The world of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is supposed to really feel fantastical and from one other time, however the sport itself additionally appears like an anachronism. One thing that shouldn’t exist in 2024. It’s not a sequel in a success franchise. It’s not working in a well-liked style. And it’s not pandering to a world viewers. It’s simply a wonderful sport, and it exhibits what’s attainable when huge publishers take an opportunity on one thing utterly totally different.
“We imagine you will need to reply to the expectations of our customers with new titles in [existing] sequence and remakes, however we additionally imagine it’s equally essential to tackle the problem of making one thing new,” the sport’s producer, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, a greater than 20-year veteran of Capcom, instructed Kotaku in a current e mail interview. “As a totally new title, we’re taking up plenty of challenges.”
Path of the Goddess has you play because the sword-dancing warrior Soh, who should rally villagers and defend the Maiden Yoshiro on a treacherous journey to purge evil from a mountain. However as an alternative of an easy third-person motion sport that has you exploring ranges and slicing by hordes of demons, Path of the Goddess is structured like a tower protection sport the place, along with killing enemies your self in fluid arcade fight, you too can conscript villagers into distinctive courses and get them organized across the battlefield.
One key was to guarantee that neither facet overshadowed the opposite and every was viable in its personal means. “We didn’t need to drive gamers to have to make use of each components equally, so we spent a whole lot of time adjusting the steadiness between motion and technique,” Kawata stated. “Due to this fact, gamers may take pleasure in extra [of either one], relying on their gear and assigned villager roles.” It’s an unlikely mashup that works surprisingly properly and doesn’t sacrifice high quality to understand its experimental inventive imaginative and prescient. It’s additionally offered in a context that’s unabashedly Japanese.
“I’m a fan of outdated Japanese folklore and different weird folktales, and I assumed it could be attention-grabbing to include them right into a sport set within the mountains of Japan, the place a messenger from the opposite world seems each night time and you could fend them off and defend the gods,” stated the sport’s director, Shuichi Kawata, additionally a long-time Capcom worker. “A significant a part of this concept was that I assumed it could be appropriate with tower protection. I feel we have been capable of make each side of the sport cohesive by incorporating participant actions and the connection between the enemies with Japanese tradition.”
Path of the Goddess options dozens of intricate and evocative enemy designs for the evil spirits you face, referred to as The Seethe. Some have heads formed like huge mouths with tongues jutting out of them. Others appear to be pearly white tumors floating by the air with harmful hooks hanging off the underside of them. In a single stage you face a large corrupted tree whose roots come alive and assault you want a large mutant earthworm. Their selection and degree of element is without doubt one of the key methods the sport punches above its weight.
However the different essential factor that helps Path of the Goddess stand out is simply how bespoke and thoroughly thought of each small element of the sport feels. “Mixing a number of sport components will all the time improve the complexity of the sport, however you will need to select fastidiously what’s and isn’t mandatory for the sport,” stated Kawata. “As a way to forestall the sport from turning into a ‘grinding’ sport, I feel you will need to permit the customers to consider what to do primarily based on the given sport supplies, and the consequence ought to result in a way of accomplishment.”
The UI is fastidiously built-in with the remainder of the sport’s feel and look. To entry the principle menu, you need to go right into a village and go to Yoshiro’s tent the place a desk in entrance of her collects the assorted ornaments, artifacts, and different objects you’ve gathered all through your journey that double as the sport’s power-ups, status-enhancing relics, and different unlockable upgrades. You improve the extent of your villagers’ roles by adorning their masks, and the save display screen is a protracted horizontal piece of folded paper that you simply stamp with every new file. One of many sport’s collectibles, an array of desserts, sit in a close-by field so that you can look at at your leisure.
