South Park: The Fractured but Whole

The pitch: from fantasy grand wizard to backyard superhero

South Park: The Fractured but Whole is Ubisoft San Francisco's direct sequel to 2014's The Stick of Truth, released worldwide as a full 1.0 on 17 October 2017 with no Early Access period. The New Kid returns, this time recruited into Cartman's backyard superhero franchise -- Coon and Friends -- and the game swaps the first entry's fantasy-RPG parody for a superhero-genre one, complete with rival factions, a running joke about franchise reboots, and the show's usual mix of toilet humour and sharper social satire. Roughly 17,900 Steam reviews later it sits at Very Positive, about 83% positive, a number that on its face looks like a clean, uncomplicated recommendation. Read the review page itself and a different picture emerges: the game underneath is genuinely well-regarded, but a huge share of both positive and negative reviews are actually reviewing Ubisoft's launcher rather than the RPG.

What the game does better than its predecessor: real tactical combat

Stick of Truth's combat was turn-based but mechanically simple -- pick a move, watch it land. Fractured but Whole rebuilds it as genuine grid-based tactics: characters occupy specific tiles, attacks can knock enemies into environmental hazards or into position for a teammate's follow-up, and flanking an enemy changes what's possible against them. Reviewers who focus purely on the mechanics are consistently positive about this shift -- several specifically call it a real improvement in depth over the first game's combat, even while noting it also runs slower per encounter than Stick of Truth's simpler system did, a trade some players are less happy to make. The costume and superhero-persona customisation system layered on top gives that combat a genuine build-your-own-hero angle within the show's universe, letting players lean into specific elemental or physical damage types rather than following one fixed class.

The satire itself gets a fresh target, too. Where Stick of Truth mined fantasy-RPG tropes, this game turns the same lens on superhero franchises -- rival hero teams, corporate reboot jokes, and a plot that repeatedly undercuts its own stakes for a punchline. Even reviewers who come away disappointed by the writing overall tend to credit specific jokes and character bits as landing, which is a meaningfully different complaint than "it isn't funny."

The complaint that swallows the review page: Ubisoft Connect

Set the game itself aside, because it isn't what most of Fractured but Whole's negative reviews are actually about. A striking share of one- and two-star reviews on Steam describe the mandatory Ubisoft Connect launcher failing to recognize a legitimate Steam purchase as game ownership at all, in some cases after the game had already been played successfully for days. Others describe load times quadrupling because of the launcher's background syncing, offline mode failing on handhelds and while travelling, and -- in a theme that recurs across multiple, independent reviews written years apart -- an unrelated Ubisoft account issue (a forgotten email, an account merge, a support dispute) locking a paid Steam purchase out entirely, with Ubisoft support reportedly unwilling or unable to restore access even with proof of purchase attached. This isn't a handful of unlucky players: it is, by a wide margin, the single most repeated sentence on the entire review page, showing up in reviews that otherwise explicitly praise the game itself. Several reviewers frame their "not recommended" verdict entirely around the launcher, stating plainly that the RPG underneath deserves a better score than the one they're leaving.

A specific bug, not a vague complaint: the endgame freeze

Beyond the launcher, one concrete technical issue recurs independently across reviews written years apart: a combat-animation freeze during the game's endgame that forces players to alt-tab out of the game and back in on every single turn just to keep playing. One recent review states flatly that the bug has gone unpatched for eight years since launch, with the workaround -- alt-tabbing repeatedly -- something players have had to discover and share themselves rather than receive from an official patch. That's a specific, reproducible technical complaint rather than a subjective performance gripe, and it's worth knowing about before committing to a full playthrough rather than discovering it cold in the final act.

Where the writing falls short of its predecessor

A smaller but consistent thread of reviews, mostly from players who loved The Stick of Truth specifically, argues Fractured but Whole's writing doesn't hold up next to it. Several describe the humour as leaning harder into juvenile toilet jokes at the expense of the show's sharper social satire, and more than one detailed review specifically calls out the final act as rushed, with a larger playable-character roster meaning some personalities get comparatively little screen time despite the game's longer runtime. That's a real, specific criticism rather than generic "not as good," and it's worth weighing seriously if the first game's writing was specifically what you valued about it. It's also not a universal read: plenty of reviewers describe the ending's satire of social media paranoia as one of the series' sharper late-game beats, so treat the writing complaint as a genuine, contested disagreement rather than a settled verdict.

DLC, price and what to actually pay

Fractured but Whole's season pass covers five DLC releases plus one additional standalone pack, and reviewers are unusually consistent in singling out "Bring the Crunch" as some of the best post-launch content the series has produced, alongside a more mixed reception for the game's other add-ons. At its NZ$49.95 list price with no discount active at the time of writing, several reviewers explicitly recommend waiting for a sale given both the game's age and the ongoing launcher risk -- a reasonable position given that the core game's asking price hasn't moved much since 2017 despite Ubisoft Connect's problems being a known, years-old quantity rather than a one-off launch issue.

Verdict

South Park: The Fractured but Whole earns its Very Positive score on the strength of a genuinely improved tactical combat system and a satire that finds a fresh target worth mining, and the game itself deserves real credit on those terms. But it's impossible to review honestly without weighting the launcher problem as heavily as the review page itself does -- Ubisoft Connect locking out paying Steam owners isn't a rare edge case here, it's the review page's dominant, recurring theme, compounded by a specific endgame bug that's had eight years to get fixed and hasn't been. Go in for the combat and the jokes, expect to need an internet connection and a working Ubisoft account to actually play what you paid for, and keep the alt-tab workaround bookmarked for the final act.