YMMV / South Park: The Stick of Truth

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • At the end of the game, the protagonist's decision to leave his new friends opens a lot of room for interpretation about his character and how he feels about the rest of the cast:
    • Was he Enraged by Idiocy, given that the other boys remain oblivious to all the chaos that ravaged the town in the previous three days?
    • Was he fed up with being called Douchebag all the time and called it quits when his friends kept doing so even after the game was over?
    • Was he stressed and just wanted to sleep, since the last three days were pretty eventful?
    • Did he want to protect them, given that he's being hunted by the government and needed some alone time to find out more about his past?
  • Cartman's relationship with the New Kid can be interpreted in various ways. Was Cartman genuinely trying to befriend New Kid and make him feel welcome? Or was Cartman just buttering the New Kid up to make him willing to do whatever Cartman wants from him? Even Kyle himself believes in the latter idea. And it's not helped by the fact that Cartman admitted he learned about the New Kid's arrival from Coldwell Banker, implying that not only did Cartman make a considerable amount of effort to track the New Kid's movements (Cartman the stalker, anyone?), but he may in ways have somehow known about the New Kid and his talents before the New Kid himself was even aware of them.
• Angst? What Angst?: The kids don't seem to be specifically put off by having to re-kill a Nazi Zombie Chef and are still more angry about Clyde stealing The Stick than the former action once they kill Chef all over again.
• Ass Pull:
  • Played for laughs with Princess Kenny's in-depth backstory as narrated by Morgan Freeman, which comes completely out of nowhere and barely justifies her actions.
  • The ending also plays this for laughs when farting on Nazi Zombie Princess Kenny's balls somehow cures all the Nazi Zombies. One of the cured former Nazi Zombies even speculates this is exactly what happened despite not being present for the incident.
• Awesome Art: The opening cutscene, narrated by (and starring) Cartman and hand-animated in a Ralph Bakshi-like style, is simply gorgeous.
• Awesome Music:
  • For a South Park game, the music is absolutely beautiful and wouldn't seem out of place in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or The Lord of the Rings. Special mention goes to the track where Cartman sings along with the music.
  • It also features a lot of songs from the series, such as the Princess Kenny song... As the Final Boss theme.
  • The Canada level features an 8-bit version of "Blame Canada" from the movie as the theme that plays after everything is completed there.
  • The music that the goth kids listen to sounds like legitimate goth music in the vein of The Cure and The Birthday Massacre, Matt and Trey have Shown Their Work.
  • Jimmy's battle theme sounds straight out of any ordinary RPG, and fits his fight perfectly with the guitar and fleet instruments, to the point it almost sounds like he's the one playing it in-game.
• Catharsis Factor: Is there a character you hate in the show? If they're in this game, you can beat them up! Special mention to Cartman, the infamous Base-Breaking Character who can be faced as a boss late in the game.
• Character Tiers: There are three tiers of buddies.
  • Butters and Kyle are top tier ^note  Butters can heal the new kid for free, doubles as a tank, and has an attack that hits enemy columns, while Kyle has massive amounts of damage to both single and multiple targets, as well as buffing your team for free.
  • Princess Kenny and Stan are middle tier ^note  Princess Kenny has a great attack for hitting an enemy row and deals better damage against lightly-armored foes, while Stan can do solid damage to pretty much any enemy target, but both become outclassed when Kyle joins.
  • Jimmy and Cartman are bottom tier ^note  Jimmy is really only useful for putting the Secret Service to sleep for Al Gore, and by the time Cartman is obtained, so is Kyle, who does everything Cartman does, only better, making Cartman completely useless once the achievements are obtained.
• Crazy Is Cool: Kenny, the series' unintelligible and often-killed Lovable Sex Maniac, dresses up (badly) as a pretty princess in this game and acts like he's actually a beautiful girl; he even successfully uses I Have Boobs, You Must Obey! when he doesn't have any boobs to speak of. And then it turns out that he decided to be one of the main villains, with the only explanation being an extremely clichéd (and obviously false) backstory narrated by Morgan Freeman. And for the final battle, he turns himself into a Nazi Zombie.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • An achievement even describes having you fart on the corpse of an aborted Nazi Zombie fetus. What's the achievement named? Too Far.
