KunitsuGami Path of the Goddess is a defiantly odd game that feels straight out of its 2000s heyday. With its sequence of small, confined stages and focused action, it’s a game that offers plenty to keep you going.
Back then, Capcom was in the midst of its most creative period. This era produced the inimitable titles of Shinji Mikami’s revisionist beat ’em up God Hand and Hideki Kamiya’s gorgeously hand-painted Okami.
The Story
In a time of bloated sequels and creatively bankrupt knockoffs, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a refreshingly focused mashup of action and strategy that’s hard to get bored of. The story is simple enough: Purge defilement from the land and return a maiden to her shrine, but it’s the game’s ability to ratchet up the challenge with every new level that makes it truly memorable.
For the most part, your goal is to guide Yoshiro from one side of a linear map to the other along a spirit path during the day. To do this, you’ll need to clear pockets of defilement, rescue corrupted villagers, and defeat especially powerful Seethe enemies that pop up during night attacks. In between these phases, you’ll be able to explore villages that you’ve liberated and assign villagers to repair defenses or earn buff-granting treasures.
The level design in Kunitsu-Gami is a joy to behold. The game uses the power of the PlayStation 5 system to its best advantage, creating a visual style that’s both beautiful and highly detailed. Despite the lack of voice acting, the game’s sound effects are impressively realistic and help to convey a sense of urgency.
KunitsuGami is a unique and rewarding experience that’s sure to capture the hearts of fans of yokai, Japanese folklore, and legend. In a game world full of bland and uninspired tower defenses, Kunitsu-Gami stands out with its stunning visuals, entrancing soundtrack, and clever action-strategy twist on the genre. It’s the kind of game that can easily be overlooked, but it’s a true gem for those who are willing to take the time to learn its many systems and adapt to a constantly changing gameplay experience.
The Gameplay
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a beautiful and engrossing game that takes a surprisingly refreshing approach to an old genre. Its evocative setting and innovative gameplay mechanics help make this a truly special experience.
Across 14 stages, players control Soh as they guide Maiden Yoshiro through the defiled land of her homeland to purge it of festering Seethe spirits. With few cutscenes and minimal dialogue, the story takes a backseat to the absorbing action. This is a good thing because the game’s strong, if not quite perfect, gameplay loop keeps you coming back for more.
KunitsuGami Path of the Goddess
At the core of it, Kunitsu-Gami is a mashup of tower defense and hack-and-slash that plays out in real time. Players command small groups of villagers to whom they bestow masks that give them roles like woodcutter, cannoneer, and ninja. Together, they clear handcrafted levels of the mountain and its corrupted villages while fighting off a variety of monsters inspired by Shinto Buddhism.
Each stage is a delightfully challenging and varied affair that offers plenty of depth. Aside from a handful of easy stages, the game pushes players into expert territory by rolling out new enemy types and villager skills that require fine-tuning. Moreover, the game’s upgrade system allows players to purchase more complex units by expending a unique currency earned through each level.
While it can be frustrating to spend all that money on units and then be wiped out in one or two battles, the game’s excellent level design and enemy variety ensures that this rarely happens. The result is a captivating and uniquely exciting experience that shows off some experimental Capcom at its very best.
The Music
Kunitsu-Gami isn’t the most narratively engaging game out there, but it does a masterful job of showing rather than telling. Unlike many other games that feel like they were made by everybody for nobody, Path of the Goddess feels like a bold creative swing that was designed specifically for this particular audience. It’s clear that great care went into crafting the game’s world and each of its individual components. The collectible sweets, for instance, were actually crafted by Tsuruya Yoshinobu, a 220-year-old confectionery in Kyoto, Japan before being scanned and turned into their digital counterparts. The same level of care was put into every aspect of the game’s design, from the music and art to its simple yet engaging storytelling.
As for the combat, Path of the Goddess is a solid action-strategy game with an impressive twist on tower defense gameplay. Enemy variety and the ability to customize your character’s skillsets help keep battles fresh from start to finish. I found myself constantly adjusting my strategy to account for the game’s changing dynamics, and never feeling bored or overwhelmed.
Kunitsu Gami Path of the Goddess
Moreover, the pacing of the game is perfect. The game has a unified experience that keeps any one aspect from growing stale thanks to the way it is structured into three phases: prepare, fight, and rebuild. Even the UI feels seamlessly folded into the experience, with Soh’s health shown via a scroll next to his body and the upgrade menu for his abilities appearing as a sword hilt that needs to be tapped.
In a sea of bloated sequels and creatively bankrupt knockoffs, Kunitsu-Gami is a breath of fresh air. Its unique setting, mystical feudal Japan setting, and otherworldly blend of hack-and-slash action and strategic planning make it an excellent game that shouldn’t be missed.
The Graphics
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a gorgeously weird game. A mashup of tower defense, hack-and-slash, and more, it’s experimental Capcom at its best, a rare sight in a year dominated by sequels and big-budget superheroes.
It’s a lot of different things, but it all works. Those three gameplay styles are combined into one seamless experience that’s as fun to play as it is visually striking. The art is inspired by classic Japanese folklore and illustration, and it creates a world that feels authentically ancient. The sequence of small, confined stages and focused action make it feel more like a PS2 classic than a product of 2024.
The game’s main story is about protecting and purging a maiden’s shrine, but that’s only a backdrop for the real star of the show: the combat and enemy design. During the day, Yoshiro makes stately, elegant progress through stages while Soh cleanses small pockets of defilement, rescues corrupted villagers, and assigns them combat roles (like woodcutter or cannoneer) to carve out a path to the end of the stage. At night, the possessed torii gates open to unleash hordes of strange creatures.
Each level is a delicate balance of preparation, fight, and rebuild. You set up bases and upgrade their defenses, get new villagers to replace those you’ve rescued, and build up your character’s attributes with various items. In battle, Soh takes on a balletic attack combo, cutting through waves of hideous enemies with ease.
In a gaming culture that’s become obsessed with loot farming, it’s refreshing to see a game that celebrates the hard work and courage of ordinary people. It’s a message that’s especially pertinent today as the political climate threatens to roll back protections for women, queer people, and minorities. As Kunitsu-Gami: Path of The Goddess shows, we can’t wait for help; we need to stand up for ourselves.
The Final Words
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a delightfully unique game that showcases Capcom’s still-strong ability to innovate. A clever blend of genres and a deft pacing make it easy to get drawn into this world. The enemy design is a real treat, with each stage introducing something new and challenging that pulls from traditional Japanese folklore. The UI is also a real standout, with Soh’s health displayed as scroll next to him and the upgrade menu for his skills appearing as his sword hilt. This sense of immersion extends to the music, where quiet moments accentuate the ambiance and the aggressive ambient score ratchets up the tension during battles against the Seethe.
Each level also challenges you to a mix of day and night gameplay, with Soh guided through the villages during the daytime as she purifies the defilement and rescues corrupted villagers. At night, these villages become battlefields where you have to battle the Seethe, and a mix of defensive contraptions can be rigged up to aid Yoshiro during the fight. These include traps, barriers, and the ability to assign villagers to specific roles during the battle.
The only thing that drags the experience down a bit is the settlement rebuilding loop, which requires you to return to a village once it’s been cleared of enemies and then assign villagers to various buildings in order to repair them. This can be quite time consuming, and you’ll only gain the most helpful rewards (including Musubi upgrades and story tiles) for fully rebuilding a village after a set number of visits.
Despite the slightly sluggish pace of the level progression, there’s plenty here to keep players occupied. The unique style of gameplay is sure to appeal to fans of both action and strategy, and it will be a welcome change from the more formulaic fare that dominates the market.
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