South Park: The Stick of Truth

South Park: The Stick of Truth brings a classic turn-based RPG to the familiar little town of South Park, where the kids from the show wage a fierce LARP war for control of a fictional fantasy kingdom using nothing more than an ordinary wooden stick, while the player, as a newly arrived neighbor in town, creates their own silent character and joins one of the warring sides of the conflict. The game faithfully replicates the show's visual style and humor and is built on turn-based combat inspired by classic JRPGs, complemented by timed button presses for stronger hits and defense.

Exploring the town works as a fully-fledged open world built from the show's sets, where the player visits familiar locations like the elementary school, the supermarket, or Kenny's house, meets characters from the show, and completes quests full of parody on fantasy clichés as well as current social issues that the show has traditionally never pulled its punches on. The friends system lets players bring along a pair of companions with their own unique abilities and distinctive humor, while the player's own character develops through classic leveling, gear collection, and gradually unlocking new abilities and costumes. The graphics and character voices faithfully replicate the source show, including its signature flat animated style.

On release, the game was received as an unexpectedly high-quality, honestly crafted RPG that, thanks to a script written directly by the show's creators, felt authentically funny and uncompromising, including the typically vulgar and socially provocative humor the show is famous for. Praise focused above all on how precisely it translates the source material's humor and atmosphere into game form, making it one of the most successful attempts at adapting a TV show into a playable, content-rich form, and it surprised many players how well it worked even as a standalone RPG without knowledge of the show.

Why play it: Fans of the show and regular RPG players alike will appreciate the authentic, uncompromisingly vulgar humor written directly by South Park's creators, along with a surprisingly well-crafted combat system.