Kokushin no Shinto might be the hottest game of the summer, and you can play it right now

If there’s any publisher I trust to be a bit eccentric, it’s Capcom. The results of Capcom’s experiments are usually at least very interesting, but they’re also often very good. You can see the unexpected brilliance of Devil May Cry, Ghost Trick, or the mechanical joys of Dead Rising emerge from the ashes of a rejected Resident Evil 4 prototype. Basically, when Capcom tries these things, it succeeds at a pretty high rate.

Even though I knew this, I had low expectations when I sat down to play Goshin: Path of the Goddess. I’d seen the trailers; it looked like a cheaper game, clearly a bit of experimentation on the part of the developers. Well, maybe I should have known better, remembering my history – because I was blown away by it. Even with just a short demo, I think I like this game.

Admittedly, this game is like someone put me in an MRI machine or something and scanned me to figure out what kind of games I would be drawn to. It’s a mix of real-time strategy (which I love), tower defense (which I think is the best “Hangover” genre), and a little hack-and-slash action and RPG-style progression as the icing on the cake.

It’s a strange game, and therefore difficult to market and explain – which is probably why Capcom didn’t initially reveal the game’s name – and it’s hard to informationWhen I talked to developers, it became clear to me that this was also the case within Capcom.

“We had to get it to a playable state in order to really show it to other team members and other people internally,” Kunitsu-Gami producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi told me. “In order to show the aspects we wanted to incorporate, it really needed to be in a visible form to be able to discuss what we wanted to do.”

I feel that pain. Trying to explain this game to you right now is a huge challenge. At the risk of descending into boring “you do this” baby first preview content, let me strip it down and try to do this:

The “Goddess Road” in the game’s title refers to the actual path that the goddess character takes in each level, walking barefoot through scenes based on Japanese history and folklore in an art style vaguely reminiscent of woodblock prints. Your goal in each level is to protect the goddess as she takes this path.

Each stage has a fairly fast day-night cycle. During the day, you are free to set traps, recruit villagers, and arrange your defenses any way you like. At night, demonic enemies emerge from portals, and it is your job to use these units and defenses to protect the goddess – trigger traps, directly command the villagers you “train” to become unit types such as warriors, archers, healers, etc., and finally pick up your own sword in a third-person hack-and-slash game. Enemies killed yield a large number of resources, which can then be used to increase defenses, upgrade units, and so on.

Ultimately, your goal is to protect the goddess. The game is one big escort mission – but not like That. This is The very good kind escort mission.

“Our basic idea was mainly based on tower defense games,” explains director Shuichi Kawata. “Based on that, we wanted to add some action to it.

“We wanted to add something that could really change the flow of the game. So when you control someone, that person can change the battlefield. By adding action, it adds an exhilarating experience that makes it a fusion of tower defense and action.”

Once placed, units are relatively static. They’ll obediently hold their position, which means you can place them strategically like towers. Some units are more tower-like than others – Archers will fire at demons from a distance, and are particularly good at taking down flying enemies. Warriors, meanwhile, will physically engage any enemies that get too close to them. More unit types will unlock as you progress, and unit caps will vary from stage to stage – some levels will have you managing up to 12 units, and that’s not counting the environmental traps and other elements you can set up and use. Between levels, you’ll have the opportunity to upgrade your options and equip equipment, which changes the game mode.

The point is, there’s a fair amount of depth to how you approach any given stage, and despite a bit of an action-type tinge, there’s a crunchy RTS element here that I really enjoyed.

“You can focus on making it an action-centric game, or you can make it a pure strategy game where you stand back and just give orders to the villagers – both approaches are possible in the game,” Kawata said of the game’s depth.

“You have the freedom to tailor it to strategize your playthrough the way you want. So you can go all out and be very action-focused, or you can use amulets to give you lots of different stats and effects, which can change the options you have and allow you to engage in a very active focused game or a strategy game.”

“I found that using [protagonist] Very interesting, so I will let the villagers take more actions to protect [Goddess] “I need to teach Yoshiro and clear the way so that I can focus on the mainstream and fighting,” Hirabayashi said, giving an example.

“But I personally really like RTS games, simulation games – so I tend to focus on the villagers,” Kawata added. “Of course I control Soh, but I tend to command from behind. But I mainly focus on the villagers and give orders – that’s my style.”

The result is that it feels… good? Still, I don’t think China is for everyone. Some will think it’s a crappy action game; others will think it’s a compromised real-time strategy game. Some will hear the word “tower defense” and immediately turn it off. I want you to know, though, that after playing some of the demo, I firmly believe that these people are wrong, and they should feel bad. Because some things outstanding here.

Any game that can get you into the groove of a gameplay demo without giving you all the context is a potential winner. Here, I was instantly in the mech; quickly opening menus to command units to move around to cover my blind spots while guiding Soh to manually carve a path through the demons. When I was alerted that they were approaching the Goddess, I quickly returned and ordered units to form a defensive line while I did so. It felt very satisfying.

A lot of this comes down to precise controls, which are obviously the point. Even in a pure expression of the RTS genre, it’s not easy to implement RTS on consoles – so doing it in a game that also doubles as a third-person action game is even more difficult. The developers talked about spending countless hours optimizing this – not only on controllers, but on PC, the game will support controllers, but also keyboard and mouse control schemes, which are more naturally conducive to RTS and tower defense elements, but then need to be better fine-tuned to suit action games.

All in all, I’m excited. Any game that breaks the traditional labels of a genre is exciting – and one that immediately inspires people’s minds and possibilities in actual practice is even better. You know what’s better than That? In fact, the release cycle for Goddess of the Realm of the Goddess is very fast – it was only announced a month ago, and it will be released this month, in a few weeks.

There is also a demo version now – So instead of imagining how the conventions of these genres fit together, you can just try it out for yourself. I think it has a good chance of being one of the most interesting and exciting games of 2024 – Not a game that’s going to blow up the charts, but probably a game that’s going to be a hit.

God of the Country: Path of the Goddess It will be released on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on July 14. A demo is currently available on all platforms.