Capcom is totally dialled in proper now; all the pieces it touches appears to show to gold, from main releases to smaller experiments. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess actually matches into the latter class, and it is a terrific time for followers of real-time technique with a twist.
With the ability to management a hero character in amongst the frenzy of a battle you are dictating won’t be utterly new, nevertheless it’s given a contemporary feeling by that battle being very a lot tower defence-inflected. Over the course of a ten to 12-hour playtime, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a delight, albeit with a few tough edges. In actual fact, you may find yourself wishing it have been just a bit longer.
The sport’s story is informed virtually solely with out dialogue. It opens with the participant character, Soh, making an attempt to stave off an invasion of demons known as Seethe from the highest of his mountain residence, defending the native shrine maiden Yoshiro as she performs rites to banish them. They’re overcome, although, and the mountain is overrun; the sport is actually a procession down its slopes, in retreat however cleaning the land as they go.
This manifests in a mission-based construction — as you wind your method down a marketing campaign map you may cease at shrines, deserted villages, and tunnels to cease off and tackle each’s problem. As soon as you’ve got accomplished a location, you are tasked with allocating sources to restore it over time, a easy and ultimately barely tedious little bit of base-building that yields improve sources and unlockables. Diving into these missions, although, is the true meat of the sport.
Kunitsu-Gami places you in Soh’s sneakers in a sequence of arenas as he guides Yoshiro down a set observe to a gate she should purify. Often you may select between two branching paths, however both method, you may nonetheless be dealing with the identical activity. You may have a daytime interval by which to run across the stage, discovering patches of demonic power to purify your self, incomes factors that may then be spent on the villagers you discover and free across the place, changing them into martial models.
At first, these can be restricted to easy archers and axemen, however earlier than lengthy you may unlock extra pricey choices which have the facility to, for instance, freeze enemies in place briefly, shoot explosive cannonballs from a distance, and even heal their fellow models. You may place these round Yoshiro’s last place because the day falls into evening, at which level the fight will begin, requiring you to outlive till morning.
This implies the arrival of enemies from set areas: festering gates that spill demons out and see them tramp in direction of the maiden, slowed by your models, any obstacles you’ve got managed to assemble, and your personal abilities. Soh is a swordsman, in any case, and you may sweep by means of fields of foes extra devastatingly than the models you order round. Which means every evening divides your consideration in two — the place you need to be, combating hearth and slicing demons down, and the place your models must be, offering overlaying hearth or blocking a lane solely.
It is a actually enjoyable stability, with a traditional rock-paper-scissors factor to your alternative of models based mostly on the enemies arriving, and additional twists are thrown in pretty often (every used a minimum of a few occasions) to make issues tougher. There are levels the place you are not in a position to participate in fight your self, and may solely present orders; others see you on a floating armada of boats, struggling to cease any of the crafts from being sunk; one other kind requires you to maintain lanterns lit across the stage to have the ability to goal enemies.
Your capability to really give instructions comes by means of a time-pausing menu that allows you to cycle by means of your models and place them across the map, though you are restricted by your discipline of view and site; there isn’t any easy method to go searching the entire map whereas paused. You additionally need to be proper subsequent to a unit to heal it or change its function (which you may have to do typically in later levels), so put together for Soh’s comparatively sluggish motion velocity to change into somewhat annoying.
Soh’s precise fight controls are serviceable however noticeably nowhere close to as easy as a great Dynasty Warriors character, not to mention a Dante or Bayonetta. This arguably helps to stability your energy on the battlefield, nevertheless it makes investing in Soh’s skill-tree lack attract in comparison with upgrading your models’ capabilities. That improve tree is totally refundable at any time, although, which is nice for experimenting with completely different models and techniques.
Most levels final for multiple evening, and sometimes a handful of days as you tempo your self by means of maps, stopping on the proper second to get a buff for the evening and affording your self extra time to construct enhancements, like cannons or sharpshooting towers. Managing your models by means of these repeated engagements is difficult enjoyable, backed up by beneficiant nightly checkpointing which implies you may not often, if ever, need to restart a complete mission from scratch in case you fail.
Nonetheless, it is honest to say that, by the point credit rolled, we have been nonetheless on the lookout for a really gruelling stage — the chance to essentially rating a backs-against-the-wall victory in opposition to the percentages. These postpone by excessive problem could be reassured that Kunitsu-Gami is extra approachable than you may suppose. What do generally demand extra ability are the boss fights that you just unlock between most levels. These act as necessary obstacles to your progress, some introducing new, extra highly effective foes, whereas others are somewhat extra distinctive (and admittedly, generally tiresome to really struggle).
From a top-down perspective however with numerous digital camera management, the sport seems to be fairly beautiful at occasions, though it is somewhat low on environmental element. These demon fashions are ravishingly bizarre, to make up for it, and we did not have any efficiency points whereas enjoying. Kunitsu-Gami’s soundtrack deserves point out, too, a stunning mix of easy and calm melodies with funky prog-rock in its most heated moments. Additionally on the sound entrance, you may need to flip down your DualSense controller’s speaker within the PS5’s system settings, as the sport sadly makes pretty obnoxiously fixed use of it with no toggle to show it off.
Conclusion
It won’t really feel fairly as new as its billing, however Kunitsu-Gami remains to be a stunning little sport, with a severely engrossing hook that’ll have you ever wishing it was longer than it truly is. The plates it retains spinning are spectacular, even when it is truly somewhat slight within the last weighing.