Sometimes the simplest RPGs are the ones I gravitate to the most. Instead of a game that demands I invest dozens of hours in order to master an overly-complicated battle system and decipher walls of text and never-ending cutscenes as a means of conveying what inevitably ends up being a clichéd story, it's occasionally nice to have something that's just simple, entertaining, and smart. That's what Obsidian and Ubisoft seem to have on their hands with South Park: The Stick of Truth.
As one of the titles that drifted from the wreckage of THQ to the shores of a new publisher in Ubisoft, South Park is an RPG with its feet firmly planted in a 16-bit mentality. Don't get me wrong – in no way do I mean this as a slight. The exploration and environmental interaction strongly resemble the simplistic discovery of games like EarthBound, while the turn-based and timing-heavy battle system draws heavily from what Square and Nintendo created in Super Mario RPG. Like Square's SNES classic , South Park's combat relies on well-timed inputs in order to strengthen your own attacks as well as defend against your enemies. It goes without saying that adding this small layer of activity helps breathe a bit of life into battles and keeps you from zoning out and simply tapping a single button and letting the game do the rest of the work.
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