Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut review — Princess my reflection

You have returned to the path, the path that leads to the cabin. In that cabin remains the Princess, and your job is still to slay her. But something’s different. The path leads to more places, the princess more multifaceted, the pristine blade more… pristine. You may have more choices, but those choices may have more unforeseen consequences. With everything new and horrifying, one thing will always be the same: this is a love story.

A year and a day ago, Slay the Princess released on Steam and I absolutely adored it. Its unique blend of horror, choice based narrative, and romance made for an amazing experience that’s closer to a CRPG than a visual novel. While the game felt totally finished and complete, there’s now even more of it with the Pristine Cut. This version adds new princesses, secret routes, endings, and even fleshes out certain sections of the game, on top of the other additions and changes already added to the game between now and launch. And the best part is that it’s all free if you own the game on Steam!

For those woefully unfamiliar with Slay the Princess, here are the basics. You are the Hero, and your job is to slay the Princess. She will lie, she will cheat, and do everything in her power to stop you from slaying her. With that in mind, there are no wrong choices. You can slay her, free her, or just chat with her, though eventually you will find yourself back on the path in the woods once more with a different Princess waiting in the cabin. All of your choices will affect both how you and she change. Fight her one on one and she’ll be more muscular and aggressive. Lock her in the basement and she might become a ghost. Save her and she might be more passive next time. It’s an incredibly cool structure, all culminating in a finale that presents you with all your choices simply to ask how you feel about them, and then decide once more from there.

The game already felt complete when it was released last year, but The Pristine Cut fleshes out some of the Princesses, such as The Fury, The Den, and The Moment of Clarity. It also adds some entirely new third chapters, like Happily Ever After and The Princess and the Dragon (both of which are two of my new favorites). All the new or altered content feels completely natural within the game, save for exactly one moment where it sounded like Jonathan Sims was recording on a different microphone. Aside from that, it’s impressive just how naturally everything fits in, including the new and expanded endings. Some of these additions had been added before The Pristine Cut, but as someone who wanted to wait for the full thing, all of it together reignited the spark of wanting to see everything the game has to offer.

The artwork remains uniformly excellent as well. Some Princesses are just adorable, while others are downright terrifying, and everything in between. I mean, just look at The Spectre. She’s spooky but cute as a button! The music is also great, and yes the game still provides a special playlist of each track you heard, in order, upon beating the game. Aside from the main theme, I probably wouldn’t seek out the music on its own but that’s a fun touch. I’ve already mentioned the voice acting, but it’s worth stating again just how good it is. Both Jonathan Sims and Nichole Goodnight have some incredible range, making each character they play feel distinct and memorable.

Any problems I had with the game, such as lackluster controller support, have mostly been fixed. Controller support is especially important with this version releasing on consoles. It’s still a little odd, with longer dialogue options taking more than one input to scroll through, but aside from completely changing that part of the interface this is probably the best solution. If the Switch version has touchscreen support, it can at least bypass that altogether. Though you do miss out on a few things with a controller, such as the Parallax Scrolling and the different cursors. The joke where you hold the blade in a reverse grip just doesn’t hit the same if your cursor doesn’t change to reflect that purely cosmetic decision. You also don’t have to rely on the achievement list to keep track of what you’ve seen in the game, as the new Memories section keeps track of what you’ve done across playthroughs. It also lets you view any CGs you’ve already seen, which is handy.

There is one issue that remains, and it unfortunately has to do with the skip functionality. When the game stops skipping, it won’t actually play whatever new voiceline you’ve landed on. It’s not a total dealbreaker, since the text itself is there for you to read, but it’s a bit annoying. However, when combined with any of the alternate fonts in the accessibility menu, which can get cut off if left at the default size, you may have to go into the log to read a line in its entirety. Still, that is a very specific situation, and it’s hard to really fault the game for something built into the engine that it’s already pushing to its limits.

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