There's a lot I like about this game. I think many parts of it and its identity clash with each other, but there's no denying that it is very fun to read and play (or, more so exhaust), and there's been a good bit of heart and creativity (a lot of that) poured into the game.

For me personally, the things that hold it back from truly shining kind of stem from one simple and at first glance unlikely feature of the game. I think the ambition with the animations didn't really play well with the nature of the branching paths. It makes the game look SUPER pretty, but the vision is tangibly suffering from it.

Simply, the game is easy to exhaust and the numerous paths you choose fail to really come together and make an impactful final scene and resolution for the game. It's like the game sets up all these delicious possibilities for you to discover, but then gives up at that point and closes up the whole thing in a hasty manner. A lot of scenarios the game puts in front of you are simply too interesting to just be left for one branch and ending, and they feel sort of wasted. I genuinely think Slay the Princess would've surpassed one day of curious fun and actually reach masterpiece level if the scope of its story was bigger, it had a better realized resolution, and cut down the workload of animations that seem to bog down its ambitions.

Nevertheless, this game does feel like a big cornerstone of non-Japanese VN history. And I hope they only grow to become more impressive from here on out.