To accommodate and maybe encourage this, the amount of experience gained from overworld exploration was substantially increased.Īnother significant improvement, at least personally for me, was the achievement/trophy system. Towards the end of the game, I avoided battles (which wasn't particularly challenging) in order to progress the story. In the original, some random battles were quick and ended in 2-3 turns, but now take substantially longer. The combat has much appreciated improvements in complexity however, at the expense game speed. You control up to 4 characters, and each has unique attacks including melee, ranged, healing, status effects, and super attacks. The major change in this entry is the combat, shifting to a mini-chess grid + active time battle system of combat. The current relevance was something I really appreciated about South Park, as explored in "Six days to Air", as each joke/reference feels like a time capsule of the headlines during the time. The jokes were really fresh and felt more relevant in 2021 (the time of playing and writing this review of a game released in 2017). The characters and collectibles are just as charming and humorous. The overworld gameplay exactly matches the original, with collectibles, shops, enemies to initiate battle, and characters to add to your social network.
The story/game is a bit longer in this entry, a little over 20 hours, whereas the original was closer to 12 hours. The story is just as ridiculous and picks up right where the first entry ended, comically transitioning from Lord of the Rings to Super Heroes, matching the whims/attention spans of children.
What immediately stands out is the improved user interface/menus (which were surprisingly clunky in the original) and the graphics (which sounds trivial, but considering the original appeared/felt like it ran at 720p and wasn't as bright compared to Fracture but Whole, but maybe that was an artistic choice for the original?). I'd recommend checking my review of Stick of Truth before this entry. "South Park: The Fractured but Whole" is substantially more polished than it's predecessor, "South Park: The Stick of Truth." This review will contain a lot of comparative comments, as I purchased and played Stick of Truth and Fractured but Whole back-to-back.