  • A few cutscenes and minigames were cut from the releases in Australia and the EU, (namely the ones where you and Randy get "probed" by the aliens, and the minigame where you perform an abortion on Randy). How did the game get around this? By having a Relax-o-Vision screenshot (of either a crying koala or a Face Palming Statue of David), while having appropriately Squick-y sound effects, and a Lemony Text describing in colorful detail what was supposed to be in the scene that was just cut (while taking potshots at Australia's and the EU's squeamishness towards Toilet Humor to boot).
  • Seriously, of what other game on the planet could you possibly say the sentence "I just defeated a giant aborted fetus turned into a Nazi zombie by alien rapists"?
    • The simple fact that the voice clips for the nazi zombie enemies are actual audio clips from speeches of Adolf Hitler himself.
  • The Jew race skill "Circum-scythe".
    • And of course, Cartman's response when selecting the class - "Looks like we'll never be friends, then."
  • Similarily, if your character is white and you select the thief class, Cartman quips "A white thief? Well, that's new".
• Demonic Spiders: The Mangy and Ferocious Wild Dogs in the Lost Forest area which also doubles as Beef Gate enemies when you unlock this area with Dragon Shout. They have powerful status attacks that can inflict Bleeding, Grossed Out (poison), or Screwed (Timed Death Status) and not to mention the attacks do a huge chuck of damage to your HP if its unblocked. Worse still, they can call in more of themselves! Because of how the forest is laid out like a maze, they will often get a first attack in when you enter the next area.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Most of the critical attention was focused on the fact that it's one of the first licensed games based on South Park in which the humour, setting and characterization is of a similar standard to the show itself, with the gameplay generally considered fairly standard RPG fare.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Jew class skill Jew-Jitsu costs 8 PP, does multiple hits, stuns and is considered a gross-out attack. Combine it with a perk that restores 2 PP per gross-out hit, and you can perform this move every turn of a battle, causing high damage and almost guaranteed stun, making most encounters trivial.
    • Also the Jew's "Whirling Dreidel of Doom" when full upgraded will One-Shot almost every trash mob in the game even if the enemy has armor and even if you're playing on Hardcore. However, this ability will only work if there's more than one enemy meaning its pretty much useless against solo bosses but extremely useful against Flunky Bosses. Also the Dreidel is super effective against Nazi Zombie type enemies.
    • Four Words: The Plagues of Egypt. Fully upgraded this ability can finish most non-boss battles in two turns.
  • Pair the Mage's Dragonbreath attack with the Patch that restores 2 PP per fire attack. Just like Jew-Jitsu, the attack pays for itself with every use. Not only that, if you level up Dragonbreath, you'll be able to reduce enemies armor rating, whilst knocking down any shields they have, whilst burning them, whilst recovering any spent PP. For free. All the time. If you're playing a Mage, the only time you shouldn't be Dragonbreathing, is when you're laying down a freeze attack... Before spamming Dragonbreath again.
    • Funnel of Frost also pays for itself when you equip the sticker that recovers 2 PP per Frost Attack, so basically you'll never run out of PP. In fact, you'll never drop below full PP.
    • Combine the following: Friar's Cap (Replenish 1 PP every time you are healed), ManBearPig Hoof (heal 50 HP per hit), and Purple Heart Badge (heal an extra 250 HP every time you are healed). The result? Dragon's Breath and Funnel of Frost both pay for themselves, and every time you use either one of them you heal a substantial amount of HP. After recruiting the girls, you can replace the Hoof with the Prenuptial Document that heals 100 HP per hit.
    • Your starting Mage's Robe increases your fire damage, and gets upgraded several times throughout the story, improving its fire damage bonus. After you gain the ability to shrink, you can get Witch's Gloves which also boost fire damage. Equipping both at once will make Dragon's Breath incredibly powerful, even more so if you add patches that either boost fire or ability damage.
