South Park: The Stick of Truth

pro

Do you have what it takes or will you come out humiliated, sore and mutilated from the battle of the Stick of Truth? To be honest, chances are you actually do have what it takes, but you'll also be pretty sore in the end. Pun firmly intended. The Stick of Truth is first and foremost a 15-25 hour episode of South Park, something you should be painfully aware of if you for your very own reasons loathe the show. It's also brilliant. This is a hilarious journey that will keep you at the edge of your seat, not because it's particularly nerve-wrecking, but for the constant absurdity that's being drawn on your TV at any given time. The writing is fantastic, almost always funny and put to good use in a game that's evenly paced regardless of how you choose to play it.

pro

The Stick of Truth is a very accessible rpg. You won't get knee-deep in statistics and conversations that branch out into 400 different story beats, but you will get a game that's easy yet satisfying to understand. The battles are turn-based, the weapons can be slightly modified, there's armor and accessories, and there's a ton of useless loot you can sell for money. You almost have to actively seek out the random encounters, and you should because leveling up is always fun, but you very rarely need to even consider grinding to progress. What I'm trying to say is, don't ignore the game just because it's labeled as an rpg.

pro

With great characters comes great powers. Some might be more useless than others, but with the ability to swap out characters mid-battle, there's no excuse to not launch Kenny's fabulous unicorn at your foe - and if you miss a button prompt - yourself. This is the only special attack I'm gonna spoil, because half the fun is seeing them for yourself for the first time. Your posse of 4th graders are well known in the South Park universe and features all of the most popular characters from the show, including but not limited to Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman.

pro

You can't have an rpg without side quests, and Stick of Truth is no different. The biggest difference from it's genre-siblings is that other games don't let you search for Jesus like South Park does. At least not this literally. I'm happy to report that the quality of side quests matches that of the main quest, so you should by no means ignore them.

pro

Canada.

con

I mentioned how accessible this is for an rpg, and I wasn't kidding. If you're going into this expecting stats, branching conversations, a huge sprawling world and layers of layers of deep interesting combat with your 200 heavily modified weapons, it's simply the wrong game. A player's expectations versus what the game is, is not a con in itself, but I'm sure Obsidian could have added some more depth to the experience and still retained the appeal of casual gamers.