Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut | Review
To save the world, you're going to have to Slay the Princess.
You are on a path in the woods to a cabin. This cabin holds a princess who will end everything you ever knew about if let loose. Your job is to make sure she doesn’t see the light of day again—this is the premise of developer Black Tabby Games’ and publisher Serenity Forge’s ‘Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut’, a fully voiced branching-path visual novel that pits you, the Narrator, the Princess, and a few others along the way. What seems like a simple task becomes a compelling and engrossing adventure into your own actions and the following consequences.
Two words of warning before you read on: Slay the Princess has a few bloody scenes, only natural since it’s in the title of the game. But the second warning for those that want to avoid spoilers—I won’t be going into detail about any specific story stuffs but I will be doing some superficial deconstruction of how the game works which, for a visual novel like this, may as well be spoiler-y in its entirety. If that bothers you, skip to the closing arguments and consider what I’ve to say about this amusing adventure.
And to the cabin we go.
Are You Going to Kill Someone?
Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut is an extended version of the original ‘Slay the Princess’ Steam release a year back. This is an adventure game that provides the player with a large number of choices throughout multiple points in each “route”, or essentially a branching path that the player has chosen based on their choices. This allows you to press issues at hand, be a silly goose, or fall down and break your neck. The Pristine Cut edition that has graced consoles and the original PC release today expands on many of the game’s routes and dialogue options, complete with new animations and some scenarios have gotten a refresh.
Now I would say that Slay the Princess is less about the destination and more about the journey, which you might think “Well, that’s odd. How many branching paths can a story about shanking a princess have?” and you’d be right to think that. But, my dear reader, know that there are a lot of possibilities—directions—for this story to go. This is in part to how each character in the story works: the Narrator acts as a middleman, to put your actions and the scenario itself into writing—but he’s got his own agenda and he’s more than happy to remind you of it at all times. There is you and the Voices that possess your body as you progress in a given scenario. The choices taken in a given route are yours to make, but the Voices in your head may support or question your actions—or start fighting amongst one another. Do trust me when I say that madness is an understatement among these chatterboxes.
And then we have the Princess herself. In the cabin’s basement lies this young lady whose right hand is securely fastened to the wall behind her. No one tells you why she’s chained up, nor can you ever get a real answer out of the Princess when you press her. And that’s because the Princess is a narrative device that changes shape based on your actions. And they don’t have to directly impact the young lady, either, the game begins to take note of choices made along the way to the cabin and down to the basement and this in turn changes the Princess into your desired (or usually undesired) scenario. And then things get “weird”.
When I first booted up Slay the Princess, I had decided that, among all things, I would Slay the Princess. And so, I did just that—I asked the Narrator a few questions about our situation, about the Princess, and made our way to the cabin. The Narrator warned that the Princess would do anything in her powers to stop us from stabbing her. But I assured him with no words of my own that that would not be a problem and pressed on. Within the cabin, we picked up our pristine blade, waiting by the door of the basement, walked right down the stairs ignoring all chatter and stabbed the Princess right in her chest. Unceremoniously, I might add. There was no struggle to be had. And she crumpled to the floor with a look of regret, even a tinge of sadness in her eyes. I’m describing this in more ways than I have to because I’m really trying not to say that I felt bad for doing what I just did.
Upon her death, we were greeted to a couple of options. The Narrator suggested we move on and forget this happened, get to greener pastures et al. And then the voice in our head suggested we check for a pulse, which the Narrator was vehemently against. We could even take our knife if we so desired. I don’t remember which option I chose, but I didn’t listen to the Narrator, and I suppose paid the price for it. Something happened in the split second that I chose, and we died. But credits don’t roll here—we moved onto the next chapter.
From this point forward we faced a Princess who was not only just alive, but one that could be a menace to society, a cold-hearted and broken observer, a furious entity that can only be described by the blood and gore that’d follow. These scenes, by the way, are all voiced by two people who take on multiple personalities with incredible ease and make these otherwise bizarre and grotesque routes such captivating reads. And even though I felt that tinge of regret, I pursued the intent to slay her every chance I got. I won’t give context, just know that you’ll be “looping” quite a bit before you reach a crossroad of sorts. Mince words here however you like as whatever you say will be key to the final scene that plays out.
Is There Chivalry to be Had?
I fear I might have undersold the voice acting or even Slay the Princess’ production values. This being a visual novel and all, you’ll be greeted to plenty of writing—some of it prose, other times lengthy ramblings—but hearing our Narrator voice it all and hearing that same man voice the Voices that accompany us through our adventure makes it incredibly worthwhile to just let the dialogue play out. The Princess has a bit of range herself, and I found out how quickly she can go from demure to being quite capable of breaking our jaw.
And mind, it’s not like we’re exactly a normal thing ourselves as you’ll soon see once you encounter the mirror. This mirror is essential to the plot and remains unchanged in context, only moving between places and forms as you progress. Each scene you find yourself in is animated between two drawn frames to give the illusion of life and Slay the Princess is more than happy to distort that to make you feel uncomfortable. Accompanied by a score that, too, will stretch the definition of “expected normalcy” when needed, Slay the Princess ended up holding my attention for multiple playthroughs thanks to its lovely presentation and interesting writing.
But I shouldn’t jump to “multiple playthroughs” talk just yet as I’ve not even covered my first. Each route I took made for violent fights with the Princess and each time the route came to an end, there was always a sense of bitterness that I couldn’t quite overcome. Maybe it was just projections on my end, but over the course of my first playthrough I lost the will to keep stabbing the Princess. Now the thing with that was, once I had gotten to the end of that playthrough, I was given a few dialogue options I felt really didn’t make sense considering everything that had happened. Even odder was what the Princess herself told me when I chose to stay silent. I didn’t feel this way in subsequent playthroughs, but I have been looking back on that moment and wondered how the writing compensated for every shank I took to the Princess like that. I was left confused and maybe a bit unsatisfied once that conclusion came to its end.
Slay the Princess has a large number of routes and endings. None of them are premature and the game encourages you to explore any and every possibility. And I did so for the 15 or so hours I spent with Slay the Princess. I read it alone, read it with family members, we laughed, we felt bad, and we felt enthralled by this adventure. By the end, I think some of my favourite routes were “The Witch”, “The Damsel”, and “the one with a lot of swords”. This was all done on a big screen on my Series X and a mate’s Series S, which made the game’s choice in animation shine all-the-more.
However, controls in this visual novel were a little finnicky and oftentimes I found myself selecting options I hadn’t intended to be it dialogue or even settings. And in my time with the game, there was one route that was rather difficult to get through due to consistent crashes. Thankfully, already treaded dialogue can be skipped instantly, but it did take me some tries to get around these crashes which is always an annoyance.
Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut is a fantastic visual novel with excellent production values and a lot of dialogue options. You’ll go through a tonne of emotions (mostly unease), but you’ll always remain engaged thanks to a great voice cast and a script that is more than happy to explore uncomfortable ideas. ∎
Slay the Princess - The Pristine Cut
Played on
Xbox Series X / Xbox Series S
PROS
- Phenomenal presentation.
- Great voice cast.
- And a solid script that is reactionary to your choices.
CONS
- Sometimes the end doesn't quite reflect the journey.
- Technical issues.