  • A Thief build focused on bleeding and vampirism can solo almost the entire game with just normal attacks. Another extremely effective build (except on bosses) is one that uses the "Mug" ability to stun opponents, and combines it with the "Backstab" ability, along with various perks and upgrades to improve damage against stunned targets. When you consider that most enemies you hit with a ranged weapon prior to combat will be stunned, it can result in being able to kill 3 or 4 enemies in a couple of turns.
  • The Fighter's "Horn of Irritation" when fully upgraded will remove buffs, inflict 'Attack down', 'Defense Down', and 'Pissed Off' on all enemies while at the same time buffing your party with 'Attack Up' and 'Ability Up' all for the low cost of 4 PP. This is extremely useful in conjunction with your partner's AOE attack such as combining Kyle's Rally with Arrow Rain. Oh and multiple beneficial and negative status effects stacks as long as they are from different sources.
  • Kyle's Arrow Rain ability, especially if used in conjunction with his Free Action Rally, will wipe out most normal enemies even if you fail the button prompts.
  • Sweet Katana + SWAT helmet. One-Hit Kill against most of non-boss enemies + an extra free action every time you kill something = Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • Using 'Fucking Ninja Stars' and equipping them with any strap-on that does fire damage allows you to shred through large groups of enemies through a combination of bleeding and burning damage, and the ability to hit up to six times if your timing is perfect.
  • Using any weapon that can use Bleeding+Burning mods. Prepare to tear apart most of the games enemies bosses included.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Princess Kenny, who was a parody of Daenerys Targaryen, pulls a Face–Heel Turn for no reason other than an obviously fake backstory he came up with the last second and becomes the game's Final Boss, which in itself is a hilarious moment. That scene loses much of its humor five years later when, in the actual series, Daenerys Targaryen pulls a Face–Heel Turn in "The Bells" and slaughters thousands of innocent people in King's Landing.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Princess Kenny's outfit is based on Zelda's dress from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Link himself would later get the chance to crossdress in The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
  • After the New Kid is recruited by the elves, Kyle threatens to tell everyone he's a butthole if he betrays them. In the sequel, Butthole is one of the many names the New Kid goes by, even more so than Douchebag.
  • The mission where the New Kid has to disguise himself as a girl is much more amusing given that the sequel makes it possible to make the New Kid female, which is played as a surprise since everybody just assumed the New Kid was a dude.
  • One of Craig's Facebook posts boasts about being single again, to which he adds, "Thieves work alone. She was holding me back." A few years later, Craig would be canonized as gay and placed into an Official Couple with Tweek, suggesting that Incompatible Orientation was the real reason for Craig's breakup.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: While the game isn't necessarily a walk in the park, it's not significantly challenging either (except for Al Gore). Particularly noteworthy is the fact that there seems to be very little difference between playing the game on any of the game's three difficulties. Because of the extremely hard-coded Level Scaling of the enemies, which when combined with the low level cap means that the player is actually getting weaker with level ups until they find equipment matching their level.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: With a normal playtime of between 9 to 11 hours has gathered some complaints because a 10 hour game is short compared to most RPGs. The other complaint is "it's really short for being $60".
• It Was His Sled: Princess Kenny is the Final Boss.
• LGBT Fanbase: Princess Kenny is well-liked by the transgender community for obvious reasons; this is helped by the fact that, despite being in a shoddy and comical princess getup, almost everyone^note except Cartman to some extent, moreso in the Black Friday episodes than here respects and goes along with Kenny's female persona without making a big deal of it, which is saying something considering that South Park is usually known and accepted for brutally mocking anything and everything.
• Memetic Badass: The New Kid is very much considered this within the game, and with good reason.
• Moe: Princess Kenny. Even though "her" anime incarnation isn't that prominent in this game, you can't deny that Kenny mumbling his way through the game while trying to act all cute and flirty and feminine in the most unconvincing princess getup ever^note a girl's wig and dress over his parka is adorable.
• Moral Event Horizon: Clyde resurrecting Chef as a Nazi Zombie, then setting him on fire and forcing the player character to kill him again after Chef's friendship with the children overpowered the Nazi Zombie virus.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The abortion clinic sequence. Especially the bit where the Nazi Zombie fetuses started attacking.
