I picked up Slay The Princess because I've seen almost exclusively high praise for it - and to be fair, it is really solid. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I do wonder if it's mostly by people who aren't big into VNs, since if you aren't familiar with them, I think you'll get a huge kick out of the meta and time loop elements

It's kinda hard to talk about the parts I liked without spoiling stuff and this is a game where you wanna go in blind so tldr - the art is really nice, it's always intriguing, it pulls off the meta gimmicks very well (im sucker for games that use steam achievements!!), the writing is good, the atmosphere really achieves what it sets out to do, etc

There are some aspects of STP I didn't vibe with but I can't really explain it, but I'm gonna try because I've not seen much critique at all and I think it's important

I think I just wanted it to take things further? The characters are quite intentionally "shallow" but I still ended up wanting more. Everything is also purposely somewhat vague which isn't a bad way to tell a story but personally takes me out of things

Maybe it's the overwhelming amount of dialogue options you're given at once, and that it's sometimes not clear what is flavour text and what progresses the story. For example, sometimes the game will give you like...8+ choices at once, and it'll be contained to half the screen, and require you to scroll down, instead of being given more space - and it just felt really claustraphobic at times lol

I also felt unsure if I should be making multiple save files while going down a route and exploring the sub options, or if I should just be committing to my first choice - and after hitting a few endings, I'm still not sure

The voice acting of the male hero character I think is really good and fine, but the princess has the same problem that I just kinda expect every indie/mid budget VN with voice acting to have, and that's her microphone makes her S sounds very sharp (which i have to cut off because i have sound sensitivity issues out the ass)

It's also not a super long game for the price but I do not regret picking up Slay The Princess and think it's worth playing. It's obvious that a ton of love and care has gone into crafting something unique and I'll take something like that, that has some flaws, over something bland any day

Ryukishi07's ̶S̶a̶y̶a̶ ̶N̶o̶ ̶U̶t̶a̶ Iwaihime is....a weird one. There's A LOT of moments that just feel like gross for grossness' sake, multiple female characters whose backstories revolve around sexual assult and like....maybe I'm crazy but a weird amount of fatphobia??? Plus the protagonist is pretty bland overall, and you've got the trope where everyone else immediately falls in love with him and says how great he is all the time

Now ALL that being said, there's something about Iwaihime that I found very compelling all the way through, and there's definitely moments of Ryukishi07 brillance sprinkled throughout, with some good mysteries. I also enjoyed all the female characters quite a bit, despite being kinda over how often visual novels use sexual assault to show that they've suffered, although Riria is a bit repetitive

My recommendation comes down to whether the game is on sale, I think

When it comes to Square Enix, you never know if you're going to get something like the Portopia Serial Murder Case demo...or something absolutely wonderful like Paranormasight. This was geninuely an absolute delight to play through!

Although there are moments of characters recollecting information you already know just like every other VN, the pacing is generally very good with the snappy 10-12 run time. The characters are compelling (Tsutsumi, Harue and Richter were my biggest faves <3) and geninuely make it hard to choose who's path you wanna go down first. There's a lot of really quirky gimmicks with the 360 environment rotation and some meta elements, however they do take a bit of a backseat after the more horror focused first chapter. It is a bit disappointing but I think the rest of the game is strong enough to make up for it

Honestly, my only issue is that the true ending may be a bit disappointing or feel rushed, but I mean, at this point, I kinda expect that from Visual Novels hghdahsdjas

A really sweet ball of early 2000s internet cringe (and i mean that in a good sincere way) tied to a good story and fun characters

The mechanical side of things is a bit wonky in places - there were a few bugs (ie messages not coming through and locking me out of progress), a few times I'd pick choices I didn't mean to progress text, and due to its presentation, you can't really speed up text which makes things a little slow in places (especially if you reload after picking a choice you're not happy and have to redo stuff). Overall, this didn't affect my enjoyment too much though

