Days mean nothing in the maw of forever. The wait is over. The Pristine Cut is finally here. For those of you who aren't aware, The Pristine Cut is a free upgrade to the base game, that among other things: Expands the game by roughly 35%. This means thousands of new voice lines, over a thousand new illustrations, and 17 tracks of brand new music.
Completely forgot about this but I’m excited to update and check out the new routes.
Pre-empt: Everything I say is in regards to the original release. I have not played the pristine cut.
It is definitely intended to be deeply uncomfortable. It has a very “cosmic horror” vibe to it, while playing on themes of relationships, love and romance. Both the player and the princess will die, repeatedly, in sometimes gruesome ways, and sometimes absurd ways. Body horror will happen. You will read descriptions of flesh and bone seperating. But despite all that, it ultimately tries to be endearing.
It’s good, but not great. The story is impactful and meaningful, and it does a great sort-of incidental meta commentary on literature.
An opinion which I find most players don’t share with me: the ending was incredibly weak, to the point that I felt it really detracted from the experience, which led me to my “not great” assessment. It has a bad case of “the only decision that matters is the last one,” which isn’t the way I like these seemingly heavily malluble visual novels to go, and none of the endings feel genuinely satisfying. Worse, my first ending set up for something of a second attempt towards a “golden ending” of sorts, only to pull the rug out from under me and just kind of… end, instead.
The storytelling is great, the writing is engaging, the voice acting is fantastic, the art is gorgeous… There’s a lot to like about the game, so I don’t want to make it sound “bad,” because it’s quite good. It just sold itself to me as a kind of “choices matter” game, where I’d find myself digging for information and answers, so I can learn more and make better decisions on multiple, short playthroughs. I hoped to eventually either discover everything I want to discover and feel good about my explorations, or use my growing knowledge to find the “right” ending, whether that’s a “golden” ending or an ending that I find satisfying and rewards me for my effort. But, for it’s variety choices, it’s not really that kind of game. It is, at its heart, a linear game, with some variation in the experiences you have between where you start and where you end up, with a couple choices in the last moment determining which page you flip to before the credits roll.
Maybe I expected too much, and the problem is with me. I can’t deny that my opinion could be based on a failure of expectation. But, I restate, it’s good, but it’s not great.
Wow! Thank you for the detailed response, based on your comments and those of the other responder I’ll probably pass on it for now, I’m deeply uncomfortable enough on my own thank you.
Who knows though, it may still end up in my library later when it goes on sale. I have a bad history of that.
Pre-empt: Everything I say is in regards to the original release. I have not played the pristine cut.
It is definitely intended to be deeply uncomfortable. It has a very “cosmic horror” vibe to it, while playing on themes of relationships, love and romance. Both the player and the princess will die, repeatedly, in sometimes gruesome ways, and sometimes absurd ways. Body horror will happen. You will read descriptions of flesh and bone seperating. But despite all that, it ultimately tries to be endearing.
It’s good, but not great. The story is impactful and meaningful, and it does a great sort-of incidental meta commentary on literature.
An opinion which I find most players don’t share with me: the ending was incredibly weak, to the point that I felt it really detracted from the experience, which led me to my “not great” assessment. It has a bad case of “the only decision that matters is the last one,” which isn’t the way I like these seemingly heavily malluble visual novels to go, and none of the endings feel genuinely satisfying. Worse, my first ending set up for something of a second attempt towards a “golden ending” of sorts, only to pull the rug out from under me and just kind of… end, instead.
The storytelling is great, the writing is engaging, the voice acting is fantastic, the art is gorgeous… There’s a lot to like about the game, so I don’t want to make it sound “bad,” because it’s quite good. It just sold itself to me as a kind of “choices matter” game, where I’d find myself digging for information and answers, so I can learn more and make better decisions on multiple, short playthroughs. I hoped to eventually either discover everything I want to discover and feel good about my explorations, or use my growing knowledge to find the “right” ending, whether that’s a “golden” ending or an ending that I find satisfying and rewards me for my effort. But, for it’s variety choices, it’s not really that kind of game. It is, at its heart, a linear game, with some variation in the experiences you have between where you start and where you end up, with a couple choices in the last moment determining which page you flip to before the credits roll.
Maybe I expected too much, and the problem is with me. I can’t deny that my opinion could be based on a failure of expectation. But, I restate, it’s good, but it’s not great.
Wow! Thank you for the detailed response, based on your comments and those of the other responder I’ll probably pass on it for now, I’m deeply uncomfortable enough on my own thank you.
Who knows though, it may still end up in my library later when it goes on sale. I have a bad history of that.