Kunitsu-Gami Path of the Goddess review – Capcom's experimental side

Kunitsu-Gami feels like the kind of experimental game we'd see in the PS2 era.

Seethe enemy. / Capcom

Ancient stone steps and Torii gates twist around the mountain path, defilement dripping from every corner. Wrecked shrines and ruined buildings litter the path, but by day it’s all quiet, allowing the swordsman Soh and the maiden Yoshiro to pass through quietly, doing what they can to repair the damage. By night, however, the Seethe crawl through the defiled Torii gates and look to destroy anything humans have left behind.

When you take a moment to soak it in, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is beautifully atmospheric. Exploring mountain villages during the day and slowly piecing the world back together is satisfying and cathartic, and the game refuses to sacrifice its aesthetic for a moment. This is a Japanese game in every sense of the word, from the setting to the costumes — heck, a lot of the keyart doesn’t even bother writing “Kunitsu-Gami” in English, simply leaving Japanese characters.

Part of me wants to slowly explore each area and take my time admiring everything like it’s Shenmue, but a time limit means you can’t do that during stages. Soh and Yoshiro must undo the defilement covering the mountain and its villages one by one, following the path down to the bottom.

Soh's sword attacks. / Capcom

During the day Soh can explore villages and undo some defilement by himself using his “dance-like” sword techniques. Removing all of the defilement from a village will unlock a treasure, while some pockets of defilement are hiding a human villager inside that you can recruit as a unit. As you clear up the scourge during the day you’ll earn crystals, which you can use to literally carve a path for Yoshiro, allowing her to slowly dance her way to the main Torii gate, where she can dispel the curse on the village.

Yoshiro’s dance is pretty slow, so before you get enough crystals to get her to the finish, night will inevitably fall. When night falls the Torii gate spews out Seethe, which are demonic creatures that spread further defilement. During the night phase, you must use the human units you’ve gathered and your own skills to fight the Seethe before they reach Yoshiro. This is pretty simple in the early levels but becomes more complex as you deal with larger stages, a variety of unit types, and multiple paths for enemies to take. Enemies also drop crystals, which you can reinvest in either changing the classes of your human units, or continuing the path that Yoshiro dances down.

A fearsome boss fight. / Capcom

You can raise barriers along the path thanks to a human helper that accompanies you, but he’ll only build one barrier at a time, won’t fight, and other human units can’t be assigned to build defenses in the same way. When put together what you end up with is a fascinating action RTS hybrid, one that only gets more interesting as you progress.

Early stages seem simple enough, almost mundane, with either yourself or your human units essentially able to take things on by themselves. Later stages have all-hands-on-deck as enemies pour out of multiple entrances and you try to keep all approaches covered.

Defences you can reinforce. / Capcom

The day and night cycle already makes the game feel like it’s in two halves – a build phase and a battle phase, basically – but boss battles take on yet another angle. Boss enemies are huge beasts with large health bars, and they output a lot of damage. I won’t compare it to another certain series – especially not since there’s no lock-on and the dodge is very different – but yeah, there’s the potential for the same kind of die, learn, and retry gameplay in these bigger fights. Luckily the fights take place in their own “stage” so you won’t have to fight through a whole village again before getting to them.

When you do get stuck on a bigger enemy, you’ll likely be able to progress either by replaying older stages or changing your strategy. You can spend crystals mid-fight to change the class of your units, and between stages you can spend another resource to give your unit classes permanent upgrades. Not all units are battle-focused, either, as the Thief is better at gathering resources during the day, and being respecced when the evening battle happens.

The are a large variety of enemy types. / Capcom

Once a village has been cleansed, you can revisit it to rebuild the environment, assigning the villagers you saved to rebuild buildings or shrines, for which you will receive Talismans to tweak your build, or more upgrade resources. The rebuilding efforts require you to play stages to progress, but you can replay earlier village stages or take on bosses again to beat previous times and achieve challenges. In this way, the game does a great job of encouraging you to rebuild, upgrade, and replay, with each phase – whether that’s the day and night cycle, or the rebuilding portion – feeding into one another in a way that makes everything feel like forward progress. 

It’s weird, though. Kunitsu-Gami doesn’t have a smooth difficulty curve as much as it does sudden spikes, and the way complexity ramps up makes you feel like you missed a tutorial prompt or three. But as long as you’re willing to resign yourself tor retrying certain stages (even longer ones) you’ll eventually get the hang of Kunitsu-Gami.

Carving a path to the main Torii gate is your primary goal. / Capcom

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is one of the oddest games we’ve seen from Capcom in a while. It feels like an indie idea, given a reasonable budget, the kind of game we haven’t really seen since the PS2 era. Because of that, it almost feels hard to recommend. I can’t say, ‘if you liked X, you’ll love Kunitsu-Gami’, because there’s nothing else quite like Kunitsu-Gami. And that’s probably why you should play it anyway. If you’re not an action nut or strategy master, that might be even better, as it doesn’t fit neatly into either of those genres either. It’s weird, it’s wonderful, and it’s well worth your time.

Score: 8/10

Version tested: PS5