Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess starts, as many games do, with disaster. Mt. Kafuku has fallen to the Seethe, a collection of monstrous creatures who serve the Mountain Goddess. We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s all humanity’s fault, with the local populace growing greedy and taking all of the mountain’s wealth. You take on the role of Soh, a samurai called upon to assist the Maiden Yoshiro, and together you must purify the mountain, and return it to its natural state.
While there’s plenty of hack-and-slash action here, Kunitsu-Gami brings in elements of Pikmin and tower defence titles to create an invigorating amalgam of the three. As you enter each village you come across its inhabitants that have been petrified, and once you release them you can add them to your group, assigning them roles to help defend against the Seethe that will attack at night.
While these villagers are an essential part of your fighting force, it’s Soh that stands resolutely at the front, holding back the Seethe with pirouetting dance moves that send his blade swinging in all directions. You can upgrade Soh’s loadout with different Tsuba Guards containing unique and extremely handy powers, as well as a series of different skills which further augment your abilities. Soh’s controls are relatively familiar, and at times you may be underwhelmed by the limited number of combos, but you’ve got rather a lot to deal with elsewhere.
Each level sees you guiding the Maiden Yoshiro along the spirit path, leading her to a corrupted Torii gate, the source of blight on the area. Once you’ve laid the path, she dances along very, very slowly, meaning that she won’t generally make it to the gate during the first day. With the arrival of night, monsters start spewing from the gate, and you have to protect Yoshiro from them.
If you’ve played games like Hellwardens, Dungeon Defenders or Orcs Must Die, you’ll understand how this plays out. The monsters travel along different routes towards Yoshiro and your recruited villagers can be assigned roles to help fend them off. You empower them via different masks you unlock as you progress, starting with straightforward jobs like the Woodcutter with his axe and moving up to more unusual roles like the Thief who searches for hidden treasure before running away at the first sign of danger.
You have to carefully position your villagers along the route in order to maximise their usefulness, from where they’ll attack anything that comes into range. Each mask can be levelled up as well, improving their abilities as the monstrous foes become ever more challenging.
The enemy designs here are grotesque and thoroughly hateful, all based upon Japanese mythology. You’ll marvel at how otherworldly they are, with claws, tentacles and tongues that are often in places that those things shouldn’t be. While they start off as pure sword fodder for Soh and his compatriots, they become larger and more dangerous, punctuated at different points by huge boss battles that change the narrative further.
This is where elements of Capcom’s Monster Hunter series bleed in, with Soh facing off against immense enemies that require different tactics to take down. I have to admit that I found the opening of Kunitsu-Gami unbelievably easy, and worried that it would put up little resistance, but the arrival of a huge centipede creature in the third level put those fears away, as it thoroughly kicked my arse.
The answer, unsurprisingly, was that I needed to make better use of my villagers, and you need to call on them frequently in these encounters, moving them around, and having them rush back to defend Yoshiro when the boss comes too close. You cannot switch off for a moment here, and the ongoing bouts become steadily tougher, pushing you to constantly revise and update your tactics.
There are quieter moments, though. During the daytime dance through the village you have the chance to purify the area of corruption, collecting orbs which you can use to assign roles to your villagers, all the while Yoshiro dances along the spirit path. You can speed up time if you’ve done everything you need to, but as levels become larger, with multiple routes and gates, you’ll still find yourself rushing to be ready for the oncoming horde.
Once you’ve cleared a level, you can set up a base, repairing and rebuilding the monuments and buildings, and earning further upgrades and currency in the process. These offer a pleasant bit of downtime, reminding me of the older Monster Hunter villages, though occasionally it does just feel like busy work rather than something truly integral. It’s nice to see each area steadily coming back to life though.
While there are plenty of similarities, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is shorter and smaller in scale than Monster Hunter, but rather than being a negative, it’s refreshing to find something that’s going to take less than 20 hours to thoroughly make you way through. The pace feels just right, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome, coming to an end just when you might be starting to tire of the mechanics.
Themed after Kagura, a style of Japanese theatre, there’s very little like Kunistu-Gami. The entire narrative is told without words, with action and dance sequences the main storytelling devices. It works incredibly well, and you’re never unsure of what’s happening, despite the lack of exposition. It does feel like a sister project to Monster Hunter Rise, but one that delves even further into Japanese mythology and culture, retaining and exploring an element of gaming that’s been sidelined by expanding Western tastes.
