With only a month having gone by since the game came out, I hope that I'm not too late to the party on this one. I picked it up last week and played through it...twice, in fact, already. Just wanted to see what other people's thoughts on the matter were.
Premise:
I really liked the thought behind the game. It was advertised as being exactly like the show and that's the product that we were given. The humor in the game is fantastic (if you're into South Park's flavor of humor) and it's a lot of the little things that made the world so enjoyable to explore. Such as finding the USB that contained The Sword of A Thousand Truths and having it's description be "This once legendary weapon was made completely obsolete by gear in the new expansion." There's also a lot of references to older episodes that I had forgotten about, but immediately got a chuckle out up upon finding them...such as the Alabama Man action figure.
That said, I can see how the game would be off-putting towards non-fans of the show. The game, itself, seems pretty much built for fans of the show rather than to get new people interested in the show. If you don't already have a taste for South Park humor and the absurdity/silliness/"dear god...they did NOT just do that!" factor of it all then you're probably not going to like the game. Perfect example of what I'm talking about is the battlefield you fight the Underpants Gnome Warlock on...or the horrors that take place in the Unplanned Parenthood clinic. As a huge SP fan, myself, I was laughing almost constantly from start to finish, but for the uninitiated I'd imagine it comes across as a game built around fart jokes.
Graphics:
Not much to say here. They designed it to look exactly like an episode of south park and that's exactly what it looks like. I really enjoyed this as it gave the game the feel of a real SP episode and experience.
Story:
It's silly and stupid, but it's supposed to be silly and stupid as that's pretty much what you should expect from South Park. The game itself really does play out like an extended episode in which events (for the most part) start out pretty normally but begin escalating very quickly. The events of Day 1 are actually semi-believable things that could occur in the lives of a bunch of rambunctious 4th graders who almost all the boys from the entire town playing a game. Then come the events that occur on the first night...and things just start to spiral out of control, just like in the episodes.
You think you've seen it all during the events of the first night...until you have to chase the underpants gnomes around during the 2nd night and end up fighting them in a very "distracting" environment. But that's not the worst of it, there's still the adventure to the abortion clinic. And just when you thought they couldn't go anywhere worse than where they went with the clinic, they let you follow in the footsteps of Lemmiwinks towards the end of the game.
As a fan of SP, I thought each of these situations was more hilarious than the last. But as I mentioned about the very premise of the game: it's stuff like what I brought up in the previous paragraph that could have non-fans likely rolling their eyes with disgust and finding the game to be far too immature to be funny or even enjoyable.
On a bit of a strange note (at least I found it to be strange), I found this game to be incredibly immersive. With all the customizations you can play around with regarding your New Kid, it's really easy to make a character truly your own. You play a silent protagonist (which the game makes fun of by having people constantly seeking a response from you and just staring for a few moments in awkward silence before someone points out that you (the main character) doesn't really talk), yet with all the clothes and hair-styles and accessories and such, you can really give your New Kid a personality of their own. Because of this, I really got sucked into the notion that I was the new kid in South Park, meeting up with other new kids to join them some grand, huge, epic game that they were playing. I found myself pondering over how much fun it would be if something like this (a huge game with everyone I knew playing and 100% buying into) had gone one while I was a kid. Can you imagine how much fun it'd be to actually launch an assault on your school which was being held by an "enemy faction" composed of the other half of your friends?
Combat:
Certainly took some getting used to, didn't it? But once you get the hang of it it's pretty straight-forward and simple. A bit quick-timey, but I never really found it a bother. The difficulty curve remains pretty consistent throughout the game, I'd say, except for when you get to Canada...those dire bears and dire wolves can easily wipe you out in one turn. You know what a dire bear is, right? It's like a bear...only dire.
That said, the combat is actually incredibly easy once you get the hang of it. This is due to the fact that you fully heal after every encounter. Now, if you don't have the hang of blocking, you can get your ass kicked in pretty much any fight. But beyond that, you go into every fight with full health and everything. It's nice that you don't have to worry about healing yourself outside of combat, but on the other hand it takes away one of the fundamental challenges of most RPG's in general.
Buddies:
Butters needs to be nerfed, it's that simply. While all the buddies that you can team up with were all pretty good and none where anywhere near what I'd consider "useless", it's kinda disappointing that one is, by far, the most useful to have in combat...and it turns out that's the first buddy you get in the game. Humble Butters is an utter badass in this game. He can heal a good chunk of your life for free and attack/use abilities on the same turn. Enemies are more likely to target him so he makes for a good tank/distraction. And his Professor Chaos roulette wheel is just absurdly powerful...as it either gives you shields, drains a good chunk of life from all enemies and gives it to both you and butters, two forms of direct-damage attacks, another that stuns all enemies for three turns, and yet another that gives you shields (semi-invincibility) for 5 turns...and it stacks, so if you land on it multiple times you just get more shields.
