South Park™: The Fractured But Whole™

Stick of Truth was lightning in a bottle and everybody knows it. Fractured But Whole isn't that, but it's still a damn good time if South Park lives rent free in your head the way it does for a lot of us. The superhero angle works, the writing is still sharp enough to make you laugh out loud at stuff you probably shouldn't be laughing at, and the way they drop you directly into the story as an actual character rather than a bystander is something the show does better than basically any other licensed game out there. The combat got a real overhaul going grid based this time around and it's genuinely more involved than Stick of Truth asked you to be. Takes a minute to click but when it does it adds something. Haven't finished it yet but that's more about life than the game. It hooks you enough that you know you're going back. Ubisoft San Francisco and South Park Digital Studios clearly gave enough of a damn to make something that feels like the show rather than a product with the show's face on it, which is a lower bar than it sounds and one that most licensed games completely fumble. If you loved Stick of Truth go in with adjusted expectations and you'll have a good time. If you're a South Park fan who hasn't played either of these yet, start with the first one and come straight here after. Runs great on Steam Deck.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole (best game name I've ever seen lol) is a direct sequel to Stick of Truth, improving in most aspects of its predecessor. Your objective this time is to protect South Park with your superhero powers, alongside multiple South Park characters using their superhero personas, while trying to get money for everyone's franchise. You choose from a multitude of superheroes classes, and mix and match their powers to create whatever combination you want. The gameplay has improved a good amount compared to the previous game, with several changes. You have way more classes and allies available; it allows you to have more than just 1 ally in combat; blocking has been changed entirely to no longer be able to be done for free and it doesn't block statuses, avoiding two massive issues that Stick of Truth had; PP is gone entirely in favor of having moves with limited range and cooldowns; and Characters now fight in a grid where you have to move around to be able to reach enemies and allies with your powers. Adding this all together makes this game a lot more challenging, fun, tactical and interesting compared to Stick of Truth. There's actual strategy required this time, unlike Stick of Truth where it was too easy from start to end and you can just do whatever and win. Instead of clothing and weapons, you now equip Artifacts and DNAs to make your character stronger. The Artifacts, alongside giving you Might, which is the value that affects you party's health and damage, can also affect 6 different categories: Critical Damage, Ultimate Charge, Status Damage, Healing, Knockback Damage and Ally Health. This allows you to make builds focusing on different categories. And since clothing is now just cosmetic, there's way more in this game compared to Stick of Truth. You can make your character look like several famous superheroes and supervillains. This game also, just like Stick of Truth, nails the roleplaying aspect. I have over 100 hours in this game and I'm still hearing new lines of dialogue that I've never heard before. Several characters that don't show up that often in the series appear here, and being able to have 3 different allies in a fight allow for way more interactions between characters. The game is also significantly longer than Stick of Truth. In SoT, I had 5 playthroughs that added up to roughly 57 hours, while a single playthrough of Fractured took me 55 hours (that's including DLCs. Without them it took me around 40 hours). The fights themselves are also much longer too. I ended up getting a total of 100 hours of playtime with my standard playthrough + a challenge run. The rest is from mods. Unfortunately the balancing is still not that great. It's not as bad as SoT, but it does start to fall apart when we include DLC items and allies. There's also an ability later that allows your character to make a clone of themselves while in a fight, which is also unbalanced. The AI is also kinda dumb, even on the hardest difficulty, and a bunch of them can be exploited due to low mobility and lack of attacks that can hit above and below them. And very few attacks have cooldowns, which can make some characters way too powerful, like Call Girl and Mint-Berry Crunch for example. And difficulty balancing is also a problem. The hardest difficulty is not only locked behind DLC for some reason (we all know the reason: money), but it also lowers your attack and increases them drastically for enemies. This really screws a character like Mosquito for example, who