The world of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is supposed to be fantastical and from another era, 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’s not working in a popular genre. And it’s not aimed at an international audience. It’s just a great game, and it shows what’s possible when big publishers take a chance on something completely different.
“We believe it is important to meet the expectations of our users with new titles in the [existing] “We intend to create series and remakes, but we think it’s equally important to take on the challenge of creating something new,” Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, the game’s producer and a 20-plus-year Capcom veteran, told Kotaku in a recent email interview. “As an entirely new title, we’re taking on a number of challenges.”
In Path of the Goddess, you play as Soh, a sword-dancing warrior who must rally the villagers and protect the young girl Yoshiro on a perilous journey to purge a mountain of evil. But instead of a straightforward third-person action game that has you exploring levels and battling hordes of demons, Path of the Goddess is structured like a tower defense game in which, in addition to personally slaying your enemies in fluid arcade combat, you can also recruit villagers into unique classes and distribute them across the battlefield.
One of the keys was to make sure that neither side overshadowed the other and that 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,” Kawata said. “That way, players could enjoy more [either one]depending on their equipment and the roles assigned to the villagers.” It’s an unlikely mix that works surprisingly well and doesn’t sacrifice quality to realize its experimental creative vision. It’s also presented in a decidedly Japanese context.
“I’m a fan of old Japanese folklore and other strange folk tales, and I thought it would be interesting to integrate 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 game director Shuichi Kawata, also a longtime Capcom employee. “A big part of the idea was that I thought it would fit into tower defense. I think we managed to make every aspect of the game cohesive by integrating the player’s actions and the relationship between enemies with Japanese culture.”
Path of the Goddess features dozens of intricate and evocative enemy designs for the evil spirits you face, called The Seethe. Some have heads shaped like massive mouths with tongues protruding from them. Others resemble pearly white tumors floating in the air with dangerous hooks hanging from their bases. In one stage, you face off against a massive, corrupted tree whose roots come to life and attack you like a giant mutated earthworm. Their variety and level of detail is one of the game’s main assets that sets it apart.
But the other main element that makes Path of the Goddess stand out is how every little detail of the game is tailor-made and carefully considered. “Mixing multiple gameplay elements will always increase the complexity of the game, but it’s important to carefully choose what is and isn’t necessary for the game,” Kawata said. “In order to prevent the game from becoming a grinding game, I think it’s important to allow users to think about what they should do based on the gameplay elements provided, and the result should lead to a sense of accomplishment.”
The user interface is neatly integrated with the rest of the game’s look and feel. To access the main menu, you must travel to a village and visit Yoshiro’s tent, where a table in front of it holds the various ornaments, artifacts, and other items you’ve collected throughout your journey that also serve as power-ups, status-boosting relics, and other unlockable upgrades in the game. You level up your villagers’ roles 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, sits in a nearby box that you can examine at your leisure.
Path of the Goddess features over 20 levels, each consisting of two phases. The result is three to five waves of enemies per level, with numerous checkpoints. While no gameplay ideas were discarded during development, playtesting revealed that most of the levels originally felt too long and drawn out, so they ended up shortening them. “Many people commented that this part of the game was tiring and lengthened the playtime, so we decided to shorten it and increase the pace of the game.”
The game feels stripped down to its bare essentials, preserving only what’s elegant, polished, and meaningful to the overall experience. While other games are about ticking boxes on a marketing ploy, Path of the Goddess feels devoid of any bloat. It’s the opposite of the open-world RPG with skill trees, gear scores, and random loot that bloats itself with hours of extra content just to hit a certain number on How long to beat.
“I think 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 and use of the sand is fixed, but you are free to use the sand as you wish.” That’s part of why I think people keep calling it PS2 cult classic or lost PS3 game. It seems made for an era where a good idea, cool looks, and fun gameplay were enough, if not to sell millions of copies, at least to convince a reputable publisher to take a chance on something new.
Before bringing Path of the Goddess to the table, Kawata directed Shinsekai: Into the Depths, an underwater action puzzle game on Apple Arcade that was later ported to the Switch. Much of that team carried over to Path of the Goddess, but developers from other bigger-budget Capcom franchises like Resident Evil also joined the project, bringing additional know-how and experience with the RE Engine that has become increasingly standard across Capcom’s portfolio (Monster Hunter is also making the switch with Monster Hunter Wilds). Still, Hirabayashi said the team has remained “relatively compact for the size of the production volume.”
Unlike many of those games, Path of the Goddess is priced at $50, just below the premium price of next-gen games like Street Fighter 6 and Dragon’s Dogma 2, but just above cheaper Steam games like Helldivers 2, whose $40 price tag is widely considered a key part of its runaway commercial success. I asked what’s behind that choice, which some PC gamers still find too high.
“As a completely new title, we faced a number of challenges, such as a ‘unique Japanese-inspired setting’ and a ‘new gameplay experience’ that combines action and tower defense,” Hirabayashi said. “We decided to set the most affordable price possible to allow as many people as possible to get their hands on this game.” He noted that the game’s size is comparable to a full-priced title, but Capcom can be seen hedging its bets in the fact that Path of the Goddess is also “free” for paid Game Pass members on Xbox and PC. When I asked earlier at Summer Game Fest how this deal came about, Hirabayashi said the goal was to try to get the game in front of as many people as possible, given that it was an unfamiliar IP in an unusual genre.
I hope it works. We’ve seen that a bold vision and a cult of fan enthusiasm aren’t always enough to guarantee a sequel or a chance to continue building on the work that came before. That’s now the sad story of Hi-Fi Rush, Tango Gameworks’ 2023 GOTY contender. The studio was founded by Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami (Kawata and Hirabayashi were part of the cinematics team on Resident Evil 4, Mikami’s last), who left a year before Microsoft announced it was shutting down Tango Gameworks.
As skyrocketing development costs push publishers to retreat into already-best-selling titles and popular franchises, there’s a real fear that the high-end video game industry will calcify even more than it has in recent years, with remakes, sequels, and live-action lottery machines. When I asked if we might see more experiences like Capcom’s Path of the Goddess, Hirabayashi said he couldn’t comment on company policy. “However,” he added, “as an individual, I’m very grateful that so many people within the company have been willing to support me in bringing this title to consumers.”