South Park: The Fractured but Whole | Review
Developer/Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: PC (Review Platform) PS4, XB1
South Park: The Fractured but Whole, the sequel to the critically acclaimed Stick of Truth is here at last to coincide with season 21 of the South Park TV series. A lot has happened in the humble town of South Park since TheStick of Truth: PC Principal took over South Park Elementary, SodoSopa brought gentrification to the town and the Canadian Devil Beelzaboot released his freemium Terrence & Phillip game to exploit children for money. So, has South Park: The Fractured but Whole changed and matured along with the show and how has Ubisoft inevitably managed to mess it up?
Yes, whilst The Stick of Truth was developed by the well respected Obsidian Entertainment, South Park: The Fractured but Whole is developed by in house studio Ubisoft San Francisco who developed Rocksmith. The fantasy theme is now completely replaced by the superhero theme seen in episodes such as 'Coon and Friends.' The story follows on from the episode ‘Franchise Prequel’ where some of the kids split off from the main group to form their own franchise ‘The Freedom Pals.’ Crime is on the rise in South Park and the kids (including the New Kid returning from the first game) are looking for a missing cat for a $100 reward. If you think the zombie outbreak from the 1st game was over the top then you’ll be shocked at the insanity of some of the set pieces in The Fractured but Whole. The writing, pacing & comedy throughout the game is of course phenomenal, no complaints here.
Exploring the town of South Park is an absolute blast, the player periodically gains hilarious team abilities which open up new areas of the world and finding and interacting with all the different iconic characters is it’s own reward. Amassing friends and taking in-game selfies with them through the new ‘Coonstagram’ app is as addictive as before. South Park fans will find many Easter eggs and references scattered throughout the world but I think the game’s tone is strongest when it’s making fun of other video games and the gaming industry as a whole, something it does often. For instance, Towelie will pop up every so often with a tutorial style hint but these are usually painfully obvious and unnecessary. The character creator is somehow worse than the first game (I wasn’t able to give my character a mole in the same place as mine) but this is forgiveable due to the insane amount of cosmetic customisation the player can do once the game has started.
Even though Ubisoft San Francisco has never made an RPG before most of the groundwork laid down by Obsidian is still present in The Fractured but Whole but there are several key differences. Player movement and positioning is now an essential part of the combat system with each character having attacks which affect different areas of the battlefield. The Fractured but Whole succeeds massively in an area where a lot of tactical RPGs of this type fail. In other words, moving and positioning your characters is thankfully not a complete waste of time. By using moves which push and pull enemies around the battlefield the player can deal bonus damage by knocking enemies into other enemies, obstacles & traps, or even allies for a satisfying double team move. All of the characters have a really diverse and interesting array of moves which can all come in handy depending on the situation at hand.
Unfortunately there are some frustrations that come with this new battle system, the most basic being a lack of simple attacks that hit adjacently up and down. A possible reason for this is simply that the team did not want to create a new set of animations for those attacks so limited them to attacking left or right. There are certain characters of the 13 that can join the 4 person team that feel far more powerful than others, certain play styles can be formed by choosing classes which change the moves of the New Kid but you will probably find yourself filling the rest of the roster with the same few characters in the times where the game isn’t choosing for you. The combat is never particularly challenging, I died a fair few times in Stick of Truth but managed to get through The Fractured but Whole without dying once. The main character seems far too overpowered, especially with their new ability to skip certain enemy turns; on top of that the Plantmancer class makes combat a joke near the end of the game with a move that heavily damages and inflicts bleed over a huge area. Each character also has a hilarious and visually stunning super move which can be used when a shared super meter is full but again a lot of these super moves are far weaker than others and therefore not worth using.
The deeper you delve into the game's character customisation the more you might realise that things like statistics, status effects and the bonus damage modifiers gained through quick time events are just that bit more shallow than what was found in Stick of Truth. Outfits are now purely cosmetic, though there are hundreds of creative superhero designs to choose from and collect, which is great fun. Weapons and their many different passive buffs, damage types and customisation slots have been scrapped so status effects don’t seem quite as important. Replacing all this is the system of equipping artefacts to your character which boost the effectiveness of certain attacks or tactics, it’s never long before you gain a new artefact which is clearly better than your old one though, so in the end it’s far more linear than it first seems. The game tries to give the player a sense of progression in other ways by dishing out many different challenges which include taking out a certain amount of enemies or finding the game’s many collectibles.
This is all presented through a user interface which I find to be absolutely abysmal, especially considering the first game’s UI had such a simple and clear design. The developers tried to present everything as if they were phone apps, this works ok for menus (though the statistical information of artefacts is often unclear) but the pop-up messages shown when exploring are for one, uglier and more simplistic than in the previous game and second, are consistently buggy throughout the game. Challenge progress messages will often display multiple times, experience gains will show you as a different level to what you actually are and this is by no means helped by the fact that you’re bombarded with these messages with pretty much every single action you take. Bugs are frequent in other areas of the game too, in combat I was often frustrated by the camera being too close, cutting off parts of the battlefield and even essential parts of the UI like targeting icons. The saddest part about all this? None of these issues were present in The Stick of Truth…
Thankfully the perfect art direction of South Park is still intact in The Fractured but Whole. Perhaps its greatest achievement is that it once again feels like you’re playing an extended episode of South Park because it’s often indistinguishable from the show itself. This includes the music from Jamie Dunlap (also the series composer) which has moved away from fantasy to match the superhero theme. Many of the tracks are perfect parodies of comic book movie style scores featuring oh-so-familiar ostinato strings, these purposefully generic motifs are harder to appreciate as stand-alone musical pieces but are hilarious when put in context. Many of the new battle tracks however are incredibly upbeat and feature a wider range of genres and instrumentation than The Stick of Truth. The Raisins battle theme is my personal favourite, it’s a track that feels longer than it actually is due to its constant shifting call and response. Each driving section seems to move it forward in anticipation of the point where it inevitably loops back to the beginning to play the short but amazingly catchy glockenspiel motif.
The final thing to cover is of course the problems some might have with Ubisoft’s forceful implementation of Uplay and Denuvo anti-piracy (which was cracked within 24 hours by the way) Though it is a pointless frustration having to connect to both Uplay and Steam at the same time and to have the occasional in game popup tell me I’ve gained some sort of Ubisoft trophy I cannot fault the game itself for it. There are also a few microtransaction items in the game but those were promptly forgotten about. My main concern is the sheer amount of bugs I encountered in the game which may or may not be attributed to Ubisoft’s general awfulness as a video game company. Overall, South Park: The Fractured but Whole is an incredibly fun experience that innovates tactical RPGs in a few small ways and despite The Stick of Truth being the marginally better experience overall, The Fractured but Whole delivers a healthy injection of South Park juice into every orifice of your chosen gaming machine.
Pros:
Great turn-based tactical combat.
Feels like playing an episode of the show.
Incredibly funny.
Cons:
It's a Ubisoft game. (Denuvo, Uplay)
Frequent visual bugs.
Not very challenging.
