Every now and then, you come across a game that you knew next to nothing about and is from a company that, last time they under-marketed a game, ended up being Exoprimal. But that is where we are today with Capcom’s newest release, Kunitsu-Gami Path of the Goddess, an interesting mix of Devil May Cry-style combat and those flash balloon games you used to play during computer class back in elementary. When I first realized what this game I was a bit turned off, but I gave it a go, and hours have gone by, and I’m maxing out every single space I can place a defense item before this next round, to say this is in the running for most underrated game of the year is an understatement, it’s in the running for game of the year based on the amount of fun I had while playing.
The game takes place in a mythical version of ancient Japan, where you play as Soh, and are given the task of defending the local villages when night falls in order to bring peace back to the valley and the local mountain Kafuku. The plot I can best describe as passable it was entertaining, but it wasn’t what was keeping me going throughout my time with the game. The graphics of the game are quite impressive, which is starting to sound like a repeating note as Capcom, with each passing game, has been making the RE Engine even better than before, and here it shows that by asking, what if we took the elements of Okami and remove the cartoon element and make it photorealistic and stylish, and that is what we have here. Okami is the best example I think of when talking about this game because this feels like a Capcom we haven’t seen since the experimental days of the PS2 when they were putting out games like God Hand and Killer7, something that doesn’t feel it was made to make a mark on a chart but was made because a team really wanted to see this idea through to the end.
As for the gameplay, as I said earlier, the game is a mix of hack and slash and tower defense, which, when you hear that at first, your mind instantly thinks of how they are going to screw that up. I thought the same thing too at first but as I was getting more used to how the game wanted me to play, I was so able to get the best out of the current situation. The game is designed in a linear fashion, and occasionally, you will be placed in these combat sections where you need to cleanse the area to proceed to the next checkpoint of the campaign, those being a Torii gate. During these sections you hack and slash your way through enemies, but you can also put up items and additional NPCs to help you, in fact one method I found was creating a conga line of NPC support to wear down the enemy so I could finish them off. Once I realized that method strategy from the old Flash games era, it started to come back to me all at once. I also I love that the game doesn’t let you cheese combat moments by finding the one element that breaks everything like a twig, you have to evolve and come up with new strategies on the spot as you are being overwhelmed by enemies filling up the screen.
As for some of the issues I had with the game, and they are minor, you have the usual glitches here which only one annoyed me, and it was a missed hit detection with one of the bosses and them making it through my defenses, and it wasn’t low damage it was not taking any damage. The game story is a bit middle of the road once you reach the climax of the game, but at that point I doubt you will be that invested in the story because that’s not the games main focus, it’s to be a unique experience that you can’t get anywhere else. So should you give this game a chance, yes you should, in fact while playing the game on my PS5 I realized that the game is up on Xbox Game Pass, so if you have that service I would give it a shot. Because this is easily a game that is not for everyone, but for those who do give it a shot, they might end up loving this game and pushing it onto others so that it can get a larger reach, and we can get more experimental games like this in the future.
Score: 9 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5