The Stick of Truth is a hilarious action packed prank fest with immense potential for Game of the Year. However, the game never strives put together all of its intricate controls and vast wardrobe to maximize the small scale of a snowy little mountain town. South Park is fun, crude, offensive, and never takes itself seriously. Unfortunately, South Park the videogame (2014) refuses to offer players a finished product and neglects to inform consumers that large portions of the game were either never completed or perhaps misconceived from the beginning. I played a $7 rental on the PS3.
Stick of Truth has all the hallmarks of a great RPG yet cannot deliver more than 10-15 hours of poor pacing, horrible questing, and below average performance. On a positive note: the game has excellent turn based combat, well designed interface, and a fun interactive world with tons of items, collectables, and abilities. None of these things are ever combined to form a meaningful experience. The game pays wonderful homage to the TV show, but casts aside the basics of leveling and role-playing.
No depth and poor leveling. The so called open world is one of the smallest game worlds I've played in an RPG going back 10-15 years. The town of South Park is uninspired and has nothing to offer a second playthrough. During later levels, when creative exploration could have opened-up previously unseen areas of the map, the game misses the mark at every step. "Canada" and the annoyingly endless forest feels like cheap tacked-on betrayal of the audience. Quite literally cheap.
The leveling is completely broken. I maxed-out at level 15 about 3 or 4 hours before beating the story campaign then I still had at least 5 side missions left. Upgrading is completely broken, I earned my final ability at level 12, therefore only leaving 3 skill points to fill 5 new upgrade slots. In other words, it was impossible to max-out my upgrade tree for my final ability. New costumes are collected so fast that by the time they're equipped and battle tested you've already gained two new costumes. Weapons, equipment, and other strap-ons are earned so quickly that they become irrelevant after a few minutes. The game offers twice as much as it delivers.
The game missed out on what could have been GOTY. It's full of laughs, it even laughs at videogame tropes like tutorials, fast-travel, checkpoints, and collectables. Sadly, the consumer is a joke too. Maybe I don't get the joke, but I cannot recommend this game as a purchase. Other missed opportunities like two-player co-op are obvious. I'm a South Park fan and I would definitely like to see more, I'm going home....