I was incredibly impressed with South Park: The Stick of Truth and was eagerly awaiting the 2nd installment, so this may be a bit of bias on my part but the 2nd South Park game hasn't lived up to the expectation and certainly doesn't feel like 3 years of development, however in the interest of objectivity i'll be reviewing this game right down the middle as I always have and hopefully i can come to an objective conclusion about the game, so lets dive straight into it!

Setting and Plot

The Plot and the Setting of The stick of truth are one an the same, they both take place in the same place as the first one, in the town of south park, the game picks up immediately were the stick of truth ended as King Douchebag(you) is fighting back against the moorish after the defeat of the elves, after fighting your way into kupa keep you realize the grand wizard(Cartman) is no where to be seen, enter the coon, cartman as the coon swings down and informs the children he's from the future, a future were crime is rampant and peoples cats are going missing and informs them the coon and friends must reform in the interest of South Park as a whole.

The game itself is based entirely around super heroes in the same way the first game was based around stereotypical RPG characters, you'll choose your class, get a back story and work with the coon and friends to figure out what is happening to the town, however this is a bit of a let down as your class is all that matters, you'll get the artifact system later but this is pretty much the entire setting of the game, your class is about 80% of the character progression of the game which means the setting of the game is largely the same all the way through, you're a super hero doing super hero things.

However the plot is steeped in comedy it doesn't feel as grandiose as the Stick of truth, this could be down to a number of things however I feel personally that this is due to South Park's recent shift in writing towards social issues and political issues, it doesn't have the insane wackiness of the first game, things like Nazi zombies, aliens and general weirdness from the town are instead flooded with things like takes on social issues, race, sexuality and "realistic" problems, as much realism as you can expect from a south park game that is however, the plot feels more like a chore than it does a comedy game in some parts, however this could be just my subjective opinion, and i'm not to be trusted.

The comedy

This is south park after all and comedy is the name of the game, the comedy can be broken down into a few parts however I want to give an overarching review of the comedy as a whole, if I had to put a number on it and i do, it'd be in between a 5 and a 9 this is for multiple reasons, some parts of the game and some jokes fall completely flat and don't really do much while some other parts are hilarious and add a lot to making it memorable, as i stated above some of the social issues are just not the funniest for the game however sometimes they're coupled with great skits.

For example whenever you leave mackeys office after talking race and sexuality, no matter what you choose a bunch of drunk rednecks will show up and fight you because of it, the first time it's funny, the 2nd time it's hilarious depending on what you pick, since i picked white american as my race, they showed up to fight since they hate white americans, even though they're white americans, little pieces like that make the game funny, but there are some parts the seem to be marketed to early teens, for example the strip club you have to keep farting on a guy while giving him a lap dance til he gives you information and most people iv'e talked to about this haven't found this very funny at all, mainly because it's not really the humor of adults but being an adult i may just be biased here.

The interactions with the children though are usually pretty humorous, when you're going through your character development it always ends that you're somehow traumatized that your dad fucked your mom, or the little fourth wall breaks from the children when something doesn't make sense or they don't like it(cartman cutting jimmy off while stuttering made me laugh a lot) actually jimmy as a whole makes me laugh at alot but i'm kinda biased since his stuttering just gets to me for some reason.

For this reason it's hard to nail down the comedy part of the review, there are some things that are hilarious and somethings that just fall flat and don't really need to be in there, but as comedy is a subjective situation i'm just going to say make up your mind about the game and the things you find funny.

Game Play

The game play is a bit of a step back from the Stick of Truth, as an RPG game it kind of fails, as an action game however it succeeds so it really depends on what you were hoping for, personally i was hoping for the same RPG experience i got in the stick of truth and was pretty let down when i realized that there was very little RPG elements outside of the artifact system, however, the game does do a good job of keeping your character progressing even if weapons and armor are not in the game you still feel your character leveling up as time progresses, below i'm going to break down the things that go into making up TFBW.

• Fighting
  
  The fighting has changed a little bit as well, you now have movement and directional squares the same as XCOM does it's great for a bit of strategizing however sometimes it can become quite annoying especially if you have a party heavy in melee characters that can only attack one way, you may have to spend a couple of turns moving them around just so you can even attack the enemy apart from that though the combat works pretty well together depending on your class makeup it actually does still feel like an RPG in this sense of having tanks,healers and damage dealers, overall however it'll be up to you to adjust to what your enemies do and where they end up.

• Upgrading and crafting
  
  The upgrading system is kinda meh, it's not "kind of" one sided, it is one sided, Artifacts are your stock standard hero upgrade there's a little wiggle room for what type of artifacts you want to use to boost individual things like knockback damage or ultimate damage but overall you're going to go with whatever gives you more might, as might gives you more overall damage, it's not the worst system but it is a downgrade from the first one as the classes are very one sided until you unlock multi classing and even then you're probably just going to pick the strongest attacks, even on the most difficult levels, the game isn't really hard.

The crafting however is almost pointless in a sense as there's no weapons or armor, the things you can build are limited to health items, artifacts and cosmetic armor to give your character a different look, in this regard the stick of truth did a lot better job with finding items and vending, where as TFBW sort of just gives you everything you need to progress, like i said i might be biased about this because i expected something different.

Content after 3 years

Most of you know about the development issues that went on with this game, however for some of you it may comes as a surprise, but this game took roughly 3 years to be released, it was supposed to take 2 but there was some problems with the development cycle and studios and it got pushed back by nearly a year, I have no problem with it as some studios can't avoid this however this game doesn't really feel like 3 years worth of content.

The South park games aren't known for insanely high end graphics which means a lot more time could of went into fleshing out the game as a whole, that said i've still got more a lot of content out if it terms of play time, I'm talking about the content of the game makeup however, when sequels remove large portions of what made the previous game awesome there's always a reason for it, they might increase other things that were ignored in the first game or they want to try something different entirely, south park however doesn't do this, it feels more like they've stripped parts of the game to get it out on the market sooner and as this is a pretty stock standard story line from current south park writers i'm left with the question, why exactly did this take 3 years to be released?

Critical Review

South Park: The fractured But Whole may be some peoples perfect cup of tea, but there are some flaws with the game this doesn't detract from the game in anyway in the sense of you'll still want to pick it up and play it but i'm a firm believer in that sequels should always add more than they remove in this case The Stick of Truth still feels like the superior game based on the things i have listed above, there are some good new additions such as more party members and an expanded "open world" enemy system but overall it doesn't hit all the marks that the first game did.

That being said though as i stated above this is completely subjective to my experience and you may not find this yourself i have friends who prefer this over the stick of truth and vice versa, so ultimately you should pick up the game and play it first before reading the reviews, something i stress in every review i do but moreso in this one as it isn't my usual glowing happy review i started writing these reviews to get away from the mainstream reviews who demand you agree with their opinion, and the last thing i want to do is color your perception of the game.

So basically, pick up the game and play it first.

Thanks for taking the time to read my review, if you have enjoyed this please feel free to up-vote or resteem or, leave a comment or question below and i'll get back to you as soon as possible, thanks!