The world of Kunitsu-Gami: The Path of the Goddess is supposed to be fantastic 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 doesn’t work in a popular genre. And it doesn’t appeal to an international audience. It’s just a great gameand it shows what’s possible when big publishers take a chance on something completely different.
“We believe it’s important to meet our users’ expectations with new titles in (existing) series and remakes, but we also believe it’s 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. ““As an entirely new title, we face a number of challenges.”
The Path of the Goddess lets you play as sword-dancing warrior Soh, who must rally villagers and protect young girl Yoshiro on a perilous journey to purge evil from a mountain. But instead of a straightforward third-person action game that has you exploring levels and slashing hordes of demons, The Path of the Goddess is structured as a tower defense game where, in addition to killing enemies yourself in fluid arcade combat, you can also recruit villagers into unique classes and command them on the battlefield.
One of the keys was making sure neither side overshadowed the other, and that each was viable in its own way. “We didn’t want to force players to use both equally, so we spent a lot of time adjusting the balance between action and strategy,” Kawata said. “That way, players could get more out of (one) depending on their gear and the villager roles they were assigned.” It’s an unlikely mix that works surprisingly well, and doesn’t sacrifice quality to deliver on its experimental creative vision. It’s also set against a decidedly Japanese backdrop.
“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.”
The Path of the Goddess features dozens of intricate and evocative enemy designs for the evil spirits you face, called The Seethe. Some have massive mouth-like heads 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 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 main ways the game punches above its weight.
But the other main thing that helps The Path of the Goddess What stands out is that every little detail of the game is tailor-made and carefully considered. “Mixing multiple game 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 game 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.
There are more than 20 steps in The Path of the Goddessand each of them has two phases. The result is three to five waves of enemies per stage with numerous checkpoints. While no gameplay ideas were discarded during development, testing revealed that most of the stages 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’s progression.”
The game feels stripped down to its bare essentials, preserving only what is elegant, refined, and meaningful to the overall experience. Where other games are reduced to ticking boxes in a marketing strategy, The Path of the Goddess seems devoid of bloat. It’s the opposite of the open-world RPG with skill trees, gear scores, and random loot that’s supplemented with hours of extra content just to hit a certain number 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 launching The Path of the GoddessKawata realized Shinsekai: Into the Depthsan underwater action puzzle game on Apple Arcade that was later ported to Switch. Much of that team carried over The Path of the Goddessbut developers of other bigger budget Capcom franchises like resident Evil They also joined Capcom, bringing additional know-how and experience with the RE Engine which has become increasingly standard across Capcom’s portfolio (Monster Hunter also moves towards her with Wild Monster Hunters). However, Hirabayashi said the team remains “relatively compact for the size of the production volume.”
However, unlike many of these games, The Path of the Goddess is priced at $50, just below the next-gen premium price 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 part of its runaway commercial success. I asked what’s behind the decision, which some PC gamers still find too high.
“As an entirely 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 price as affordable as possible to allow as many people as possible to get their hands on this game.” He pointed out that the game’s size is comparable to a full-priced game, but Capcom can be seen hedging its bets in the fact that The 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 unknown 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 previous work. Now this is the sad story of Rush to high fidelityTango Gameworks’ GOTY 2023 contender. The studio was founded by resident Evil Director Shinji Mikami (Kawata and Hirabayashi were part of the cinematic team for Resident Evil 4the last one directed by Mikami), who left a year before Microsoft announced the closure of Tango Gameworks.
As skyrocketing development costs push publishers to fall back on proven sellers and popular licenses, there is a real fear that the top end of the video game industry will calcify even more than it has in recent years through remakes, sequels, and live-action lottery machines. When I asked if we might see more experiments like The Path of the Goddess Capcom’s Hirabayashi said he could not comment on the company’s policy. “However,” he added, “as an individual, I am very grateful that so many people within the company have agreed to support me in bringing this title to users.”