I used to wipe out Jimmy's mice in 1 turn. I failed and got Kenny killed by his own mice once though.

My end gear:

Barbarian gloves (because of bonus melee damage) socketed with +100 melee damage

Knight armor (because good armor and bonus 2 hand damage) socketed with +200 melee damage

Knight helm (because armor and shield on kill) socketed with 100 health leech

Battle bow (because it was triple flame shot) socketed with +250 weapon damage

Sweet katana (amazing damage and destroy armor) socketed with +35% damage on perfect attack

This was a game where the story elements were better than the gameplay, so some people may be better off watching a let's play video than playing themselves. The gameplay was good itself though, despite the annoying QTEs. I didn't like the perfect attack system in Legend of Dragon nor the limit break mini games in Final Fantasy 10. I do not enjoy half assed shoe horned "action" gameplay in my turn based rpgs, and there really should have been an accessibility option to skip that nonsense. The out of combat shooting and triggering environmental hazards to auto defeat enemies was an excellent addition, as well as the puzzles and Metroidvania style backtracking with new powers. Though I did find that most loot was nothing special. I could see playing through again as the other classes to see how different their tactics could be, but since I played for free I will not buy the game. I will definitely relive the game by watching full playthroughs, as it is on par with the actual show and movies.

8.0/10

After 5 years this game was released I finally sat down and played this in one sitting. (don't do this it ain't healthy)

This game relies solely that the gamer who is playing the game also likes South Park as a series and there is nothing wrong with that because this game is like an interactive RPG TV episode. I like South Park it’s not my favorite, but I like it. This game however, I love it.

The game itself is simple. It’s an RPG but much smaller in perspective for a usual big studio tittle or even Obsidian themselves, only 12 hours or so and every minute is pure South Park experience and as an adult gamer I like my games “short” and sweet. It made me laugh and sometimes the game just mocked me.

I played the EU version, so some part of my game was censored but I liked how Obsidian handled this. The censor text was much more entertaining than just a black awkward pause. I watched the censored scenes afterward and I think I didn’t miss that much so I don’t put this as negative.

As a female gamer I was a bit sad that the only option was a boy because I wanted to make South Park version of myself (the second game you can also play as a girl) but part of the story was gain a girls trust and get them play with boys( because girls don’t play with boys usually in South Park) so it makes sense that I couldn’t pick a female.

Only nitpicks includes some highly missable collectibles and minor frame issues while running (ps4 version) also it’s a bit sad that you can only have on buddy at the time but considering the battles in this game aren’t that hard it’s understandable.

I’m really happy that I played this and like watching reruns of South Park I’m going to play this again someday.