has low health and relies on lifesteal, basically making him useless thanks to it. He just constantly dies instantly and his lifesteal can't cover for the low survivability. I wish the game was more like the [url=https://www.nexusmods.com/southparkthefracturedbutwhole/mods/6] Final Mix mod [/url] , which makes the game more balanced on both sides, by giving cooldowns to way more moves, alongside various other changes like status immunities to several enemies. I do have one nitpick as well, and it's about damage numbers. Before you confirm the use of a skill, the game shows how much it will do, but for some reason the game only shows you the normal value. Crits are powerful and can be done all the time by just hitting the action command at the right time, yet the game doesn't show you the crit damage you can do beforehand. This can mess you up sometimes, like making you deal just barely not enough damage when you think you had enough to defeat an enemy. Having to calculate the damage on your head everytime when using a different power or when using different artifacts which affects crit damage can make this annoying. The graphics and animations are just as good as the previous game though, once again looking just like the show. The music is overall better too, alongside having way more tracks, which avoids the issue that I had in SoT where things like the final boss didn't even had its own theme. Sadly, the story is not as good as SoT. It still has its moments that catches you off guard and makes you laugh, but it's inferior to the previous game. The story also gets really convoluted near the end due to time travel shenanigans, and the final boss is disappointing and it's finished with a pretty underwhelming ending thanks to it. Stick of Truth did this much better and with a satisfying conclusion. At least we got to learn more about the New Kid and we got a happy ending for him. The game overall still does have a pretty good amount of references to several episodes of the show, and it's still funny, but it's sadly just not as funny as the previous game. This game was developed much faster than SoT, and it shows. SoT took 5 years, while this one only took 2. I had 2 crashes and 1 softlock on SoT, while in TFBW I had 1 powerful crash when I finished the game that made my Steam Deck restart, and more than 5 softlocks. Alongside multiple annoying bugs, like consumables not working properly; attacks being executed way faster than normal; attacks doing no damage; powers like Double Edge not working properly; characters dying but not really; there's an artifact that you can get from a secret boss that is bugged and doesn't do anything, and there's even a bug that allows you to trigger some unused lines of dialogue in the game. It's a mess. At least this game doesn't have nearly as much cut content as Stick of Truth. The biggest loss is Timmy sadly not being playable despite him being mostly finished (you can even get his Character Cheet, but you can't read it all since he's not a playable ally lol). This game also has wayyy more unskippable cutscenes for some reason. Which, alongside a bunch of unskippable tutorials, makes it really annoying for additional playthroughs. And of course, the biggest issue this game has, is that this game was made by Ubisoft, so you know what that means. It has the completely unnecessary and stupid launcher. Not only do you need to make an account, but you also need internet connection... for a singleplayer game. Gotta love modern gaming right? And they wonder why people pirate games... The game is also a little pricey, especially if we include the DLCs. I recommend waiting for a sale. In conclusion, even with all the criticism, I give this game an 8/10. I think it's a great game, and a fantastic sequel. Despite some things being worse than the previous game, It's better than it in almost every aspect, specially on the gameplay department. To quote what someone said in a comment (sadly I don't remember who said that and where): "Stick of Truth is a better South Park game, while The Fractured but Whole is a better video game." The DLCs will be reviewed in their own pages. I recommend getting Danger Deck, From Dusk Till Casa Bonita and Bring the Crunch. I don't recommend getting Relics of Zaron, and don't buy the Towelie one, waste of money. If you do wanna get the 3 first ones I mentioned, then you can get the Season Pass instead.

Игра ощущается как 44 минутный эпизод южного парка,но из-за моих лишних хромосом мультик затянулся на какие-то там 20 часов 40 картин в жанре яой/10

Near-perfect sequel minus all the Ubisoft live service slop on my singleplayer game

penis

Uma Obra de Arte, de longe o melhor jogo de RPG do ano que lançou, infelizmente muitos não jogam porque é South Park e sabem que vai ter zuera com as religiões, raças e etc.

Ubisoft Connect. go n fok urselves. cant enjoy this game cuz log in wont work.