I adore a good narrative-driven game, especially if that game is built on giving players agency over the trajectory of the story, but subverts the illusion of free will without ever disrespecting your choices.
What I mean to say is a game that reacts to your actions, but never in the way you expect. It's the story equivalent of a monkey's paw, and that's exactly what Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut is. This horror-tinged visual novel is a love story on the surface, but underneath is an emotional allegory on the power of perspective, the consequence of action (including the lack thereof), and the immutable nature of forces beyond human understanding.
Slay the Princess is a known quantity that still remains as one of the highest rated PC games of all time, but now it has finally arrived on console alongside The Pristine Cut update, which massively expands the game with new art, new dialogue, new paths to follow, new Princesses to slay (or not), and new endings to discover. I'm reminded in all the best ways of my time reviewing The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, but Slay the Princess is still held back slightly by its technical execution.
What is Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut?
The original Slay the Princess was released on Oct. 23, 2023 exclusively for Windows PC, and became one of the highest rated games on Metacritic shortly after.
• Price: $17.99 at Microsoft Store (Xbox) | Steam (PC)
• Release date: Oct. 24, 2024
• Developer: Black Tabby Games
• Publisher: Serenity Forge
• Genre: Psychological horror / Visual novel
• Players: Single-player
• Install size: ~9.5GB
• Playtime: 10+ hours
• Platforms: Xbox, PC, PlayStation, Switch
• Xbox Game Pass: No
• Reviewed on: Xbox Series X
It's a psychological horror visual novel in which you (the protagonist) embark on a quest to slay a captured princess and, in the process, save the world. You're guided by the enigmatic Narrator and your own inner voices, but you'll learn early on that you don't always have to do as you're told.
Slay the Princess can be as short or as long as you want it to be, dictated by how much you explore, how much you rebel, how much you learn. In this fashion the narrative-delivery and choice-driven gameplay is very similar to The Stanley Parable, which can also be finished in 5 minutes or 15 hours, depending on your perspective of what "the end" really means. Now, The Pristine Cut is here to add approximately 35% more content to the base game in the form of new endings and new paths to follow, as well as expanded dialogue and artwork.
The Pristine Cut is a free update to the existing game on Steam, but it also comes alongside Slay the Princess' console release on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch consoles. Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut officially releases on Oct. 24, 2024.
Slay the Princess review: The good
The pros highlights
- Being a visual novel, Slay the Princess is interacted with through the text-based choices you make.
- The entire game is wonderfully narrated and voiced, with a cast of interesting characters.
- The branching, multi-path narrative is also incredibly well-written and endlessly fascinating.
Do our choices have lasting consequences, or is everything ultimately meaningless in the end? Can life and death exist apart from each other, or do they simultaneously stream into and stem from the other? Are there real endings, or are there only new beginnings? Those questions are all too big; Slay the Princess is, after all, a simple story about a Hero on a quest to save the world from the Princess.
Slay the Princess always begins the same: "You're on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You're here to slay her. If you don't, it will be the end of the world." At first, your mission is simple and your decisions equally so. You can question what you've been told to do, shirk your responsibility entirely and run away, or accept the fate that has been handed to you and progress forward.
You are guided by the seemingly all-knowing hand of the mysterious Narrator, and if you choose to follow his directions exactly, the world will be saved, and you'll receive your blissful award in a matter of minutes. That's the "good" ending, but is that the only ending you'll find? As you explore and make more decisions, are confronted by the consequences of those decisions, and make still more decisions, you'll soon discover that Slay the Princess is far from the simple tale you were told it would be, and that how this story ends is an enigmatic knot of different paths you can follow.
I won't say anything more beyond that. Just like with The Stanley Parable, the less you know about Slay the Princess, the better. Go in as blind as possible and don't let any one ending deter you. "The end is never the end," after all. Whichever choices you make, Slay the Princess will engage you with emotional voice acting that brings each character to life in whatever form they may come. The words with which the story is woven are beautiful, thought-provoking, or just downright terrifying. You are a character in a play just as much as you are the director, just as much as you are the audience.
