Is it just us, or has Capcom been on some kind of record-breaking streak of fantastic form since about 2016? The Resident Evil 2 Remake generally improved the game in terms of innovations, Street Fighter 6 is the best series since Street Fighter 2 Turbo (fact) and movies like Monster Hunter and Devil May Cry are more popular than ever before.
This dev team has a slick system with the extremely flexible Resi Engine and is riding a seemingly endless wave of remasters, remakes and brand new hits. So why, in the midst of all this partying and enjoying the ice-cold classics, are they coming out with a “Kugura Action Strategy Game”? That doesn’t even sound as interesting as Leon Kennedy getting all hot and dirty in his tight shirt and fighting the mischievous Ganados.
But wait. What is this? Kagura is actually a really cool traditional form of Japanese dance where people dress up in demonic costumes and… well… we don’t know the exact moves, but it’s like doing a jig for a good harvest, we guess, or like doing a really big moonwalk so that the evil demon living in the local mailbox will be released into the nearby forest. Something like that. Look, we’re not really sure, but it looks and sounds incredible, we do know that, and the Resi Engine has proven once again that it’s a powerhouse when it comes to delivering highly detailed graphics with very nice performance, even when you switch to the game’s quality visuals mode.
So, what do you actually do in this Kagura strategy? Well, you play as Soh, a sort of cool ninja who looks like he’s on a break from the set of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and your task is to travel down Mount Kafuku, which is currently completely covered in pollution, unfortunately, and slice up Seethe – the game’s truly disturbing enemy – while protecting a dancing Goddess. As levels begin, you’ll have to collect orbs from fallen enemies and use them to create a magical path for your pupil, a path that she’ll then VERY SLOWLY dance across, giving you lots of time to sweat, plot, and reflect on your mistakes in life.
All of this takes place against a timer that cycles through stages of the day. The light hours are spent planning and coordinating, using local villagers and people you’ve rescued from the pollution as a sort of violent Pikmin. You’ll be given command of motley crews of varying sizes depending on where you’re located, and they can be trained to fight or provide aid in various ways. You’ve got your archers and axe-wielding rangers, of course, and your entire entourage can be switched to defense/offense to take on bosses or come to the aid of the Goddess at the press of a button. As things progress, the unit types get more interesting, allowing you to freeze enemies in place or slow them down, heal your team on the fly, transform simple farmers into sumo wrestlers, and a whole bunch of other fun and crazy stuff that would kind of spoil the game if revealed.
Everything your units do, whether it’s collecting an item, repairing a bridge, or advancing along a route, costs you orbs, and so the crux of the core loop here is collecting enough of them to keep cutting a path for the Goddess, while ensuring your minions are properly role-played and busy repairing and fighting. Your units can be upgraded through various levels, with strength, health, and special effects (dual-tipped arrows, anyone?), and there’s plenty to think about and keep you occupied once a mission begins. Time can be sped up during the day if you’re in a hurry, but we found ourselves spending as much time as possible prowling the beautiful landscape, reading the terrain, watching for forks in the road, using our thief to steal treasure, and using the game’s strategic overlook to carefully place our warriors to stem the flow of Seethe.
Once darkness descends and the desecrated portals placed around stages start spewing out your enemies, things get a lot more intense. Thankfully, Soh also has a ton of abilities to unlock, allowing you to strengthen your team, focus your attacks, or even teleport directly back to the Goddess’ position if she’s under stress. He’s also just really good with a sword in general, and one of the main things this game does well is that it gives you the strategic element without sacrificing the action feel. The combat here looks and feels really great, Soh has some nice combos to pull off, and you’ll need to use them well to be effective against grounded and airborne targets.
The early levels do a fairly good job of slowly introducing you to everything you need to know, giving you a sense of how the Goddess navigates her path and how to deal with threats in an organized manner that ensures there’s no path you’ve missed that a bunch of goblins are using to flank or attack from behind. This may make them sound smarter than they are – for the most part, enemies here just charge at you – but it works because of the timer, the sheer number of bad guys, and the constant feeling that you’re on the verge of being completely overwhelmed.
And so we make our way down the desecrated Mount Kafuku, and as we go along the game introduces split paths for the Goddess that allow you to choose from multiple routes through an area, larger enemies, special standing spots that give you various power boosts for archers etc, and safe zones where our special lady has some improved defenses. On top of that you also have a boss fight to deal with once you complete each stage of a given mission, and you’ll need to repair and restore each stage once you’ve completed it in order to use it as a base. Nice!
The base-building stuff (and this writer is genuinely put off by base-building stuff, to be honest) strikes a nice balance between giving you something worthwhile to do between missions and providing useful rewards for fixing everything without it even remotely feeling like a chore. The boss battle elements, however, don’t fare as well, we think. It’s not a huge deal, and some of it is fun, but it just feels like an extra bump in the road, a checkpoint on your skills that feels a little off-kilter at times.
We struggled a little with the third boss in the game – maybe that’s because we’re bad gamers – but it feels like the difficulty ramps up in this mission and then drops off again, which is never ideal because it makes subsequent missions feel a little less exciting, right? Don’t worry, it’s still challenging and the difficulty does ramp up again towards the end, but this is the only aspect of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess that bothered us a little bit during our review period.
But aside from that one personal quibble, we thoroughly enjoyed everything else about what Capcom has served up here. This is a unique and utterly charming strategy game, a real breath of fresh air that gives you tight and rewarding loops to dive into. It’s also perfectly suited to playing in small chunks, one mission at a time with a final boss that might keep you busy for 30 minutes (unless it’s that third one), and the level of detail, the music, the dance and battle animations all add up to one of the most memorable strategy games we’ve played in a while. Another very nice addition to Xbox Game Pass, then, and an eccentric diversion that keeps Capcom’s hot streak alive and well.
Conclusion
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a unique strategy experience that draws on traditional Japanese culture to give us an incredibly detailed world to work through, one small level at a time. The strategy here is tight, the animations and combat look and feel great, and the dancing, music, and base building ensure that there’s always something to do in the downtime between Seethe-destroying missions. Capcom is still on that hot streak, and we’re ready for it.