The "Franchise Prequel", that's actually a sequel. Following on from the Stick of Truth, the Fractured But Whole is a direct continuation from the endgame of it's predecessor.
Dropping the Humans vs Elves craze in favour of Super-Hero Alter-Egos, Cartman has an idea to launch a new Super-Hero movie franchise, but after yet another disagreement amongst the group around how to make enough money to get the plan off the ground, we're suddenly presented with the perfect plot for some more South Park cartoony warfare. Coon and Friends vs The Freedom Pals will take you to all corners of South Park, torn between both parties in order to make it to the big screen.
The gameplay formula remains mostly the same in it's concept. Combat is still turn-based, though is much more expansive than before, with the ability to move freely across tiles on the battlefield being the most notable change, which adds layers of dynamism to combat strategy.
The RPG elements have also been retained, but hugely improved upon too. Characters have different move-sets, which can be mixed and matched to produce tons of variety in battle/squad combinations, which is a crucial element to progression. Moves, Summons and the ability to craft battle items using consumables also add to the variety of options within the players arsenal, and being able to collect DNA Strands and Artefacts, placing them in various character slots that become more available as you level up your character, all heavily contribute to the RPG feel. The vast array of options and character customisation really make it look like they've levelled-up the RPG experience.
It's a solid sequel that improves upon the original game in practically every element, which is also reflected in the 36 trophy-strong list.
I know you can technically beat the Stick of Truth in 1 Play-through, using some save-game trickery to reload at certain points and make alternative choices where multiple trophies are earned, but I played through that game twice anyway. I wanted to enjoy the story and had also missed a couple of trophies that I wasn't aware were missable until it was too late.
So, the big improvement on the trophy list for the Fractured But Whole is the fact that none of that exists anymore. Nothing is missable that can potentially force a second Play-through of the entire game, there aren't any split decisions to make during the Story which will block out certain trophies that make them unachievable if you make the opposite choice and everything you do miss can still be mopped up at the end once you've beaten the main story arc.
In fact, after a completely casual run focusing purely on beating the main story, just shy of 30 hours, I'd already unlocked 30 out of the 34 trophies required to achieve the Platinum trophy. This is a bit of trophy list anomaly, especially within story driven games. It's rare to unlock so many trophies through relatively natural progression and it was a bit of a surprise to reach the end and realise how far into the trophy list I'd gotten. When things come across this straight forward, it makes analysis somewhat challenging, but there are still a few main things to look out for;
"The Token Experience" trophy, awarded for Creating a Black character and completing the game on Mastermind Difficulty, will ensure you have to make the right decision at the very beginning of the game during character creation, and if you're to avoid a second Play-through. When you select the darkest skin tone, the indication is that you'll automatically play the game on the toughest difficulty, though it becomes quickly apparent that this is purely for comedic value and you actually choose the real difficulty at some point a little bit later. This is where you have to ensure you select Mastermind difficulty, so there are a couple of things to pay attention to here. I don't technically count this trophy as missable, as it's a decision that's made before the game even begins, and can be easily pre-empted as long as you do your research.
Mastermind difficulty isn't the highest difficulty setting in the game. It sits just below Diabolical. However, you may expect a tougher challenge than what you get in reality. There are a few challenging fights that will keep you on your toes, but finding the correct battle strategy was never more than a few tries away and once you discover artefacts and start to level your characters "might", these battles start to become a matter of going through the motions as you progress towards the end of the game.
Even after clocking the main story at around the 30 hour mark, which did include a little bit of digression here and there, the 4 trophies I had remaining only took me a further 4 hours to grab. To fit in with the aforementioned point around the lack of digression away from the main story, these included discovering and mastering every toilet in the game, collecting all 40 Yaoi posters for Clyde's Dad, unlocking all combat TimeFarts and finally, defeating Morgan Freeman.
Speaking of which, the "Farts Over Freckles" trophy, awarded for Picking a fight with Morgan Freeman and defeating him, is the best example of one of the rare times this game will seldom challenge you. He has 9999HP and some devastating wide-spread, one-hit moves which can take out your entire team if your positioning/strategy is caught wanting. He also has multiple battle phases you'll need to contend with, where he'll clone himself as a "Young" Morgan Freeman, as well as another phase where he'll use the "Soothing Voice" move to Charm a member of your team.
Before quickly touching upon the fight itself, it's important to note that, Morgan Freeman won't fight you if your character is still black, which is more than likely to be the case if you've been following the requirements of the trophy list as per "The Token Experience". Thankfully, you can change your skin colour via PC Principal, located at Crunchy's Microbrewery, and this will all your to initiate the conflict.
You should be fairly well-prepared by this point, but I made sure I bought alot of healing/revive items into the fight, which were definitely needed. His vast amount of HP means this is a long fight anyway, but they become longer when you get closer to the end and one attack takes out the whole team, so it's important to have healing items to hand. It's also important to chain together status effects which deal damage per turn. Anything that causes bleeding, shock or gross out will do, and it's also important to make sure these are consistent throughout the fight in order to continually whittle that HP down. The Morgan Freeman clone phase isn't too bad to deal with, but the second phase when he starts to use the "Soothing Voice" ability to charm your team is where I lost the majority of my attempts. Not only will this take a turn away from you per round, but the damage inflicted against your team is something you can't really afford with how powerful Morgan Freeman already is.
He's the real end boss for good reason, and the majority of the time dedicated towards trophy clean-up was specifically on trying to beat him. I spent around 3 hours attempting to do this, and when you consider the overall completion time of around 35 hours total, this ends up being almost where 10% of my time was spent.
Before I knew it though, that was it. The full trophy list clocked in a single 34 hour Play-through. No need to run around gathering tons of collectibles or worrying about what you might have missed along the way during the story, a stark contrast from the Stick of Truth, and certainly a welcome change of pace. I've always believed it's completely unnecessary to overload trophy lists with tons of missables, and some games are still guilty of that, so the change in direction for the sequel is refreshing to see. A much more traditional trophy list with clarity and no frills.
Looking back at my previous rating of the Stick of Truth has put me a tricky spot. I've perhaps slightly under-rated the Stick of Truth in hindsight, and there's no doubt the Fractured But Whole is a much simpler experience designed to make life easier for Trophy hunters in comparison to it's predecessor. My gut reaction was to give this a 4/10 too but can I really give them both the same score when I've already made the point that this is definitely a more casual experience? Probably not, though the Stick of Truth was rated without anything to relatively compare it to. I will nudge this down to a 3/10 though, as I believe that's the fairest reflection on both games. This is an easier trophy hunting experience and the scores of both games should reflect that as fairly as possible.
You can simply enjoy The Fractured But Whole journey as if trophies don't even exist and the progress you make throughout will be rewarded as you go along. Collectibles are hugely watered down compared to the original game too and everything can be polished off in a single play-through. Wins all round.
Notable Trophies -
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| The Token Experience - Create a Black character and complete the game on Mastermind Difficulty. Farts over Freckles - Pick a fight with Morgan Freeman and defeat him. |
Hardest Trophy -
Farts over Freckles Pick a fight with Morgan Freeman and defeat him
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