- #SOUTH PARK FRACTURED BUT WHOLE BEST CLASS COMBO UPGRADE#
- #SOUTH PARK FRACTURED BUT WHOLE BEST CLASS COMBO PC#
Moments like the journey through Canada, which was not only one of the game's best jokes but a welcome bundle of fresh gameplay opportunities you didn't see coming.
Because for all the hoods and staffs in The Stick of Truth, it had plenty to counterbalance that trad stuff with in its many excitable left-turns, both narrative and in its design.
It's still an RPG, then, under all the masks and capes, but a less conventional one than Obsidian crafted in 2014. I suspect there are much more effective builds than the Cyborg Speedster Gadgeteer Thingamy I've created, but it's an enjoyable hybrid all the same. Basically it's a chance to swap old abilities out for new ones, although since you're forced to select your new class without having examined the abilities it offers, you're essentially stabbing in the dark. Things get fiddlier when periodically selecting a new class to add to any existing ones. New slots for these are unlocked every time you level up, and new artifacts can be crafted, bought, or found, lending a pleasing and uncomplicated sense of progression to your character. In the place of traditional RPG gear slots or skill points are DNA strands and Artifacts which modify your character's stats and offer bonuses to things like critical hit chances and health recovery.
#SOUTH PARK FRACTURED BUT WHOLE BEST CLASS COMBO UPGRADE#
It's not entirely without upgrade trees, however. The human body's tendency to produce methane during the process of digestion has seldom escaped South Park's attention, and in this case it's your essential power a means of time manipulation, navigation, and inflicting a grossed out status effect on enemies. Outfit items, along with the obligatory collectible detritus, are scattered throughout the world map, often dangled tantalisingly at the end of a navigational puzzle that might require farting yourself back through time to navigate a hazard, or combining that same flatulence with The Human Kite's airborne prowess to reach the town's rooftops. Outfit customisation is a purely aesthetic endeavour - and before you ask: no, they're not unlocked via loot boxes. Superheroes having abilities innate to their beings and all that, equipment upgrades now take a backseat. Thus, the town of South Park changes from a nine-year-old's vision of Middle-Earth to a nine-year-old's vision of a crime-ridden metropolis, and the Archmage's Wands and Axes of Stopping are replaced by endearingly rubbish superhero abilities from the likes of Toolshed, Mosquito, Captain Diabetes, and The Amazing Butthole. On a whim Eric Cartman ditches the role-playing world the neighborhood kids have been playing in for his own comic franchise universe, Coon and Friends. It's a system that serves the new superhero theme well: you're once again the New Kid in town, only this time it's the town that's changed. Elsewhere, Ubisoft San Francisco has done a commendable job expanding the turn-based combat system to incorporate multi-class character builds and place more emphasis on positioning party members effectively, broadly similar to Divinity: Original Sin 2's battle grids and even Disgaea's esoteric boxiness. What's all the more frustrating is that limp writing is the only real problem with The Fractured But Whole (other than that name, obviously).
It's a game that listlessly re-tells the same 'gaming be like' jokes as its predecessor, changing tack only to give 2015's hot button issues like gentrification a real roasting. But with the jokes about gaming already made once before, and South Park's defining current affairs-based humour kept out of reach by game development's longer timespan, The Fractured But Whole can't help but miss the mark. Familiar RPG design met naturally in the middle with the series' humour and made a cohesive whole. It was the vessel for every observational gag about gaming that had ever occurred to Matt Stone and Trey Parker up to that point, and on those terms it was a real pleasure. But The Stick of Truth had the advantage of going first. The well-recieved Stick of Truth spent five years in gestation, after all, and didn't feel at all lacking relevance or bite back in 2014. It's not simply that the game isn't topical.
#SOUTH PARK FRACTURED BUT WHOLE BEST CLASS COMBO PC#