The world of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is supposed to feel fantastical and from another time, but the game itself also feels like an anachronism. Something that shouldn’t exist in 2024. It’s not a sequel to a successful franchise. It doesn’t work in a popular genre. And it’s not aimed at an international audience. It’s simply an excellent gameand it shows what is possible when major publishers dare to do something completely different.
“We believe it is important to respond to our users’ expectations with new titles. [existing] series and remakes, but we also believe it is equally important to take on the challenge of creating something new,” said the game’s producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, a Capcom veteran of more than 20 years, My city in a recent email interview. “Since this is a completely new title, we face a number of challenges.”
Path of the Goddess In this game, you play the sword-dancing warrior Soh, who must gather villagers and protect the maiden Yoshiro on a dangerous journey to banish evil from a mountain. But instead of a straightforward third-person action game where you explore levels and fight through hordes of demons, Path of the Goddess is structured like a tower defense game where you can not only kill enemies yourself in fluid arcade combat, but also divide villagers into unique classes and command them across the battlefield.
A key was to make sure that neither side overshadowed the other and each was viable in its own way. “We didn’t want to force players to use both elements equally, so we spent a lot of time adjusting the balance between action and strategy,” said Kawata. “This allowed players to enjoy more [either one]depending on their equipment and assigned villager roles.” It’s an unusual mashup that works surprisingly well, not sacrificing quality to achieve its experimental creative vision. It’s also presented in a context that’s unashamedly Japanese.
“I’m a fan of old Japanese folklore and other bizarre folk tales, and I thought it would be interesting to incorporate them into a game set in the mountains of Japan, where a messenger from the other world appears every night and you have to fend him off and protect the gods,” said the game’s director, Shuichi Kawata, also a longtime Capcom employee. “An important part of this idea was that I thought it would be compatible with tower defense. I think we were able to make every aspect of the game cohesive by incorporating player actions and the relationship between enemies into Japanese culture.”
Path of the Goddess features dozens of intricate and impressive enemy designs for the evil spirits you face, called The Seethe. Some have heads shaped like giant mouths with tongues hanging out. Others look like pearly white tumors floating through the air with dangerous hooks hanging from the bottom. In one level, you face a giant corrupted tree whose roots come to life and attack you like a giant mutated earthworm. Their variety and detail are one of the main reasons the game punches above its weight class.
But the other important thing that helps Path of the Goddess What is striking is how tailored and meticulous every little detail of the game seems. “Mixing multiple game elements always increases the complexity of the game, but it is important to carefully choose what is necessary for the game and what is not,” said Kawata. “To prevent the game from becoming a ‘grinding’ game, I think it is important to give users the opportunity to think about what to do based on the given game materials, and the result should lead to a sense of achievement.”
The interface is carefully integrated with the look of the rest of the game. To access the main menu, you must go to a village and visit Yoshiro’s tent, where a table in front of her collects the various ornaments, artifacts, and other objects you’ve collected during your journey, which double as power-ups, status-enhancing relics, and other unlockable upgrades to the game. You increase the role of your villagers by decorating their masks, and the save screen is a long horizontal piece of folded paper that you stamp with each new file. One of the game’s collectibles, an assortment of desserts, lies in a nearby crate for you to examine at your leisure.
There are over 20 levels in Path of the Goddessand each has two phases. The result is three to five waves of enemies per level with generous checkpoints. No gameplay ideas were discarded during development, but testing showed that most levels felt too long and drawn out at the beginning, so they ended up being shorter. “Many people said this part of the game was tedious and dragged out the game time, so we decided to shorten it and increase the pace of the gameplay.”
The game seems to be reduced to the essentials, only what is elegant, sophisticated and important for the overall experience is retained. While other games degenerate into mere ticking of boxes in a marketing strategy, Path of the Goddess feels free of bloat. It’s the opposite of the open-world RPG with skill trees, gear scores, and random loot that bloats with extra hours of content just to reach a certain number How long does it take to hit?.
“I think that the sandbox in a playground is similar to this situation, and I used this concept to explain it to my team,” Kawata said. “The scope is fixed and the use of the sand is fixed, but you can use the sand however you want.” This is one of the reasons why I think people keep using it as PS2 cult classic or lost PS3 game. It seems tailor-made for an era when a good idea, cool looks and fun gameplay were enough, if not to sell millions of copies, then at least to convince a well-known publisher to try something new.
Before pitching Path of the GoddessDirected by Kawata Shinsekai: Into the Depthsan underwater action puzzle game on Apple Arcade that was later ported to Switch. Much of this team was transferred to Path of the Goddessbut developers of other Capcom franchises with bigger budgets like resident Evil also joined the team, bringing additional know-how and experience with the RE Engine, which is increasingly becoming standard across the Capcom portfolio (Monster Hunter also moves there with Monster Hunter World). Nevertheless, according to Hirabayashi, the team remained “relatively compact in relation to the production volume.”
Unlike many of these games, Path of the Goddess costs $50, just below the premium price of the next generation of things like Street Fighter 6 And Dragon’s Dogma 2but just above cheaper Steam games like Helldivers 2whose $40 price tag is considered by many to be a key factor in its sales success. I asked what led to this decision, which still seems too high for some PC gamers.
“As this is a completely new title, we faced a number of challenges, such as a ‘unique Japanese-inspired setting’ and a ‘new gaming experience’ that combines action and tower defense,” said Hirabayashi. “We decided to set the price as affordable as possible so that as many people as possible could enjoy this game.” He stressed that the size of the game is comparable to a full-price game, but you can see that Capcom is hedging its bets by Path of the Goddess is also “free” for paying Game Pass members on Xbox and PC. When I previously asked at Summer Game Fest how this deal came about, Hirabayashi said the goal was to get the game in front of as many people as possible, since it’s an unknown IP in an unusual genre.
I hope it works. We’ve seen that a bold vision that works and a cult of enthusiasm among fans aren’t always enough to guarantee a sequel or a chance to build on previous work. This is the sad story of Hi-Fi noisethe GOTY contender 2023 from Tango Gameworks. This studio was founded by resident Evil Director Shinji Mikami (Kawata and Hirabayashi were on the film team for Resident Evil 4the last film directed by Mikami), who left the company a year before Microsoft announced it would close Tango Gameworks.
With exploding development costs forcing publishers to retreat to proven best sellers and popular licenses, there is a real fear that the top end of the games industry could become even more ossified by remakes, sequels and live service lottery machines than it has been in recent years. When I asked if we could see more experiments like Path of the Goddess Hirabayashi, a Capcom employee, said he could not comment on the company’s policies. “However,” he added, “as a private individual, I am very grateful that there were so many people in the company who agreed with me to deliver this title to users.”
