Bring a maiden to the shrine. Kill all demons that stand in her way. Remove the impurity from a mountain and restore the natural harmony and splendor of the land. This is Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess in short, and one of my favorite things about it is how little it deviates from that humble, straightforward concept. In a sea of bloated sequels and creatively bankrupt imitations, Path of the Goddess is a fun, focused mashup of strategic planning and action gameplay that doesn’t get lost in details.
Manufactured by Capcom and available on July 19th for PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC. Path of the Goddess combines the third-person action feeling of a Ninja Gaiden with Tower Defense Management for people who hate the way these words sound together. Think transmission of the warHorde mode with swords instead of pistols and the sensitivity of the PS2 classic Eyes. One moment you’re assigning roles to your allies and commanding them across the battlefield, the next you’re frantically spamming combos to try and fend off sturdy enemies that are about to kill everyone.
Buy Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess: Best buy | Humble Bundle
Based on Japanese folklore, Path of the Goddess blends history and myth to create a beautiful and captivating journey that feels like playing through a series of poems. You control Soh, a masked warrior guarding the maiden Yoshiro, who is on her way to get rid of evil spirits called Festering Seethe that have taken over a mountain and corrupted its inhabitants. There is almost no dialogue and barely any story. Cutscenes are short and rare. Instead Path of the Goddess
Each stage begins at dawn. You run around, building defenses and traps, cleansing animals, plants, and villagers of impurities, and collecting translucent pink orbs left behind that serve as an important resource. These orbs are spent to clear a path forward for Yoshiro so she can slowly perform her cleansing ritual across the map. They are also needed to promote villagers into various roles, from melee lumberjacks and long-range archers to shaman healers and sturdy sumo wrestlers. Spend all the orbs on Yoshiro and you’re defenseless. Waste them all on your allies and she’s finished.
After a few minutes, night falls and the Seethe come through the gates and attack in waves. While the villagers can easily defeat small enemies, larger enemies require quick attention. Here Path of the Goddess‘ Action gameplay comes into play. Soh has simple, single-button combos that do decent damage, but adding a heavy attack to the end of each combo strings together a series of dancing sword attacks that you can control but can’t cancel. It’s like winding up a toy ballerina and then watching her slash her way through hordes of enemies. It’s a small but novel innovation that makes combat feel fluid and rewarding even at its simplest and most repetitive.
Path of the Goddess But that’s not all. Soh has a dodge and block attack with a timed block mechanic that adds extra depth. Repeated attacks will stagger an opponent for a short time, but Soh’s block can also be broken if used too many times in a row, leaving him frozen and vulnerable for a few seconds. Soh also has a special gauge that slowly fills up, allowing him to perform various ultimate attacks that can change the course of a fight at crucial moments.
It’s a tight combat loop that slowly gets more interesting as you progress through the game as you unlock new skills and find items that give you special advantages. A small skill wheel lets you invest in a few dozen upgrades, such as a riskier but more rewarding fighting stance, as well as charge attacks that do more damage to an opponent’s stagger meter. The result is moment-to-moment combat that makes you feel strong and agile, but not overpowered. It’s built on enough customizable elements that you feel like you have some meaningful options for strategizing with each new encounter.
The other big part of this strategy is your villagers. Each time you defeat a boss, you’ll get a new mask that represents a different role that you can assign to the villagers that will help you on your journey. You’ll start each mission over and incorporate everyone you meet along the way into your demon-hunting crusade. Basic roles require fewer bullets but aren’t as powerful. Roles like the Sumo, who attacks enemies, or the Gunner, who has a low rate of fire but does a lot of damage, cost more.
All have different strengths, weaknesses and use cases, and one of the many things Path of the Goddess right is that none of them feel obsolete or redundant. My favorite by far, though, is the Wizard. He charges a spell that gives you a map-wide super spell that you can use immediately if they’re still alive. It feels like you’ve got a nuke killstreak in call of Duty and it has saved my ass so many times.
Boss fights are usually about the design and animation of the enemies, not the unique mechanics. Most of them look incredible, even if they weren’t the absolute highlight of the game for me in terms of gameplay. Few things feel better in Path of the Goddess than throwing a giant Seethe on your back and then calling in your troops to unleash hell. I still think about the giant poison toad that shot my gunners all at once with giant fireworks, killing them while I was still out of action.
There is only one thing that is slow Path of the Goddess below and it’s the settlement rebuilding section. After liberating a village, you can go back and explore it free of enemies, which mostly means going to different sections and assigning workers to repair a house, bridge, gate, or shrine that must be finished after a certain number of battles. There’s no real need to prioritize one repair line over another, and the most helpful rewards come for completing each repair in a specific map location, meaning you’ll have to get everything done eventually anyway. As such, every cool battle is followed by a cumbersome and perfunctory upkeep phase that would have been easier to manage from the map’s main menu.
It’s a not-quite-perfect system as far as strategy games go, one that stands out in part because of how balanced and thoughtful the rest of the game is. One thing I particularly love about Path of the Goddess is the UI, which feels integrated into the actual gameplay experience. Soh’s health is displayed on a scroll next to his body, the upgrade menu for his skills is a sword hilt where you can swap out the tassel and runes, and the save screen is a long sheet of folded paper that gets stamped.
It’s the little touches that make an already great game even better, and they remind me of the PS2 era when more games felt like they were trying to forge their own path rather than following in the footsteps of what everyone else had already done. It’s this spirit of authenticity and unwavering commitment to a distinctive vision that Path of the Goddess so refreshing right now, especially with this budget, this production and this quality. When so many games feel like they were made by everyone for no one, Path of the Goddess feels like something unique, made for people who never knew how much they would love it. Such creative fluctuations don’t always work out. Path of the Goddess is definitely one that does.
Buy Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess: Best buy | Humble Bundle
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