Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is not a game that I could call revolutionary or innovative. It is a very curious mix of hack and slash action game with a tower defense strategy and I haven’t seen it done quite like this before. But definitely not revolutionary. And yet, I can’t help but love this project and wish to see more huge development companies and corporations learn from it. No, not from the mix of genres, but rather from the approach this game takes. You see – this is very much a “AA game”, made by “AAA” standards, which is something you used to see all of the time back in the late 90s-early 00s, but which doesn’t really happen anymore. And playing this game reminded me of how much are we all missing out with the current gaming market trends.
But I should explain what this game is and also emphasize that it holds really well on its own, without this “olden days” nostalgic vibes. As mentioned, this is a curious mix of hack and slash and tower defense, where you go through a series of missions, where you have to protect a shrine maiden from waves of attacking demonic creatures. You directly control a ninja-like character who is very good at this task, but can be easily overwhelmed by the amount of said creatures attacking from different directions, hence why you save villagers and assign them to roles using special masks that you unlock as you play. Each mask is a class (or type of a tower, if you will), with its own strengths and weaknesses, some are ranged, some are melee, some are support units or fit even more specialized roles. And each mission is usually divided into the daytime, during which you explore, carve the path for the maiden to walk on, save villagers, gather resources and prepare for the night, during which you focus on directing the units and engaging in combat directly.
There’s a big variety in missions, some introduce unique challenges or twist the main rules on their head. Boss fights are treated as a separate type of a mission with their own rules. You also get to rebuild places you had your missions in and upgrade the masks. And each mission has a set of additional tasks and challenges that become visible once you’ve played through the mission once. So the game is very much focused on replaying completed missions with new unlocked masks with the additional motivation to unlock everything.
And there’s a lot of surprises too. I won’t elaborate just because I feel like each one of those is an incredibly welcome surprise which evokes that “olden days” feeling that I’ve mentioned, where games just kept on giving you more surprising cool twists without resorting to updates, DLCs or expansions, paid unlocks or “seasons”. And while one can guess where the budget was saved, in comparison with, say, a typical modern Resident Evil release, the game still uses all of the cool technological marvels and heck this might be the best implementation of HDR on RE Engine. It also has fantastic Japanese folklore-inspired style and storyline and the music is just… Gosh, this is easily the most fresh and daring soundtrack from Capcom in decades. Last time I’ve seen them being so “open-minded” was with Resident Evil 7, but they’re pushing for experimenting even further and I wish they’d done it more often.
All that said, this game is far from perfect. There is one particular level that I found extremely frustrating even without doing the challenges. One boss fight was very poorly explained, despite several dedicated tutorial-like phases of the fight. Some of the challenges are just evil in how tough they can be to do. Game is somewhat lacking as both hack and slash and a tower defense title and makes me wish more time was spent to develop both of these halves of the game. Some of the micro-management of abilities and special attacks is very nuanced and frustrating and is mostly unimportant for normal play but becomes a chore when setting up for each mission challenges…
Despite all that, though, it’s just so irresistibly charming. I can’t help but admire its simplicity, while fully understanding that it can only be how it is because it was made by a huge studio with the amount of skill, experience and budget not available for most “actual AA” and indie studios. And I don’t remember the last time a release like this even happened. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and I hope I won’t forget the title as I constantly do, isn’t just a welcome callback to a different era of gaming, it’s a very fun game in its own right, with its own voice and its own terrific soundtrack. Thankfully, there is a demo of the game you can try for yourself if you’re still confused about how this even plays, so give that a go. Don’t ignore this title, it’s genuinely cool.