Cartman's ass of fire, Stan's omnislash, Kyle's arrow assault, Kenny's rat-wave, and Jimmy's lullaby are all very good, strong, and useful abilities...but in terms of "who's the best person to have in your party?" The answer is very easily Butters.
It is funny, though, that Kenny automatically comes back to life two turns after he dies.
Classes:
I can only speak for the Fighter and the Mage, as those are the only two classes I've played through as. The fighter was a lot of fun. Pretty much what you'd expect from him: he deals mostly with direct-damage stuff. I had a lot of fun with him, though, as one of his super attacks is the good ol' roshambo that ends with you kicking the enemy right in the nuts, stunning them for a few rounds.
That said, I think the Mage was better. His final attack is just way too overpowered. Basically it deals a crap-ton of damage to all enemies and that damage completely ignores armor and shields. By the end of the game I was one-shotting everything except for bosses, which only took two or three turns.
A friend of mine had also gotten the game recently and played as a Jew. From what he tells me, the Jew's final attack is about as overpowered as the Mage's.
The fighter's was definitely good: stuns all enemies for a turn and deals a decent amount of damage. Still, I think the Mage's was more effective.
Replayability:
Sadly there's really not much replay value to the game. It's actually pretty short, the items aren't randomized so once you play through it the first time you'll know exactly where to go and what to do to get your favorite weapons and gear. And sadly there's no New Game+. Considering how short the game is, there really doesn't need to be a NG+ for this game, but it'd still be nice to be able to start a new game with at least all the hairstyles and customization accessories already unlocked, letting you fully design a New Kid with all the possible options right from the start. In the end, though, unless you're a huge SP fan and could consider this game as being like an episode you'd want to watch again every now and then, I'd recommend just renting it rather than buying it.
_______________________________________________________________________
So there's my thoughts on the game, how about your's? I'd be happy (and rather eager) to discuss actual plot-points and such, but I wanted to keep my breakdown of the game as spoiler-free as possible.
Captcha: "Fairy Tale". I'd say this game was one of the most enjoyable fair tales I've ever experienced.
Premise:
I really liked the thought behind the game. It was advertised as being exactly like the show and that's the product that we were given. The humor in the game is fantastic (if you're into South Park's flavor of humor) and it's a lot of the little things that made the world so enjoyable to explore. Such as finding the USB that contained The Sword of A Thousand Truths and having it's description be "This once legendary weapon was made completely obsolete by gear in the new expansion." There's also a lot of references to older episodes that I had forgotten about, but immediately got a chuckle out up upon finding them...such as the Alabama Man action figure.
That said, I can see how the game would be off-putting towards non-fans of the show. The game, itself, seems pretty much built for fans of the show rather than to get new people interested in the show. If you don't already have a taste for South Park humor and the absurdity/silliness/"dear god...they did NOT just do that!" factor of it all then you're probably not going to like the game. Perfect example of what I'm talking about is the battlefield you fight the Underpants Gnome Warlock on...or the horrors that take place in the Unplanned Parenthood clinic. As a huge SP fan, myself, I was laughing almost constantly from start to finish, but for the uninitiated I'd imagine it comes across as a game built around fart jokes.
Graphics:
Not much to say here. They designed it to look exactly like an episode of south park and that's exactly what it looks like. I really enjoyed this as it gave the game the feel of a real SP episode and experience.
Story:
It's silly and stupid, but it's supposed to be silly and stupid as that's pretty much what you should expect from South Park. The game itself really does play out like an extended episode in which events (for the most part) start out pretty normally but begin escalating very quickly. The events of Day 1 are actually semi-believable things that could occur in the lives of a bunch of rambunctious 4th graders who almost all the boys from the entire town playing a game. Then come the events that occur on the first night...and things just start to spiral out of control, just like in the episodes.
You think you've seen it all during the events of the first night...until you have to chase the underpants gnomes around during the 2nd night and end up fighting them in a very "distracting" environment. But that's not the worst of it, there's still the adventure to the abortion clinic. And just when you thought they couldn't go anywhere worse than where they went with the clinic, they let you follow in the footsteps of Lemmiwinks towards the end of the game.
