Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Review
Is it just me, or has Capcom been on an inexplicable winning streak since around 2016? The Resident Evil 2 Remake set a new bar for revamps, Street Fighter 6 is arguably the best the series has been since Street Fighter 2 Turbo (fact), and Monster Hunter and Devil May Cry are finally enjoying mainstream success.
This development team has perfected their craft with the highly adaptable Resi Engine, churning out an endless stream of remasters, remakes, and new hits. So why, amidst all this celebration of stone-cold classics, are they releasing a "Kagura Action Strategy Game"? That doesn’t sound nearly as thrilling as watching Leon Kennedy battling Ganados in his tight shirt.
But wait. What's this? Kagura is actually a fascinating traditional form of Japanese dance involving demonic costumes and intricate movements. I’m not dance experts, but it’s like performing for a good harvest or banishing demons. It looks and sounds incredible, and the Resi Engine once again delivers stunning graphics and smooth performance, even in quality visual mode.
So, what’s the deal with this Kagura strategy game? You play as Soh, a ninja who seems to have stepped off the set of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, tasked with descending Mount Kafuku, which is overrun with defilement. Your mission involves slicing through genuinely unsettling enemies, Seethe, to protect a dancing Goddess. Collect orbs from defeated foes to carve a path for her, which she slowly dances along, giving you plenty of time to strategize and reflect on your mistakes in life.
All of this unfolds against a timer that cycles through the stages of the day. During daylight, you strategize and coordinate, utilizing local villagers and those you've rescued from defilement as violent Pikmin-like units. You direct varied groups depending on the location, training them to fight or offer aid in multiple ways. Archers and axe-wielding woodsmen are your standard troops, but you can toggle your entire squad between defense and offense to tackle bosses or aid the Goddess with the push of a button. As the game progresses, unit types become more diverse, allowing you to freeze enemies, slow them down, heal your team, transform simple farmers into sumo wrestlers, and engage in other creative tactics.
Everything your units do, from collecting items to repairing bridges, costs orbs. The core loop revolves around gathering enough orbs to keep creating a path for the Goddess while ensuring your minions are assigned the right tasks. Units can be upgraded, enhancing their power, health, and special abilities (like twin-shot arrows), keeping you engaged throughout missions. While you can speed up time during the day, the game's beautiful scenery often entices you to take your time, assess the terrain, watch for paths, use your thief to nab treasures, and strategically place your warriors to halt the Seethe's advance.
When darkness falls and the defiled portals start spewing out enemies, the intensity ramps up. Soh has various skills to unlock, enabling you to strengthen your team, focus your attacks, or teleport back to the Goddess when she's under threat. He's also quite skilled with a sword, and the game excels at blending strategy with satisfying action. Combat feels great, with Soh's combos being essential against both grounded and airborne foes.
Early levels introduce mechanics gradually, helping you understand the Goddess's movements and how to handle threats methodically. The enemies may not be particularly smart—mostly charging forward—but the timer, sheer number of foes, and constant threat of being overwhelmed create a compelling challenge.
As you descend the defiled Mount Kafuku, the game introduces split paths for the Goddess, allowing multiple route choices, larger enemies, power-boosting spots, and safe zones with enhanced defenses. Each mission ends with a boss battle, and you must repair each stage to use it as a base. This base-building aspect, though often tedious in other games, strikes a good balance here, offering meaningful activities between missions and useful rewards for repairs without feeling like a chore.
However, boss battles are a mixed bag. Some are fun, but they can sometimes feel like an unnecessary obstacle, a skill checkpoint that's occasionally unbalanced. I struggled with the third boss, which felt disproportionately difficult, disrupting the game's pacing and diminishing the tension in subsequent missions. Though the difficulty ramps up again later, this inconsistency was a minor annoyance.
I encountered some difficulty with the third boss in the game—perhaps it's just me not being the best gamers—but it does feel disproportionately hard compared to the previous missions, which throws off the pacing and makes subsequent levels feel less intense. Don't worry, though; the challenge picks up again towards the end, but this imbalance was a slight annoyance during our review period.
Despite this personal gripe, I had thoroughly enjoyed every other aspect of what Capcom has offered here. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a unique and highly charming strategy game, a breath of fresh air with tight and rewarding gameplay loops. It's perfect for playing in bite-sized chunks, with each mission and boss battle taking around 30 minutes (unless it's that tricky third boss). The detailed environments, music, animations in dancing and combat—all contribute to making it one of the most memorable strategy games I has played in a long time.
VERDICT
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a unique strategy experience that draws from traditional Japanese culture to create an incredibly detailed world to explore, one bite-sized level at a time. The strategy is tight, the animations and combat look and feel great, and the dancing, music, and base-building ensure there's always something to do in the downtime between Seethe-destroying sorties. Capcom is still on that hot streak, and I am here for it.