Let's get the negatives out of the way:
- game is incredibly poor at explaining objectives, and flat out doesn't tell you what to do. I think I might've thrown my first few family games because I didn't understand the car batteries. Even as someone who enjoys learning these types of games as I play and finding techs out for myself, it's a little too much imo....especially in a world where google is completely shit up with seo slurry articles lol
- the skill/progression system is horrid. You collect skill points that are shared between all characters, but levelling up slows down hard after you reach level 10. This means you'll initially start levelling up a character really fast and soon hit a wall, meaning if you need to play another character, they'll probably be underlevelled. This is also a pain because only one person can pick each character, so players leave lobbies a lot. That being said, respeccing is free which is nice but also means this choice of system is even more bizarre lol
- You can't do inventory/skill management while finding a match, but you can during the pre-game lobby, which has a maximum timer of five minutes. Because people can't do their skills while finding a match, they're going to do it now, meaning it's pretty slow to get into the game
- Victims are really overwhelming and there's no three hook state system like DBD. You can die REAL fast if you encouter the family so if you're playing with friends and struggling, you can spend most of the evening spectating instead of actually playing. Spectating in this game can still be pretty fun and tense but the novelty can wear off

Now, all that being said, push past an ungodly amount of liveservice horseshit and the core gameplay is honestly really fun - family especially - with a decent amount of depth and skill expression on both sides. The vibes are also great as well, with the game being geninuely kinda scary as a victim.

An absolutely wonderful little game. Deconstructeam have become some of my favourite game devs, with their focus on unconventional narrative experiences with a heavy queer and left leaning focus. From their small game jam projects to full releases like this, I always get something out of it and walk away with a lot to think about

Honestly, my main hangup (and I recognize this absolutely might be own my feelings of insecurity and invisibilty in queer spaces) is that it feels a bit alienating towards transmasc people, like another review mentioned. The game explicitly mentions that witches can only be women and non binary, and there's a plotline about a trans woman being a witch that I thought was sweet but also recognize that it's not my place to judge since I know some negative reviews weren't happy with it - but the game skirts around the idea of transmasc people existing, while it's awkwardly sitting in my mind and it just felt a bit cruddy. I guess in a way it can't mention them? I could go into the way "women and non binary only" spaces exist in real life, and usually serve as a way to alienate certain groups, but that may be reading too deep into things. Either way, there were only a few scenes where I felt this got in the way of enjoyment and am mostly able to push it aside

The writing here is so fun and powerful. Some might say it's cheesy but for me, it really works. Although it will often give you small glimpses and vignettes into its world, rather than super in depth looks, but I kinda love that because it feels like poetry

I think it's worth noting that the second half of the game is more of a political campaign sim, where you allocate people to tasks and try to influence others, which I did not expect. It isn't bad or anything, but I do think I preferred the first half of the game. Simply talking to witches, creating cards and reading fortunes were strong enough mechanics by themselves that they would have worked for the full game thanks to the high quality/intriguing enough writing

If I paid 50 quid for this and/or was hoping for a good singleplayer story experience, I'd be pretty upset with Exoprimal - but I'm playing it through gamepass and am admittedly a grindy liveservice game sicko that enjoys managing cooldowns and seeing numbers go up

And from that perspective, I honestly really like Exoprimal lol it's a nice alternative when my friends and I are feeling a bit tired of Overwatch or the other games we play. It's a bit visually overstimulating at first with the sheer amount of horseshit that's on screen but you do slowly get used to it. The characters have some good variety and depth to them which is one of the main things I'm looking for

That being said, I can't deny that the game is kind of a mess if you think about it. It really does seem to be trying to merge a singleplayer story game with a f2p liveservice experience, and will no doubtly alieniate a ton of people who are only looking for one of those. If you're here for the story, you'll probably find grinding the same gameplay over and over again fairly boring, and if you're here for that grind/minmax, you might be skipping all the cutscenes while feeling like matches take too long to get started

In summary though, check it out in you have game pass or see it on sale but I would absolutely NOT recommend paying £50 for it