  • The bells that you hear while you're inside Mr. Slave's stomach with the snuke. It sounds a lot like the snuke's detonation is imminent.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: A few bugs and a relatively short game length for RPG standards aside, the general consensus is that it's both the best South Park game ever made and a damn good RPG in its own right.
• Padding: The quest to recruit the girls on the third day is exhaustingly long. First you have to go to the park and fight a mini boss, then you have to playthrough the entire abortion clinic level and the entire Canada level before finally finishing the quest. The Canada level in particular is noticeably padded itself, as you have to visit the prince, walk to another city to kill a few wolfs, walk back to the prince, walk to another city to have a boss fight, walk back to the prince again, walk to another city to meet Terrance and Phillip so they can teach you a new move, and bust into a cave to rescue the one guy you came to Canada to find in order to finally finish recruiting the girls. While there are fun gags to see though this process, you will start to notice the game seems to be deliberately wasting your time.
• Spiritual Licensee: Many consider this game a much better Paper Mario game than the newer ones, since it plays very similar to the first two games in the series.
• Squick: The entire level taking place in Mr. Slave's digestive system is full of this.
• Stoic Woobie: The New Kid himself. Never has a strong reaction to any of the madness that happens around him.
• That One Boss: The penultimate boss Nazi Zombie Chef is a huge spike in difficulty, with great health, very powerful attacks, and immunity to many status ailments. In short, he's very nasty for a non-bonus boss.
• That One Level:
  • The abortion level. Some clicks don't respond at all, making it difficult to remove Randy's balls from the vacuum. This creates a certain irony given that some people complained that those mini games are skipped in the European and Australian version.
  • Randy teaching the New Kid the Squeaky Sneaker. The first control prompt is unclear, difficult to do correctly and is quick to fail the player. Expect to hear "Kee-yah! You call that farting on someone? You missed by a mile, try again" from Randy several times.
  • Using the Sneaky Squeaker to get by the guards at the Taco Bell construction site. Even if they are looking in the complete opposite direction, they may still catch you. Even worse, if the guard in the next section catches you, you have to start again. Getting him to walk to the puddle where you can electrocute him can be a pain as well. While you don't have to do that, it makes getting some good treasure much easier.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A lot of European and Australian fans are not happy about the game getting censored in their regions, especially since it was Ubisoft's decision in Europe. However, it should be noted that losing 'disturbing' footage wasn't what got a lot of people angry, it was the fact that Australia and Europe lost two mini-games due to censorship fighting the Anal Probe and giving Randy an abortion.
  • Whilst some European and Australian fans weren't happy about the censorship, they found the anal probing and abortion minigames that were censored to be pretty funny.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • A lot of the stuff shown in the trailer and What Could Have Been in the game had THQ never gone bankrupt. Who didn't want to see a fight with the crab people and vampire kids?
  • Partway through the kids plan to convince more factions to join the game, naming the girls, the kindergartners and the federation. While recruiting the girls does lead to a fairly long quest chain, the kindergartners and federation are recruited offscreen, instead of you being given a quest to get them to join you.
  • Given the turn-based RPG gameplay, the Chinpokomon side-quest might have been better if you actually could battle and catch the Chinpokomon rather than just collecting them on in the overworld.
• Ugly Cute: Kenny is obviously trying to dress up as a cute princess in this game (which is even lampshaded by the Princess Kenny theme song). Problem is, he doesn't look much more feminine and is even wearing his parka underneath the wig and dress, but the sheer Stylistic Suck of the whole thing makes him loop back around to "cute" again due to South Park's art style and his usual mumble-speak.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It runs on the engine used for Dungeon Siege III. The fact that a 3D engine was redone to accurately look like South Park says all.
• The Woobie: Just like in the original show, Butters. While you're walking around South Park with him, he will tell you about quite a few times he's been beaten up. If you side with the elves when attacking the school, you have to fight him, and he outright cries when he's defeated.

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