Among the well-known heavy hitters in Capcom's Summer Game Fest arsenal this year, tucked away in its own little corner of the Capcom area, is Kunitsu-Game: Path Of The Goddess. This very unique game has piqued our interest ever since its debut trailer during the Xbox Showcase in 2023, but we weren't sure what this was or what was going on. After getting some hands-on time with Kunitsu-Gami in that tucked-away little corner, we're still not sure what to make of it, but we know we want to try more.
As mentioned before, it's hard to describe what Kunitsu-Gami actually is; it's an action game with elements of resource management, a light tower defense mechanic where the tower moves through the stage, and some brief puzzling via finding and purging pockets of demonic blight from the world, that contains heavy, heavy Japanese elements. That about scratches the surface, but this is a game that needs to be seen or played to be understood.
The demo stage we played placed us in an area on the side of a mountain, with gross demonic-looking infection everywhere and a few branching paths. Our main goal is to get Soh, the Goddess, from one side of the playable area to a gate on the other side. This gate is a portal to the demon world that only Soh can close, but she can't get to the gate without the path being clear, and that's where we come in.
First, we investigated the area and saw that we could purify eight different sections, each granting us an NPC helper. We can assign classes to these heroes and command them when the time comes to protect the goddess. Freeing these NPCs grants us a pink spherical resource, which we then must use to draw a line in the ground from the Goddess to the demon gate. Once we do that, Soh can purify the gate, which repels the demons and lets me advance to the next stage.
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However, after a certain amount of time, the gate activates, and demons come pouring through in an attempt to kill our goddess Soh. When this happens, the game turns into a pure action game as we hack-and-slash through waves of demons in order to repel them and continue our gate purification quest. Meanwhile, the NPCs we helped before will attack demons based on the abilities we gave them, but we must place them in specific areas of the map in order for them to be effective. Once the wave of demons is over, we can continue with our path-drawing quest.
Got all that? It's a lot, I know, but I found myself endeared to the strategy of the whole thing. This is an action game on the surface, but I'm also using friendly units to create a wall around an objective, or mapping out the best path for Soh to travel in order to keep her safe. There's so much going on, with so many different layers, and this is only the demo.
However, there's one cultural aspect to this: As the name implies, Kunitsu-Gami is traditional Japanese to a fault. The dress, the words, the design of the demons, all of it is heavily rooted in traditional Japanese garb and art. It's beautiful to behold in real time, especially if you appreciate Japanese culture like this, but those just looking for a good gaming experience might get turned off by how over-the-top scenes can be.
While we didn't get a ton of time with Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess, the brief demo that appeared at Summer Game Fest gave us enough to analyze and enjoy. The resource management blends very well with the action-oriented moments, which in turn makes the original objective quite interesting as well. Chalk this one up to being one of the most unique games at the show, and we're hoping Capcom continues to experiment like this in the future.
