When Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess debuted during Capcom’s summer digital showcase last year, I didn’t pay it much attention. It looked like a high-concept action-RPG based on Japanese mythology, with some of its artistic cues taken from Capcom’s highly stylized game, Okami. I love action-RPGs and Japanese folklore, but neither the first trailer nor any of the subsequent ones did enough to tell me what the game was about that I found uninteresting.
I tried the demo of this game at Summer Game Fest this year, then got a copy and finally bought the game, this game is truly worth playing.
In Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, players play as Sou, the guardian of the shrine maiden Yoshiro, who must protect Yoshiro while guiding her through the land and helping to rid it of evil demons. In an email to The Verge, art and game director Shuichi Kawata wrote that it was unintentional for Kunitsu-Gami’s marketing to make it unclear what kind of game it was.
“This work is a mix of several genres,” Kawada wrote, “and I imagined that people might have different impressions of it.”
Check out this launch trailer and see what kind of game it is.
Kawata described Kunitsu-Gami as a “maiden” defense game. Gameplay is divided into three parts: day, night, and base-building cycles. During the day, Soh travels around mountain villages ravaged by demon corruption. He cleanses the corruption and rescues villagers who will help him in the following night cycle. At night, demons attack and try to kill Yoshiro. To stop them, Soh assigns villagers different jobs, each with their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and places them around the village to keep the demons from getting close to Yoshiro. When Yoshiro reaches the edge of the village, the village is permanently cleansed and becomes a new base that Soh and the villagers must repair before moving on to the next location.
I like how Kunitsu-Gami cleverly replicates tower defense games. You assign roles to villagers using crystals, a resource you gain by killing demons at night and purifying the village during the day. Not all villagers can play all roles, and some roles are not good for combat, but they have other benefits. During the day cycle, you might assign a few of your men to the role of thieves and send them out to dig up more crystals and food that act as health potions for So and the villagers. But thieves are useless at night, so you have to spend precious time and crystals to reassign and redeploy them. Sometimes you’re low on crystals because you used them up to buy the expensive role of sumo wrestler (to draw the demons’ attention to yourself and away from Yoshiro) or the role of monk, who uses his power to freeze demons in place, making them easy prey for your bow or lumberjack’s axe.
Kunitsukami provided a challenge that excited my puzzle- and strategy-obsessed brain.
Beyond simply clearing the stage, village battles also have special parameters that, when met, will grant additional items. One of the parameters required spending less than 1,900 crystals. While this seemed easy at first, this goal became much harder to achieve as we also needed to give Yoshiro 1,500 crystals to clear the stage. This resulted in only 400 crystals available for villagers. Basic roles like archers and lumberjacks require 50 crystals each, while more powerful roles require 150-300 crystals, making this a very tight budget.
1/3
I really enjoyed the tension between strategic allocation and placement. Should I spend crystals to gain a stronger role and reduce my defenders? Or should I risk being overwhelmed by a larger, weaker army? Kunitsu-Gami is also special in that it never falls into the trap of being too trivial. In other tower defense games, it’s possible to set up your defenses nicely and then sit back and watch the game progress by itself. But that never happened for me. Even with resources galore and villagers well placed, I always kept my guard up, often rescuing Yoshiro with one of Soh’s ultimate attacks. At every level, Kunitsu-Gami offered a challenge that kept my puzzle- and strategy-obsessed brain buzzing with excitement.
Though it’s not a standout feature, the game also has an interesting narrative. Each villager you rescue has a name and a background, and I enjoyed reading their stories and how they intertwine. These people become more than just anonymous troops to throw at the demonic hordes; they become members of a living community made up of couples, families, and friends. It’s a beautiful reminder of the adage “we are all us.”
In Kunitsukami, only Muneta is trained in martial arts; everyone else is a farmer, a fisherman, or a housewife. Rather than waiting for help from the outside or succumbing to a relentless demon, ordinary people picked up what few weapons they had to defend their homes and families. It’s nice to see this message in a political climate that seems intent on rolling back protections for women, queer people, and people of color. Help doesn’t come, we help. It’s a sentiment backed up by what Kawada shared as the main theme of Kunitsukami:
“Challenge is what drives this game,” he wrote. “We take different situations seriously and move forward fearlessly.”
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is available now on PlayStation, PC, Xbox, and Xbox Game Pass.