First let's get the obvious out of the way. If you don't like South Park then you're going to hate this game. Move along, nothing to see here. If you don't really know much about South Park and its politically/religiously/everythingly incorrect humor then get over to Hulu or YouTube or whatever and check out an episode or five. If you like them, you'll probably want to watch a few seasons worth before playing the game.
Tastes like JRPG, talks like TV
Obsidian has nailed the TV show feel perfectly. The characters look and move like they do in the TV show, the voices are done by the same actors (mostly the series creators), and they even play a quick little bar of banjo music when you start from a saved game just like you came back from a commercial break. The humor is right on the money, too. You'll be thankful that you can't smell what's going on in the game.
It's also definitely an RPG. When a battle starts, you and your companion line up on the left and the enemies line up on the right then turn based battle begins - just like an old Final Fantasy. Enemies drop loot you can sell or use, inventory slots let you upgrade your armor and weapons, and slots on the actual items let you add some custom effects to the items you've gotten (e.g. strap a dead bird to your weapon to add 20 gross-out points).
Don't get your hopes up too much, though. This isn't a game of deep RPG strategy. Nor should it be, really. The game only takes about 15-20 hours to complete and a lot of that time is spent exploring or interacting with the NPCs. There wouldn't really be time to fully learn a deep RPG system before the game ended. It's a good RPG system for the size of the game, I think.
Difficulties in the Difficulty
I played in hardcore mode and only rarely found battles difficult, especially in the late game. You can change difficulty any time you want so you can always start at normal difficulty then crank it up when you find yourself nodding off. However, the game itself was actually quite difficult for me.
What's this? The combat is easy but the game isn't? Has Zloth been munching on psychedelic Dove Bars? No - the secrets to this mystery are found in the tutorials and mini-games. This is the first game I've ever seen where the tutorials are actually HARDER than the battles!
The problem is in how the game tries to explain commands. It manages to do these so poorly as to make them almost impossible to do without help! For instance, about a third of the way through the game you are taught how to cast magic spells. To explain how to do it on the keyboard, the game shows you an A and a D above a display with a pulsing line. You're supposed to hold down the left mouse button and do… something with those A and D keys. If you do it right, the line starts jumping around like mad and you click the right mouse button to fire the spell. All you get for a hint with the A and D keys, though, is circles animating around one then the other. Are you supposed to push the A when the circles are around the A key? Are you supposed the mash the A key when the circles are around it? Maybe you're supposed to mash both keys? Nope! There's actually a tiny little arrow on the edge of the display with the line in it. You can move that arrow right with the D key and left with the A key. Get the arrow to the right point on the display and the line goes mad. <sigh>
Other examples include a dancing game where you're suddenly supposed to use the arrow keys instead of WASD and some mash-the-key challenges that are quite impossible on many keyboards without setting up some sort of macro. Using a controller instead of mouse/keyboard will help with some of these but not all of them.
Overall
Once you get over your pride and look up how to get past those blasted tutorials and mini-games, though, the game is pretty fun. The humor was just OK at first but did eventually get up to the "laugh out loud" level as the situation became more and more ludicrous. I also really enjoyed the ingenuity of the kids' weapons made out of every-day items. (My hockey stick with an ice skate blade strapped to the end was a fearsome pole-arm!) The music worked and some of the scores were really excellent though they also got repetitive by the end of the game.
I'm not so sure about the price, though. $60 for a 20 hour game is steep. It's certainly fun but $3/hr fun? I think you'll get a better bang for your buck (hmm, not a real safe cliché with this subject matter) playing Saints Row the Third for half the price.
P.S. 3D Vision works perfectly with South Park! Everything looks like paper-cutouts at screen depth, just like on TV. There's NO crosstalk/ghosting at all!!
