Capcom’s new tower defense-like action game is a surprise summer success

Capcom

As dark as the atmosphere of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess can be, you constantly challenge it with colorful celebrations. Fireworks are a recurring motif, symbolizing the accomplished feats of your journey as you help rid villages and shrines of the threat of yokai-inspired enemies – supernatural beings and spirits in Japanese folklore. In battle, every time you fire a cannon, the force of impact turns the pale creatures into a splash of particles. Outside of battle, fireworks are ever-present as you rebuild people’s homes while townspeople jump and scream for joy at having hope again.

Capcom’s latest mixes hack-and-slash action with strategy elements reminiscent of the tower defense genre. As Soh, you swing your sword through a series of increasingly challenging levels to protect the shrine maiden Yoshiro. She’s the only person who can cleanse the gates at the end of each level and ultimately the corruption plaguing the land at large. But she can’t fight back alone. As you quickly realize, Soh can’t do it alone either – instead, you recruit the help of the villagers you rescue as various unit types, slowly building a party to stand together against savage hordes of enemies. It’s a novel concept, and one that evolves with surprising results.

The first few levels of Kunitsu Gami serves as an extended tutorial that introduces the tone and general structure. After a defeat in an early encounter, Soh is left in a weak state with few skills at his disposal. Additionally, there are 11 Goddess Masks scattered throughout the explorable region of Mount Kafuku, each of which unlocks a new unit type you can assign to your villagers, including gunners who can deal with large groups of enemies, shamans who heal their surroundings, thieves who can pick locked chests, and so on.

The game mechanics can be difficult to understand at first. You watch Soh from a bird’s eye view and control her like in a standard hack-and-slash game. The villagers, on the other hand, act independently – you assign them their positions on the map and give some general direct commands, like attacking at full speed during boss fights. Aside from a few odd cases where they get stuck in environments, they’re all quite competent.

Once you understand what each unit type is good at and how to best face enemies, the loop becomes compelling. The structure of each stage varies, but most of the time you’ll be using your sword to clear a path for Yoshiro from point A to B so she can get to the gates that need to be cleansed. A day and night cycle sets a time limit – in most cases, it will take Yoshiro more than one in-game day to reach the gate. Once the sun goes down, enemies pour in and try to reach Yoshiro. The plan is to strategically place units around choke points to ward off dangers, and Set traps.

However, you can’t just assign roles to villagers at will, as this costs the in-game currency, “crystals.” During the day, Soh can cleanse some areas of each level, which grants crystals in return. If you manage to find all of them, you’ll be rewarded with equippable trinkets that grant passive abilities. You’ll also have to manually free some of the villagers – which is important to avoid rushing into battle at a numerical disadvantage. Defeating enemies also grants you crystals, and you can assign roles mid-battle, which freezes time, a handy and welcome mechanic as encounters become increasingly difficult to fight.

But it takes a while until Kunitsu Gami challenging. I spent the first few levels completely ignoring the map. Instead of placing units on different paths and using the available space, it was easier to group everyone near the gate entrance to wreak havoc on the enemies that appeared. The structure started to feel stale – I could complete all of my tasks during the day and have plenty of time to spare, removing any friction from the day and night cycle. After getting used to the core loop and mechanics, I kept waiting for Kunitsu Gami to lay his cards on the table.

Eventually, it does. Levels feature different combinations and obstacles to keep an eye on, such as dark caves with lanterns that need to be lit up so villagers can see and attack enemies. The maps themselves are more complicated, with multiple gates opening at once and changing locations at whim, so you’re always having to think on the fly and move units around. Enemies also get harder to deal with – some prevent Soh from healing himself or controlling units until you defeat them, while others are walking kamikazes that explode if not killed, hurting enemies instead. These levels take a while to appear, but once they do, they provide a satisfyingly breakneck pace.

Completing levels will earn you another currency that you can use to upgrade each unit type. You can reset upgrades on the fly and reallocate those points elsewhere if you’re stuck with your current choices. Finally, you’ll also get access to Soh’s own skill trees. Don’t expect too deep a progression path here, but there are skills that are must-haves, like unlocking more slots to use trinkets and special attacks, or even accessing different combat styles, including long-range attacks with a bow. It’s the same currency that’s used to upgrade your villagers, which adds another strategic component. I’ve always wondered if I should invest more in Soh and my agency as a player, or make my villagers stronger so I can focus on special enemies while they hold their positions without having to constantly defend them.

One aspect in which Kunitsu Gami Vulnerabilities exist in the moments between levels. After successfully clearing a village, it becomes a base where you can rebuild structures to obtain money and jewelry. To do this, you must manually interact with debris to assign the required number of villagers, which requires several visits until the entire base is rebuilt. The rewards are considerable, such as increasing your limitS of crystals and rations used to heal Soh and the villagers. But the back and forth can become a slog, especially when multiple bases are being repaired at once. In order for villages to complete them, you must complete a stage. Some require more than one, creating a backlog.

Do not expect Wild crossing Complexity levels here, as rebuilding buildings is a fairly superficial feature that isn’t intended to be a farming sim. But it would be nice to have the ability to redeem the rewards from the world map after completing a repair, rather than having to manually revisit each one and interact with the building again.

Fireworks are not the only way Kunitsu Gami symbolizes celebration. When you rebuild a building, flowers bloom around the structure as villagers cheer for a job well done. Bases teem with life after being cleansed, and wildlife hang out and gather around Yoshiro once you’ve removed their corruption. These touches are small, but they’re signs of care and passion that enrich the experience. Aside from the grunt work, I found myself devoting myself to helping the townspeople, and it was satisfying to completely rebuild a town, walk across a lake that was previously poisonous, or pet a deer that first tried to flee when I got too close.

The further I go into Kunitsu Gamithe better the mechanics fit together. Reaching longer levels with bigger threats through strong synergy between my units prevented Yoshiro from getting even a scratch and felt like solving a puzzle that had been building up for the past twelve hours. Boss fights in particular can be quite inventive, putting past lessons to the test and forcing you to use every tool at your disposal to achieve victory.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, director Shuichi Kawata said the team is “constantly trying to find the best way to explain to everyone what this game is about.” I can understand why. The trailers alone don’t really convey what the experience is about. The satisfaction you get from managing 12 villagers at once and actually making it out alive requires a significant time investment, listening to tutorial after tutorial.

As AAA companies continue to invest in existing series with sequels and remakes, it is refreshing to also see experiences like Kunitsu Gamipresents new worlds with genre blends that might be a hard sell to mainstream audiences. It takes a while for its charm to blossom, and some mechanics aren’t clear without trial and error, but once the concept comes to life, overcoming its challenges becomes a puzzle worth its fireworks.