fellow aromantics, this one's for you.
i open the game. i am greeted almost immediately with the line "this is a love story." i make a face, say ♥♥♥♥ it and play anyways, and very quickly decide that this line is the single most misleading introduction to a game i have ever experienced in my life.
this is not a bad thing. this is, in fact, one of the best things ever. even as someone who could not possibly care less about romance and who loathes the belief that love is everywhere, love makes us human, there's no point without it, etc, this "love story" is one of my favorite games of all time. it has very fierce competition and every time it comes out on top, it's my go-to game to recommend to anyone who i know won't be poorly affected by the horror elements. i truly believe that if you can play this game, you should play this game, and you should play with as little prior knowledge as possible.
anyways! while love can be viewed as interwoven into every part of the game, it can just as easily be ignored.
on one hand, looking at everything romantically significantly contributes to so much of the game's psychological horror. it's not boiled down to perfect fairy tale love that saves the day or even portrayed solely as a terrifying driving force to cause harm. it's complex and complicated, changes things sometimes for better or worse and more often in ways that cant be categorized nearly so neatly as that.
i very fondly refer to a specific part of it as "the aromantic route" in that it displays and breaks down So Much amatonormativity in so many little ways. the "love" portrayed in that part alone is binding, blinding, cruel, merciful, careless, delicate, soft as can be; it can very easily be argued that there's no love present there at all.
on the other hand, setting love aside completely, there is so much more to this game than that.
slay the princess dives deeply into change, into perspective, into autonomy. it explores the countless ways one's "self" can be interpreted or defined: what it means to exist as only a shell of yourself, for yourself to split or grow into different pieces, the meaning of your "self" versus your body. what pieces remain and which will never be the same and how drastic those differences can become. to be too little or too much, to be half of a whole, to carry pieces of another within you; ghosts and echoes and fragments, overflowing and endless and more than anyone was ever meant to be.
completely ignoring love, it delves deep into the dynamics of each character with each other, with themselves. how connected they are and how many ways that connection can be strained or strengthened or severed. the constant push and pull and influence they have on one another is endless and fascinating and i can't get enough of it.
if you're not interested in character dynamics either, the complexity of these individual characters, who they are and how they learn to be and the way their self is defined and changes ceaselessly, is so thorough and fascinating that it alone is, to me, reason enough to play this game.
and of course, every last part of it is indescribably well-executed. the art, the writing, the voice acting, every last little detail.
so while the game defines itself as love above all else, don't let that fool you. there is so, so much more to it than the telling of a love story.
please slay (or do not slay) that damn princess. it is so worth it in every possible way.
