Capcom went back in time with Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess, presenting an action-RPG/tower-defense hybrid that feels very much like the 2000s. Very welcome to this era of open world, live service. And for some it will deliver what it needs: a pretty good time. A time marked by a loop that includes hack ‘n slash, management, and a bit of base repair in the middle. But for me, and probably many others, I just don’t think this mix ever really captures what makes even the simplest tower defense games so engaging.
Kunitsu is on Mount Kafuku, a enormous mountain that has been ravaged by dripping demons. They would appear at night over the course of days, weeks, or months, and overthrow the lovely community of Kafuku, who apparently hadn’t stacked enough sandbags. All those pretty lakes and peaceful villages? Covered in goo, buddy, sorry. But! There is hope, though, as the mountain maiden Yoshiro has the mystical powers and dance moves to dispel the darkness and cleanse the mountain of goo once and for all. And it’s here that you, a boy named Soh, must safely guide Yoshiro through the cleansing process using your swordsmanship and people management skills.
The clearing process naturally takes you through a series of progressively more complex areas of the mountain, each split into two missions: the first is a tower defense hybrid that I’ll get into in a heartbeat, and the second is a standalone boss fight. There’s no way to stray from the set path, so if you get stuck on a level, you’ll have to find a way to beat it using tactical cunning. Although I never had a problem with that, since the game is relatively straightforward and gives you enough resources to level up Soh and his minions to keep up with your dribbling.
The tower defense-style missions have a similarly plain setup, often placing Yoshiro at one end of the map before you’re tasked with safely leading her to a torii gate at the other end so she can distract her. There are a few catches, of course. The gates expel demons at night, and Yoshiro moves at the pace of a ball of grass, so you can’t just hold her hand and lead her to each gate when it’s airy out. Instead, you’ll exploit special orbs to carve out a path for her to follow at her own pace, and that almost always means waiting multiple day/night cycles for her to complete her piss pilgrimage.
As Yoshiro stalks the gate, you’ll spend your daily portions—measured by a sunset icon in the lower left corner—gathering resources and setting up defenses ready for the night’s attacks. This includes: running around looking for groaning demonic stalks to clear as your main source of orbs; earning rations to heal yourself and your allies by bashing wild animals affected by the evil ooze; repairing structures like barricades to ponderous the demons’ advance; and, most importantly, freeing people from the goo and using your orbs to transform them into minions.
Next, you need to see where enemies are coming from (marked by purple gates on the minimap) and place your minions in the spots where you think they’ll best defend Yoshiro. And as you might expect, each of these minions fits a certain archetype. Archers are best at dealing with flying enemies but are frail in melee, while the gigantic boys Sumo are great at absorbing attention but relying on others to deal damage. There’s definitely some satisfaction in finding good combos or placing them on environmental buffers (like an archer perch to augment range) that make them do their job a bit better than normal, although their “normal” is pretty underwhelming.
And that’s because of your role as Soh. In 90% of situations, you’ll have to join in with your buddies and collect orbs dropped by downed enemies. You can slash, slash, and with later upgrades, fire arrows and perform finishing moves to pretty much destroy even the worst dribblers. Some might find it satisfying to contribute to the defense, and I certainly feel that my increased strength compared to my buddies fulfilled the fantasy of power. But the mandatory participation takes away some of the real joy of tower defense games, I think.
What is that joy? The joy of being a manager sitting in a drone hovering over the map, planting people on the ground and idly watching them mow down the hordes. The joy, ultimately, of doing nothing. In Kunitsu, you play a micromanager who constantly cleans up after employees who are designed to do their jobs suboptimally. Rather than being excited about supporting my buddies, I honestly find it a bit exhausting.
Survive the night and it becomes day, automatically burning all the demons left on the map. And it’s here that you’ll spend all the orbs you’ve collected either on pushing Yoshiro further towards the endpoint, or – if that endpoint turns into a second, more complex gate chase – on building a whole fresh set of defenses and minions. If that ever throws me into a second gate chase, I’ll admit that a compact part of me goes into a fetal position and rocks back and forth. Mainly because the routine of daytime – collecting orbs, recruiting minions, etc. – followed by nighttime only further reinforces a repetitive loop that I simply can’t be bothered with.
Sometimes the missions change completely, which is good! Sometimes you have a few boats to defend, drifting across a lake, and other times you have to bang on drums, sending out area spells with your strikes. Ironically, though, I had the most fun when the game transformed me into a ghost who could only collect orbs and assemble them into Yoshiro – and who needed to be freed from a demonic headcrab. The game finally allowed me to command more minions and elevated them to a position of authority, assigning responsibility to their performance, not mine.
Boss fights unlock fresh types of buddies, and the boss fights themselves are against menacing demons with wonderfully hideous designs, like thrashing centipedes and tormented Buddhas who exploit rosaries like brass knuckles. Early fights are a bit repetitive, but that repetitiveness is later discarded in favor of knowledgeable (if occasionally annoying) scenarios that force you to split your attention between hitting the boss and helping Yoshiro.
While unlocking fresh minions like shamans who heal, or spear-wielding ones who sweep, or ascetics who summon zones that ponderous enemies is great, I can’t assist but feel like they’re all a bit… eh. The variety of enemies forces you to exploit different archetypes, and map layouts can also change, so you can’t assist but experiment. However, their upgrades are a bit uninspiring (more health, more damage, a few better moves), making your investment feel more like sinking your hard-earned cash into a Souls stat sheet than I’d like.
Complete an area—by completing the associated tower defense missions and boss missions—and you’ll be able to revisit these cleared areas as bases that you’ll need to repair. They act solely as currency generators, awarding you Musubi (used to upgrade your minions or Soh), orbs, and amulets (which grant you special abilities and stat boosts) if you manage to restore them to their former glory. While initially satisfying, these repair jobs aren’t exactly a DIY SOS patch, and quickly become mindless exercise. You assign villagers to repair sites that take however many mission days to complete. Sometimes, you’ll ask villagers to gather lumber scattered around these bases before repairing a more exorbitant but more satisfying project. You then return to these bases after each mission, gather your gadgets, rinse, and repeat.
What do you get when you finally fix the base? No interactions with the villagers, no little “Cheers buddy” from Yoshiro, nothing but a bit of currency. At least Nick Knowles got to talk to the builders and families after they renovated their homes.
I think it’s great that Capcom has released a strange, sometimes wonderful tower defense/action RPG hybrid with such powerful early millennial vibes. And I think some will find its micromanagement more compelling than I did, and its base repairs and gradual power-ups make for an uncomplicated way to spend an evening with an average-to-good video game. And yet I also think many will find its approach to tower defense only halfway satisfying. It may be full of separate elements that often work together, whether it’s base building or hack ‘n’ slash, but as a whole it falls into a repetitive rhythm that struggles to capture the joy and thrill of much simpler tower defense games.
This review is based on a test version of the game provided by the game developer.
