Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess | Review

Experimental Capcom makes a wonderful return

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris July 15, 2024Last Updated: July 23, 2024

7 7 minutes read

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a tower defense meets hack-and-slash title from Capcom, and it’s launching day one into Game Pass. You are Soh, a maiden’s protector spirit and you will command small groups of villagers upon whom you bestow masks. These give them roles like woodcutter, cannoneer, and ninja. Together you’ll work to cleanse a mountain full of dark spirits across dozens of levels, which can be difficult. Let’s get into the ins and outs of this gorgeous, sometimes incredibly frustrating title.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Review

Mt. Kafuku

The game begins with a divine maiden, Yoshiro, and her spirit protector Soh (that’s you). After a quick beatdown, you’ll get Link’ed (aka lose all your power) as evil spirits have taken over the legendary Mt. Kafuku. Every level finds you spending the daytime rescuing villagers and cleaning the defiled land as you prepare to fight the demon hordes at night. You’ll start at the top of the mountain and slowly snake your way down as you follow a pattern of cleansing a village, fighting a boss to unlock a new class, and then assigning work to jobs in each town to rebuild them.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a multi-genre title. Your gameplay as Soh is a solid hack-and-slash setup, and during most stages, you’ll have a legion of anywhere from 4 to 10+ villagers who you can assign classes to. You’ll start with basic “I have an axe” or “I have a bow” types and work your way towards a shaman that can heal or aesthetics that can slow down enemy types. Everything in the game works off of a crystal currency that can be found through cleansing or via killing. The game is an endless series of escort missions, which at first sounded horrific to me. Thankfully the title fixes most escort mission issues by giving you the tools to succeed, most of the time.

Every main village cleansing level sees you using your crystal currency to juggle creating a path for the maiden to traverse as she cleanses each area of its demonic possession. The game uses a day/night cycle for these levels and you’ll have a short period to find and save any cocooned villagers, whom you can then assign roles and place around the map. Early levels have one section to clear while mid and late ones have two and can last a long time. The game does checkpoint whenever a new night starts so if you fail and the maiden is killed you don’t have to do it all over again.

Days, Nights, and Boss Fights

To give an example of how a level starts you will enter an area where a short cutscene plays to give you a quick look at the layout. As Soh you have to work quickly, cleansing every area that needs it by holding B. These areas have a neon light glow emanating from them but are tricky to find at times. Once you have cleansed every area in a section you’ll be awarded a new trinket that lets you customize your build. These can be “Soh does more damage” or “Villagers have more HP” and you’ll need to change them up often. There are super moves as well to unlock through progression and eventually you can equip up to 3 at a time.

As you cleanse each spot you’ll need to keep an eye out for cocooned villagers. The level description lets you know how many there are, and you’ll need to take note as nothing in the level tells you if you’ve missed anyone or not. As you cleanse the demonic rot you’ll earn crystal currency with which you’ll assign class types to your saved villagers. Finding the right balance of the eventual 11 classes is the bulk of the game’s strategy and the controls for it work well enough. To assign a role you have to be in the melee range and press B. Once a role is assigned you can press the right bumper to pause the action and move each villager to where you want in a circle around your character.

There are animals to cleanse (you hit them with your sword) that drop rations, which are one of the only ways to heal until the Shaman class is unlocked. Pots can have rations as well and each level will have three objectives to complete to earn more upgrade items, called Musubi. Every time you complete a level you get various items and the upgrade currency and can then visit any cleared village to use it. These base areas have objectives you can assign the villagers you saved to help rebuild things, and each job done earns you more rewards. Without doing these you will never get enough upgrade materials to carry on and as each area is fully rebuilt you upgrade the amount of crystals and/or rations you can hold at once.

Soh and each class type have upgrades available and they are must-haves if you want to beat what is a surprisingly difficult game. There are several boss encounters that you’ll face as you weave your way down the mountain, and the game ends with an incredibly long and difficult boss rush that made me feel relieved that I had spent so much time building bases and getting extra upgrade materials.

Soh Soh

Kunitsu-Gami’s combat is overly basic early on. As you progress through the levels you’ll eventually unlock the ability to upgrade your player character, Soh, and it helped keep things interesting as boredom had started to kick in. Soh can have two fighting stances and a ranged weapon with a set special move. It never gets on the level of a Devil May Cry, which is fine as you’ll be too busy focusing on the strategy aspect as you engage with the game’s various systems. As you run, jump, and slash your friendly AI will be defending the specific areas you set them in. During each day cycle, you’ll also have a builder who can fix various traps set around the level.

Using these in conjunction with the safe spots that the maiden can stand on is key. These safe spots have her emanate a murderous aura that takes out any enemies that reach her fairly quickly. There are various nets, traps, cannons, and more that can aid in stopping the constant flow of enemies as they head out of demonic gates in a straight line for your maiden. My favorite villager was the Sumo Wrestler as he dominated whatever area he was in and allowed me to fend off the various creatures coming from different directions.

Enemy variety is high, with a large number of fodder types filling out most battlefields. You can leave them for your AI fighters as you focus on the elite varieties that have special moves and larger health bars. The game does a solid job of introducing you to them slowly throughout the campaign with some of the later levels being monstrously hard as you have twenty or more elites hitting the playing field at one time. Level variety is high as well, with some finding you unable to fight during the night time, instead relying heavily on properly commanding your troops. The opposite occurs a few times, too, including one devilishly hard boss fight that you must face solo. The maiden is an ever-weak presence in all of these as she’s always ready to die and end a level after taking a few good hits from the enemy. I didn’t find this too frustrating early on, though later levels with bosses having massive sweeping hits saw her die in a few seconds out of nowhere when a random attack was pointed in her direction.

Simplistic Beauty

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a gorgeous game, utilizing similar tech to Harold Halibut. Many of the game’s items are scanned in from real-world models, giving the title a unique look. Steeped deeply in Japanese lore the art style is a blend of beautiful pastels and horrifying demonic body horror. The game looks like a diorama come to life and a few times I found myself marveling at a cutscene only to have to quickly pick my controller up as the action started up.

There is no voice acting outside of grunts and groans, with characters gesticulating to convey emotion. The only non-masked character is the maiden, with every villager and Soh always wearing one. The soundtrack is fantastic at setting the mood without ever feeling in the way. Lots of drums and wind instruments give it an authentic, ancient feeling.

I ran into a few bugs while playing, though they were quickly remedied. Every once in a while after using the command screen the game would turn red and be unplayable. The fix was to go back in and out of the command screen (right bumper) and a day-one patch is coming in to fix some other potential issues that I was lucky enough to avoid. Issues wise my main one is the massive difficulty spike at the end of the game. The final boss rush sees your maiden have one health bar for multiple fights where she can take damage at random depending on what moves the bosses decide to use. I was able to get through in a few attempts but it was frustrating as hell compared to the tough but fair difficulty the game had up to that point.

Wrapping Things Up

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is experimental Capcom at its best. While some of the fights can teeter on feeling unfair the majority of the game is a glorious mix of hack-and-slash action with a heavy dose of tower defense. It’s launching directly into Game Pass and is well worth checking out for anyone looking for 14+ hours of a damned good time.