There are over 20 levels in Path of the Goddess, and each has two phases to it. The result’s three to 5 enemy waves per stage with beneficiant checkpointing. Whereas no gameplay concepts have been discarded throughout its growth, testing revealed that many of the levels initially felt too lengthy and drawn out, in order that they ended up making them shorter. “Many individuals commented that this a part of the sport was tiring and made the play time longer, so we determined to shorten it and improve the tempo of the sport development.”
The sport feels stripped all the way down to its necessities, preserving solely what’s elegant, polished, and significant to the general expertise. The place different video games devolve into ticking packing containers on a advertising technique, Path of the Goddess feels bereft of bloat. It’s the other of the open-world RPG with ability timber, gear scores, and random loot that pads itself out with additional hours of content material simply to hit a sure quantity on How Lengthy To Beat.
“I feel that the sandbox in a playground is much like this case, and used that idea to elucidate it to my staff,” Kawata stated. “The scope is mounted and the usage of sand is mounted, however you’re free to make use of the sand to your liking.” That is a part of why I feel folks hold referring to it as a PS2 cult-classic or misplaced PS3 sport. It feels made for an period the place a good suggestion, cool look, and enjoyable gameplay have been sufficient, if to not promote hundreds of thousands of copies, than at the very least to persuade a widely known writer to take an opportunity on one thing new.
Earlier than pitching Path of the Goddess, Kawata directed Shinsekai: Into the Depths, an underwater motion puzzle sport on Apple Arcade that was later ported to Swap. A lot of that staff was carried over to Path of the Goddess, however builders from different bigger-budget Capcom franchises like Resident Evil joined as properly, bringing extra know-how and expertise with the RE Engine that’s change into more and more commonplace throughout all of Capcom’s portfolio (Monster Hunter can be shifting to it with Monster Hunter Wilds). Nonetheless, Hirabayashi stated the staff remained “comparatively compact for the scale of the manufacturing quantity.”
Not like a whole lot of these video games, nonetheless, Path of the Goddess is priced at $50, just under the premium next-gen price ticket of issues like Avenue Fighter 6 and Dragon’s Dogma 2, however simply above cheaper Steam video games like Helldivers 2, whose $40 value many regard as a key element of its runaway gross sales success. I requested what goes into making that decision, which anecdotally some PC gamers really feel continues to be too excessive.
“As a totally new title, we now have taken on plenty of challenges, similar to a ‘distinctive Japanese-inspired setting’ and a ‘new gaming expertise’ that mixes motion and tower protection,” Hirabayashi stated. “We’ve got determined to set the value as inexpensive as attainable to permit as many individuals to get their palms on this sport.” He burdened that the scale of the sport is similar to a full-price sport, however you possibly can see Capcom hedging in the truth that Path of the Goddess can be “free” for paid Sport Move members on Xbox and PC. After I requested beforehand at Summer time Sport Fest how that deal happened, Hirabayashi stated the aim was to attempt to get the sport in entrance of as many individuals as attainable, given it was an unknown IP in an uncommon style.
I hope it really works. We’ve seen {that a} daring imaginative and prescient that delivers and a cult of enthusiasm from followers isn’t all the time sufficient to ensure a sequel or an opportunity to proceed constructing on the work that got here earlier than. That’s now the unhappy story of Hello-Fi Rush, the 2023 GOTY contender from Tango Gameworks. That studio was based by Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami (Kawata and Hirabayashi have been on the cinematics staff for Resident Evil 4, the final one Mikami directed), who left a 12 months earlier than Microsoft introduced it was shutting down Tango Gameworks.
As exploding growth prices push publishers to retreat into confirmed sellers and well-liked licenses, there’s an actual concern the highest finish of the gaming trade may calcify much more than it already has lately by remakes, sequels, and live-service lottery machines. After I requested if we’d see extra experiments like Path of the Goddess from Capcom, Hirabayashi stated he couldn’t touch upon the bigger firm’s coverage. “Nevertheless,” he added, “as a person, I’m very grateful that there have been so many individuals throughout the firm who agreed with me to ship this title to the customers.”
