In a little over a week on the 17th of October the 2nd installment of the South Park RPG finally gets released with many people waiting impatiently for their next fix of South Park's brand of RPG games, the first game, The stick of truth came out of no where an impressively in-depth RPG with a surprisingly hefty amount of content, it really was the dark horse of the year and surprised everyone who thought this was south park trying to cash in on the Video game franchise, so open a new box of cheesy poofs and fire up your best Mr Hankie impression as we review South Park - The stick of truth.

Setting and Plot.

As with most things South Park, the initial game starts off incredibly weird, you take on the role of "The New Kid" which is your player character who has just moved to south park from an unnamed place with your parents, you quickly befriend the regulars of south park who are currently role playing a game of what is essentially, Lord of the Rings, you're quickly introduced to the Princess, played by Kenny and the grand wizard, played by Cartman who brings you to the kingdom of the humans Kupa Keep (Cartmans backyard) and informs you that the stick of truth, a magical stick that can control basically anything, you are then informed of the big quest and you're on your way.

Before all this however you get to choose your characters class, the classes consist of Fighter, a front line warrior class who uses melee weapons, Thief, a sneaky class that uses daggers and various other underhanded tricks to gain an advantage, Mage, who can casts a variety of spells and heal others and finally, Jew, yeah that's right, Jew, a character that essentially works like a monk that fights bare handed and can severely damage other characters at the cost of his own health.

The game takes place entirely in South park with the antagonists being the Elven Kingdom(more south park regulars) and more enemies that I won't spoil for you, needless to say it's south park so expect something hilarious.

Story Line

It's south park, so expect everything you've seen on the show and then some, the story revolves around the new kid and the world the kids have created in this instance elves vs humans however it doesn't end there you're going to go all over south park collecting items, fighting the homeless, swarms of rats and even Nazi zombies and....well Nazi everything, the game itself is rather linear so there's room for a great story it's essentially a very long episode of south park with all it's insanity built in, packed with side quests, hidden items and a story that just gets confusingly more enjoyable as it goes a long.

As the story is pretty tight knit and progresses with your character i can't go too deep into it without spoiling major parts, but the story line for the game is great and will keep you entertained for hours with shenanigans.

Game Play

The game play of The stick of truth was truly a surprise, rather in-depth with standard RPG elements such as gathering, upgrading and character skills, however there is also environmental factors and special items you'll need to achieve certain objectives the game can be rather hard in parts and the town of south park has numerous hidden objectives that test if you're paying attention to them, for example some places may only be accessible after a few hours played time and you may even need to revisit old areas to grab items that seem out of reach, below i'm going to expand on some of the systems in game.

• Character development
  
  Your character is going to progress as you move through the town of south park and as such you'll equip new and better weapons, armor and gear as well as choosing your preferred play style in the talent tree's, you'll also unlock special equip items that work in tandem to your characters choices but can be changed at any time similar to most RPG's in the way of secondary talents.

• Combat
  
  Depending on your class the combat is enjoyable and fun, I played through as a warrior, so mainly focusing on heavy damage and things like bleeding or destroying armor, you're given your choice of party member who you will also control and can be used to compliment your skills, most people i know took Butters the Paladin for moderate damage and healing abilities.

• Upgrading and other items
  
  There are also numerous numerous items in the game ranging from health items to item sets and weapons as well as collectibles while the enemies are plentiful it will become harder later on as certain enemies come standard equipped with great gear and hurt even on lower difficulties, you'll spend most of your time enjoying the story line and fighting your way through hordes of elves, nazi zombies and other downright stupid enemies that make up the south park experience in general, as this typical south park the graphics are exactly what you expect them to be so i'm going to skip that and instead focus on locations.

Locations

The iconic town of South Park has many hidden gems you'll explore everything including the houses of all the main characters of the show as well as the out lying areas and even a trip to the far north eh, even though it's typical south park animation the locations still feel awesome as you've seen them on the small screen for so long it's great to finally get to walk around and enjoy them "in person" there will be some mechanics in the game that take you to "certain" places in South Park you probably don't want to go but even this is achieved with great comedic effect, remember the game is based off of a comedy series so you can expect no less in this game as well.

They do a great job of fleshing out the town of South Park for the video game some areas were made specifically for the game and give you an expanded feel of the town you don't get from the TV show, as well as expanding on previous area's of episodes that felt small but are actually quite detailed in the video game, places like Mr Hankie's house, the girls order hall and Canada itself, there are also some less than savory areas like the abortion clinic and doges your mums breasts while your father is having sex with her and you're being chased by Nazi rats(yes seriously it's south park what did you expect?).

Overall however for a RPG setting this works incredibly well instead of wide open fields filled with monsters and hostile humans you get suburban streets and shopping centers filled with....humans in elf costumes and nazi's running around destroying the town while all of the adults seem to mysteriously ignore most of this even though there's corpses all around the streets and hordes of zombies attacking people, who knows, it is south park after all.

Critical Review

Over all South Park The Stick of Truth is an exceptional game that really came out of no where, with enough content and story line to keep you interested for 30+ hours, it's character system is rather in-depth and offers multiple replays through different classes and choices in game, if I had to gripe about something it would be the fact the game had censored areas in countries like the EU and my country Australia, luckily for them we have ways of getting around the (Ahoy matey).

The stick of truth is a great first offering in a game that nobody expected but now are completely excited for the sequel which gets released very soon, if i had to bottom line this i would say if you have been on the fence about this game, go buy it now and finish it before the sequel is released.

Thanks for taking the time to read my review, if you have enjoyed this feel free to up-vote or resteem, have a comment or question? leave them below and i'll respond to you as quickly as possible, thanks! S