As a fan of SP, I thought each of these situations was more hilarious than the last. But as I mentioned about the very premise of the game: it's stuff like what I brought up in the previous paragraph that could have non-fans likely rolling their eyes with disgust and finding the game to be far too immature to be funny or even enjoyable.
On a bit of a strange note (at least I found it to be strange), I found this game to be incredibly immersive. With all the customizations you can play around with regarding your New Kid, it's really easy to make a character truly your own. You play a silent protagonist (which the game makes fun of by having people constantly seeking a response from you and just staring for a few moments in awkward silence before someone points out that you (the main character) doesn't really talk), yet with all the clothes and hair-styles and accessories and such, you can really give your New Kid a personality of their own. Because of this, I really got sucked into the notion that I was the new kid in South Park, meeting up with other new kids to join them some grand, huge, epic game that they were playing. I found myself pondering over how much fun it would be if something like this (a huge game with everyone I knew playing and 100% buying into) had gone one while I was a kid. Can you imagine how much fun it'd be to actually launch an assault on your school which was being held by an "enemy faction" composed of the other half of your friends?
Combat:
Certainly took some getting used to, didn't it? But once you get the hang of it it's pretty straight-forward and simple. A bit quick-timey, but I never really found it a bother. The difficulty curve remains pretty consistent throughout the game, I'd say, except for when you get to Canada...those dire bears and dire wolves can easily wipe you out in one turn. You know what a dire bear is, right? It's like a bear...only dire.
That said, the combat is actually incredibly easy once you get the hang of it. This is due to the fact that you fully heal after every encounter. Now, if you don't have the hang of blocking, you can get your ass kicked in pretty much any fight. But beyond that, you go into every fight with full health and everything. It's nice that you don't have to worry about healing yourself outside of combat, but on the other hand it takes away one of the fundamental challenges of most RPG's in general.
Buddies:
Butters needs to be nerfed, it's that simply. While all the buddies that you can team up with were all pretty good and none where anywhere near what I'd consider "useless", it's kinda disappointing that one is, by far, the most useful to have in combat...and it turns out that's the first buddy you get in the game. Humble Butters is an utter badass in this game. He can heal a good chunk of your life for free and attack/use abilities on the same turn. Enemies are more likely to target him so he makes for a good tank/distraction. And his Professor Chaos roulette wheel is just absurdly powerful...as it either gives you shields, drains a good chunk of life from all enemies and gives it to both you and butters, two forms of direct-damage attacks, another that stuns all enemies for three turns, and yet another that gives you shields (semi-invincibility) for 5 turns...and it stacks, so if you land on it multiple times you just get more shields.
Cartman's ass of fire, Stan's omnislash, Kyle's arrow assault, Kenny's rat-wave, and Jimmy's lullaby are all very good, strong, and useful abilities...but in terms of "who's the best person to have in your party?" The answer is very easily Butters.
It is funny, though, that Kenny automatically comes back to life two turns after he dies.
Classes:
I can only speak for the Fighter and the Mage, as those are the only two classes I've played through as. The fighter was a lot of fun. Pretty much what you'd expect from him: he deals mostly with direct-damage stuff. I had a lot of fun with him, though, as one of his super attacks is the good ol' roshambo that ends with you kicking the enemy right in the nuts, stunning them for a few rounds.
That said, I think the Mage was better. His final attack is just way too overpowered. Basically it deals a crap-ton of damage to all enemies and that damage completely ignores armor and shields. By the end of the game I was one-shotting everything except for bosses, which only took two or three turns.
A friend of mine had also gotten the game recently and played as a Jew. From what he tells me, the Jew's final attack is about as overpowered as the Mage's.
The fighter's was definitely good: stuns all enemies for a turn and deals a decent amount of damage. Still, I think the Mage's was more effective.
Replayability:
Sadly there's really not much replay value to the game. It's actually pretty short, the items aren't randomized so once you play through it the first time you'll know exactly where to go and what to do to get your favorite weapons and gear. And sadly there's no New Game+. Considering how short the game is, there really doesn't need to be a NG+ for this game, but it'd still be nice to be able to start a new game with at least all the hairstyles and customization accessories already unlocked, letting you fully design a New Kid with all the possible options right from the start. In the end, though, unless you're a huge SP fan and could consider this game as being like an episode you'd want to watch again every now and then, I'd recommend just renting it rather than buying it.
_______________________________________________________________________
So there's my thoughts on the game, how about your's? I'd be happy (and rather eager) to discuss actual plot-points and such, but I wanted to keep my breakdown of the game as spoiler-free as possible.
Captcha: "Fairy Tale". I'd say this game was one of the most enjoyable fair tales I've ever experienced.
