Should you slay the princess?
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. She will do everything in her power to stop you. She’ll charm, and she’ll lie, and she’ll promise you the world, and if you let her, she’ll kill you a dozen times over. You can’t let that happen. Don’t forget, the fate of the world rests on your shoulders. You’re not going to listen to him, are you? We’re supposed to save princesses, not slay them..
Slay the Princess is a visual novel, but not a traditional one. This one gives you choices that you normally wouldn’t be expected to make and each sends you down a rabbit hole of bizarre outcomes where you could end up with anything from ending reality, being killed over and over again or just arguing with the narrator. Nothing is quite what it seems and while the game’s art style may look on the dark side, there’s a good level of humour to be found here too.
It definitely has a British style of humour with it’s voice-actors doing a great job. It almost feels like The Stanley Parable meets Monty Python. There are a good variety of endings to discover and earning them all will take a good amount of time. It’s hard to recommend if you aren’t a fan of visual novels, but this one is unconventional as you would expect from the studio that brought us Doki Doki Literature Club, another crazy and memorable game.
The art style is impressive with it’s hand-pencilled design. The voice-acting is very well done and the music isn’t too bad either. The Pristine Cut for consoles has more chapters, expansions to routes and thousands of new lines of recorded dialogue. I didn’t play the PC version, but was pleased to hear of the additional content.
The Verdict
Slay The Princess: The Pristine Cut is a clever take on the visual novel genre. It mixes things up by making you question every choice you make. Each can have violent or and sometimes hilarious consequences. You wont be satisfied till you get each one as you fight the narrator along the way.