68 people found this review helpful
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Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 3.3 hrs on record
Posted: 4 Mar, 2024 @ 2:59am

Are you sure you want to be reading this? Slay the Princess is one of those games where simply understanding what it actually is is part of the gameplay; of the entire experience. I'll do my best to avoid anything that could even hint towards spoiling, but...

Look. It's sexy in a cerebral and emotional way. Its kink is hidden in plain sight. It's absurd, yet coherent. Violent, yet intimate. Conceptual. Disembodied. Beautiful.

Is that enough to convince you? I'll try to expand a little, but I'll try to keep it as vague as possible. If the game is a meal, then let this review be the smell coming from the kitchen.

Oh, and I dedicate this piece to a certain horny horned witch.

Hell is other people - Sartre
If you think that quoting French philosophers is too pretentious, chances are this game's flavour might not be to your liking. Not just because it borrows ideas from some schools of philosophy, but also because the dialogue often is just arguing semantics; for humorous purposes, but also to establish stuff. Because yes, there's a lot to establish - and probably not for the reason you think.

No, I won't tell you the reason.

When you think about it, isn't the act of communication a dance of ideas of each other? In the end, we can only see other people through the lenses of our own understanding, limited or enhanced by our perception. Perhaps the same can be said of our own self-image; we can only define ourselves by what we are/are not, and others can - must - help us establish these things.

I swear, what I said is not a random tangent.

For all joy wants - eternity. - Nietzsche
All that philosophical nonsense aside, the meat of the game is, well, deciding. Do you slay the princess? Do you save the princess? What do you say, when, and in what order? It is a visual novel, sure, but the sheer amount of agency you have is simply unreal.

I sometimes say that Disco Elysium is an impossible game; it couldn't have been made, but the devs missed the memo and made it anyway. This is very much the same thing. The paths branch and twist in so varied and incredible ways that it's surreal (and it's all voice acted!). This fact, combined by how surreal the rest of the game is, creates this bizarre reality-bending effect; it feels like the surface of your eye-mirrors has cracked and now you can see... beyond. And our brains aren't really made for that.

F**king magnets, how do they work? - Some Dumbasses
Ok, for real now. Imma cut the crap with the smart words. Is gud when u smart when playin this, but f*ck dat noise. Yknow what else is gud? The pictures. Like, they so fine u wanna slap yo momma. Yea, yea, words blah blah, but at the end of the day u gon be stabbin dat broad and watch her SQUIRT dat red juice all over ya.

SYKE BEYOTCH - nothin is simple. Get reddy to get yo ass HANDED to ya like it's ELDEN RING. U dont need book-learnin to shank a b*tch, but u gonna be needin some of those street smarts, yknow wat im sayin? A playa's gotta play. A slaya's gotta slay. And let me tell you brotha, theres plenty of slayin to be done. Gon need dat big PP energy.

Bottom F**KING line: if talkin sh*t bout random crap aint your thang, u can still get ur balls blown into the mfing shadow realm.

Everything is inherently contradictory. - Hegel (♥♥♥♥♥, man?)
Let's be honest: reality is scary - especially when you pay closer attention. Existentialists definitely were on to something. Slay the Princess will trick you into doing actual philosophy without you even realising it. Many dialogue quips are taken almost verbatim from the writings of all the wordy bois I quoted here, but there's definitely more - I only dabble in philosophy a little bit, so I wouldn't know.

Earlier on, I mentioned sexiness and kink. And yes, they're there - probably not in the way you think, but they're absolutely there. The game very explicitly states that it's a love story whenever you launch it; and its quasi-sapiosexual horniness mixed with violence, bondage and power dynamics is the main vessel of expressing that love. Not the only vessel, mind, but don't expect a romance in the traditional sense. Or do. See if she cares.

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. If you've made it this far, dear reader, I'm rather confident you know exactly what it is you should do.

More pretentious crap
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10 Comments
peter.makai 15 Jun, 2024 @ 3:51pm 
Seriously though, this ia basically Slay The Princess theory. Like, I am trying to find a paragraph or sentence that does not directly apply: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phba.htm
Vitlöksbjörn 26 Mar, 2024 @ 3:36am 
It actually does. But I feel that some quotes deserve to be anonymised.
diji 26 Mar, 2024 @ 2:43am 
Cool review but does this actually quote Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope?
Vitlöksbjörn 5 Mar, 2024 @ 1:04pm 
THE PEN0R IS METAPHORICAL. BIG PP ENERGY, NOT BIG PP, YOU MEMORY-DEVICEY WITCH

or is it. :bard_sing:

And while I do embrace the pretentiousness to a degree, if I made stuff too pretentious it would just become incomprehensible to most readers. I was thinking of namedropping the master-slave dialectics, quoting Simone de Beauvoir (MANY TIMES), wax poetic about the Logos (the original Greek meaning) and the motherfXXking Plato's cave. I refuse to believe that the game brings up so many philosophical points on accident, but let's be honest, how many people would this benefit? If I want to stroke my intellectual pp I'd rather do it in, shall we say, more consensual circumstances.

I don't know where I was going with this.
Drugo⚸a 5 Mar, 2024 @ 9:59am 
My, my... the spice!!
But first, these are not horns, it's a memory device. Remember...? :fatamaria:

I see it was you that squirted all over, hm-hm :catblood:
Oh yeah, "big PP" - easier to chop off in the throes of battle :stpknife: The perceived advantage becomes a weakness just like that, with a flip of a coin :Ycoin: It's all about perspective, in keeping with the themes :steammocking:

Thanks for the review. I'm glad you had so much fun with the Princess :beatriceemo:

What do you mean pretentious? I see you were trying to get away from it (and with it ;P). Embrace it! You can't escape hipster self-realisation. The more you try, the more hipster you look. (speaking from experience)

PS: "Hell is other people" - is quite fitting here, I must admit :PrisonerDeadpan:
Vitlöksbjörn 4 Mar, 2024 @ 11:14pm 
Thank you! And yes, outstanding is definitely the right word.
8168055 4 Mar, 2024 @ 3:44pm 
Great review for an outstanding gem! :)
⛓ Avant-Garde Lilith ⛓ 4 Mar, 2024 @ 4:27am 
Ahahahah
Vitlöksbjörn 4 Mar, 2024 @ 3:48am 
Oh, it certainly was a pleasurable, ecstatic release. Glad you enjoyed my... emissions.
⛓ Avant-Garde Lilith ⛓ 4 Mar, 2024 @ 3:32am 
Pretentious is good! Albeit a tad pretentious 😁
Lovely review, a pleasure to read and I'm sure to write:)