Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut Review
Around this time last year, I saw a lot of chatter about a game called Slay the Princess from Black Tabby Games and Serenity Forge on Steam. I apparently had missed some demo back then, and everyone told me to just play it without looking into it much. I knew it was a visual novel experience, but I didn't know anything else when I first started playing it. It initially felt like an interesting narrative experience where you had a lot of choices, but I didn't expect it to blow me away like it did.
Fast forward to last week and Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut has been released as a free update on Steam with it also seeing the game debut on all consoles. Over the last week or so, I've been replaying Slay the Princess on Steam Deck to see the new content and also across new saves on Nintendo Switch and PS5 to get a feel for how the console ports are. This review will be spoiler free for any major plot points, but I will be covering the new content and how it adds to the experience for older players.
While I usually recommend anyone interested in a visual novel or narrative-focused experience go into a game as blind as possible, I want to stress that this is a horror game with a lot of gore, and the game has a content warning for the same. Don't let the cutesy aesthetic in the promotional artwork fool you. I avoided the trailers back when I first played it, so this was a nice surprise, but I feel like newcomers need to know what they are getting into here.
If you're new to Slay the Princess in any form, it plays like a visual novel with a branching and looping narrative that has elements of horror, gore, humor, and just fantastic writing and voice acting across the board. You begin on a path in a forest with a cabin waiting for you at the end. A princess is in the basement of the cabin and you're tasked with slaying her. She will try to stop you, and the way this happens is what makes Slay the Princess special.
The story takes place from the player's perspective, and it involves a narrator, inner voices, and the princess as the main characters, but everything varies quite a bit as the game progresses and you start experiencing more of the routes. Every little thing you do matters. Early on, it might seem like you're just going through the motions, but I think the game does a superb job of letting you get comfortable before going into the deep end thanks to its loop structure. This also applies to the voice acting and the inner voices you unlock as you make your way deeper into the narrative flowchart of possibilities.
As the player, you make decisions like whether you take a blade into the basement or look into a mirror, and the princess is always there trying to stop you from killing her, or is she? I was in two minds about mentioning how the plot progresses given I want players to experience this as blind as possible for the best experience like when I first played it or even games like Gnosia.
Without getting into any story spoilers, the way Slay the Princess kept surprising me has been my favorite aspect of it outside the actual writing and superb art. With multiple endings and new additions to existing routes for older players, Slay the Princess' genius isn't obvious until an hour or so in when you start to question not only the game, but also yourself.
If you've played games like The Stanley Parable, you might think you're familiar with how things will go here, but Slay the Princess does so much more. Slay the Princess' structure usually has you going through different loops that see future loops drastically affected by your decisions in prior ones.
Being as vague as possible here to help you understand the basic structure of the game, Slay the Princess has you going through specific paths to unlock certain items, and once you have enough of these items, you are on the path to see one of the proper endings. There are of course endings you can get before reaching here, but the real draw is unlocking said items and seeing one of the main endings. I was shocked at how much variety these paths and endings had even last year, but the new content is shockingly good at improving on an already brilliant narrative experience.
Games with looping narratives usually suffer from some form of repetition, and while that is an issue here to some degree, I haven't been this impressed with a branching narrative since I played Disco Elysium, one of my favorite games of all time. In fact, after revisiting Slay the Princess with The Pristine Cut on PC and consoles, it is definitely clawing its way up my favorite stories in the medium list.
Even after nearly having 100% completion on both the PC and console versions, I still think I haven't fully understood how Slay the Princess tracks your progress for unlocking content in the new gallery, but it is a great addition with this update and release. A dedicated flowchart would have been nicer to have though. In fact, the lack of one of those and portions of the interface are my main complaints here. The repetition didn't bother me aside from a few minutes as I learned how this was structured.
While the Switch version's sluggish interface compared to other platforms was the most annoying in certain story sections, I also had issues with scrolling on PC and PS5 where I accidentally selected the wrong option because the game ate an input or two while scrolling. I would've also liked to have bigger touch targets and text size options since Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut sees the game arrive not only on Switch with full touchscreen support, but also for TV play where some font sizes were too small to read.
Visually, Slay the Princess is excellent. I love the unique designs the princess can have depending on the route, the animation work, use of colors when required, and how things change in the environment as well. The cute hand-drawn aesthetic is very deceiving. There are two visual effects (boil effect and parallax movement) that gave me a bit of motion sickness though. Thankfully you can turn them both off.
After just one ending last year, I knew I would want to buy a full artbook, and I'm glad that's happening, but the new music in The Pristine Cut enhances the experience quite a bit. The eerie piano tunes, orchestral songs, and general audio design of Slay the Princess are all great. While the voice acting might feel weird initially, the few voice actors playing multiple roles here did a brilliant job really showcasing their range through the varied story beats.
Speaking of accessibility options, the PC version has additional accessibility options like line spacing scaling, text size scaling, high contrast text, and additional font options like Opendyslexic.
Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut new story and features
I thought Slay the Princess was already amazing last year, but the new content and enhancements makes it even better. Think of this as a Persona 5 Royal situation with how much new content it adds with a new ending, additions to older routes, more branching paths, an interactive gallery to track unlocks better, and even the ability to play older versions on PC.
The new music and voice acting additions also elevate the game quite a bit. I'm still shocked that this was all free for existing owners given the volume of content and improvements it brings to the game.
I also like how the developers made it easier to access some of the new content through specific changes to the font and styling near the endings. This got me more curious about other additions I had missed in prior branches of a specific loop.
The current version is Steam Deck Verified, and I had zero issues playing it on my Steam Decks and MacBook Air. While there are some caveats to the console versions, none apply to the perfect PC version as of this writing.
Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut PS5 & Switch impressions
While my main platform for Slay the Princess' new version is PC, I also have been playing it on Switch and PS5 to see how the transition has been on the console side.
The Switch version of Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut is rough in spots. Not only does it take quite a bit of time to load initially, but I felt like the game was about to crash during two endings with how it froze during some animations. It also happens to have noticeable loading in between areas including just moving from the cabin into the basement in specific routes. I would recommend waiting for a patch before buying it on Switch right now.
The one advantage the Switch version does have over PS5 and Xbox is touchscreen support and being able to play it on the go. I haven't tested the Xbox version yet, but the PS5 version is excellent with much faster loading. I haven't run into any crashes on PS5 yet, but I've not seen every single route there yet.
I also like how the developers use gyro on both Switch and PS5 for the parallax effect like the mouse cursor on the PC version. I disabled these because of motion sickness concerns, but it is good to see them go the extra mile for this effect on consoles.
Slay the Princess was a brilliant experience last year on PC, and one I considered on par in many ways with Disco Elysium narratively. With Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut, Black Tabby Games and Serenity Forge have improved upon, added to, and enhanced the core experience enough to have among my favorite games of the year, and one I recommend to anyone interested in well-written stories and compelling horror games.