I've spent 10 hours in Slay the Princess and have yet to discover all there is to discover. Serenity Forge and Black Tabby Games gave me a cheat sheet, but I refuse to look at it — just finding the path that'll take you to a new ending is half the fun. This is a truly phenomenal visual novel that expertly ties in dozens of themes and philosophies into a single experience, and if it weren't for the actual technical execution of that experience, I'd have next to nothing to complain about.
Slay the Princess review: The bad
The cons highlights
- During my review, I encountered multiple issues with dialogue not playing or ending properly, and an entire path that was completely unplayable.
- Slay the Princess' menus are also very rough to navigate and lack the quality-of-life features I expect from a modern game.
- A pre-release patch improved matters, a launch day patch is planned, and menu navigation will supposedly improve after launch, but I have to review the game as it is now.
Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut may have enjoyed a very sparse section for its cons if it weren't for technical issues. During my playthrough, I encountered a variety of bugs and observed a number of barriers with the user interface.
Dialogue would sometimes not play, or would not stop correctly when you skipped, or would keep playing over into the next section, or would not pause correctly when the game menu was open. Menus suffered from visual issues, with items and options not highlighting correctly or responsively. I also encountered an entire path that was simply unplayable, at first freezing the game entirely and forcing me to restart it, and then (after a pre-launch patch) just flat out crashing whenever I reached a specific point.
The menus themselves are rough around the edges. It's awkward to navigate on a controller and your position in the menus is sort of but not really remembered between menu opens, which further adds to the confusion. There's a lack of information in areas, such as the save files not indicating what chapter or point of the story it is. In general, Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut suffers from a lack of technical refinement that stands in stark contrast to the polished, near-perfect storytelling and writing.
Black Tabby Games released a sizeable patch midway through my review period that fixed some issues, and a launch day patch is planned to hopefully fix the progression-stopping bug I encountered. I've also been told that the devs are working on a series of post-launch bugs to improve the menus and navigation, specifically. It's all good to hear and worth mentioning here, but as of the time of writing these issues remain.
Slay the Princess review: Final thoughts
You should play this if ...
✅You love playing a role in an interesting story
Slay the Princess doesn't just put you in the shoes of the protagonist, you are the decider. This is a fantastic game for those who love to play an active role in incredibly written stories, where your choices do matter.
✅You're a fan of visual novels
Visual novels aren't always the most exciting of video games, but it's a potent medium for telling outlandish, chaotic, or downright insane stories that would be far more difficult in any other setting. This is one such visual novel, and it's awesome.
You should not play this if ...
❌You want lots of gameplay in your games
I personally love video games of almost every genre (except sports games, those just aren't my jam), but I do acknowledge those who don't enjoy video games without much gameplay. This being a visual novel is a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. I say the former, but you might say the latter.
It was difficult to land on a final review score for Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut, highlighting my issues with attempting to consolidate everything that encompasses a video game into a single number.
• ~link~ [relevant review]
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After all, this is one of the best narrative-driven games I have ever played and there's little to fault with the story, writing, voice acting, or gameplay (it's a visual novel). The Stanley Parable is another legendary game in the long list of titles I've completed, and it feels fantastic to find a like-minded gem telling a twisting story that bends and breaks your mind in equal measure. However, like I've said previously, I have to judge a product on what it is now, not on what it could be.
Fundamentally, Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut makes a compelling argument for being perfect as a visual novel, especially now that it is so expanded in terms of story content, art, and dialogue. However, bugs and unrefined menus still linger in the console release, and until those are resolved I simply can't score this game higher regardless of its storytelling prowess. If Black Tabby Games brings proper improvement to this game in the future (and I actually learn of them), I may have to revisit my review with some updated thoughts.
As a final note, I am immensely disappointed that there's no Collector's Edition for Xbox, but I do understand why so many physical editions skip the digital-dominated Xbox platform.
Newly expanded and evolved for its console release, Slay the Princess is one of the best visual novels made even better. It's a wonderful, twisted experience that dips its toes in horror, romance, action, and more as you go. It's a shame there are some lingering imperfections, but that doesn't stop this game from being amazing.
