Overview
In Kunitsu-Gami: Path of The Goddess, you play as Soh, the guardian and protector of the Maiden Yoshiro on her path to cleanse the mountain of corruption. In many ways, Path of the Goddess resembles an elaborate tower defense game with a personal sword-swinging touch. However, it actually has more in common with games such as Pikmin or Overlord.
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While you will fight toe-to-toe with the sinister Seethe. The majority of your success relies on how well you command and manage your villagers. Villagers can be assigned a variety of classes with various strengths and weaknesses. While you could simply set and forget them, it’s far more effective to manually command them around and change tactics as the battle evolves.
Path of the Goddess has some interesting ideas, and the battles themselves are a blast to play. However, each of your victories or defeats is tarnished by the fact that you have to trudge through an assortment of meaningless busy work before you can start having fun again.
| Gideon’s Bias | Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: No | Publisher: Capcom |
| Hours Played: 18+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed On: Xbox Series X | Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Third Person Action Strategy |
| Mode Played: N/A | Price: $49.99 |
It Takes a Village
You start most stages with just Soh. But as you explore the level you will cleanse corruption and rescue villagers who can help you protect the maiden. You can unlock a variety of classes and upgrades for these villagers, and a large part of the game’s depth is focused on them.
Villagers can take on roles such as aggressive Axe Wielders, beefy Sumo Wrestlers, Archers, Gunners, and a large variety of other classes that can help you hold back the tide of Seethe.
During the day, you explore and command a friendly builder to set up barriers, traps, and other devices. At night, the Seethe pour forth from the corrupted Torii Gates, and you have to protect the Maiden until daybreak.
The combat system is fairly basic but meaningful. What I mean is, that every potential attack combo or special move you equip has a specific purpose. Some moves are made to wipe out mobs of weaker Seethe, others are for taking down flyers, while some are meant to break through the defenses of tougher Seethe to stun them. You also have the ability to block, parry, and dodge. It’s relatively simple but satisfying and it looks flashy as hell.
However, your fancy swordplay is complimented by the variety of villagers you command to help you in battle. As you unlock more and more classes, you end up with a lot of leeway on how to tackle each level while adapting to the various strengths of the large variety of seethe the game throws your way.
Some situations call for a Sumo Wrestler to taunt and stun the enemy while archers and gunners bring down the flyers. Other times a mob of spearmen being healed by a Shaman is more effective. What I particularly like, is these situations can change throughout a given level and you can command and move villagers around at any time.
I also appreciate the animations of the villagers themselves. Even with the ability to command them around, it’s their detailed animations and behaviors that makes Path of The Goddess feel different from tower defense games.
The villagers feel like real warriors battling the Seethe alongside you, and not just a weapon emplacement. The way an upgraded Axemen will turn and charge a seethe that snuck by, or the archers diving backward to shoot when an enemy gets too close. It’s interesting to watch.
That attention to detail adds a lot to the game and makes every attempt to protect the maiden feel like a collaborative effort. That’s a pretty neat feeling to get from a single-player game with almost no dialogue.
Another interesting aspect of the gameplay is the balancing act you have to maintain throughout each level. While your swordplay and command of the villagers play the biggest role in your success, it’s not free.
You gather crystals by cleansing corruption and defeating Seethe. These crystals are used to actually change the classes of your villagers. However, that’s not all. To complete each level, the Maiden has to reach the final Torii Gate. You have to spend crystals to carve her a path through the corruption, and she only moves during the daytime.
You have to carefully balance where you spend your crystals, between the path and your villagers. You want to ensure the Maiden is in a fairly defensible spot every night. However, the longer you take, the more nights you have to endure, and the more likely it is that she will take damage. It’s a fun and interesting balancing act to maintain, and it works well together with the core mechanics of using villagers to protect the Maiden.
Pacing the Path
The pacing in Path of The Goddess is a bit of a mixed bag. The early levels are so easy that the game teaches you bad habits. For my first couple hours, I didn’t understand the point of villagers, as I was able to cut down entire waves of Seethe on my own. However, that quickly changed as I progressed, and the game grew much more engaging as a result.
Path of the Goddess constantly drip-feeds you with new villager classes and potential upgrades. Some of them arrive a little bit late, but every stage has optional objectives that you can go back and complete for goodies. Such as extra points that can be used to upgrade Soh and the villager’s
Standard levels are broken up with some seriously cool boss fights that test your knowledge of the game’s classes and various mechanics. The enemy variety as a whole is pretty great. New Seethe are introduced throughout the entire game, and each one puts a new twist on how to fight and use your villagers.
You might think you have the hang of the game, just for a new long-ranged bombardier beast to show up and obliterate your front lines, or a shifty specter starts possessing your villagers. Figuring out how to tackle a wide assortment of foes with limited manpower and resources is an interesting challenge that will largely keep you on your toes for the entire game.
However, the base-building busy work in between each level grinds the entire experience to a painful halt.
Busy Work
Every level you beat becomes a base for you to upgrade. However, referring to this activity as base building is giving the game far too much credit. You simply walk up to a project, assign the required number of villagers, and then come back later, usually after playing a level. You gain a reward for each completed project, with a large bonus for rebuilding an entire base.
The thing is, this is tedious busy work. You are just running around and pushing buttons in a way that feels eerily similar to those predatory base-building mobile games. There are no meaningful decisions to be made. It’s just a time suck.
To add insult to injury, some buildings need wood. So, you also have to run around the area finding planks of wood to order villagers to pick up. Then run to the project and assign them. It serves no gameplay purpose other than to pad time.
After you play a stage, you need to come back and collect the rewards for the projects that are complete, and then run around reassigning villagers again. Here’s the thing, there will be times when you’re managing three or more of these bases at once. You will run in, do busy work in one, and then repeat the process for each other base you have unlocked.
While you aren’t technically forced to do this, you also kind of are. A ton of the upgrade points you need to upgrade your villagers are locked behind these projects, as well as a variety of talismans. Furthermore, completing bases is the only way to extend the maximum amount of crystals you can carry into a stage, and believe me, later stages need a lot of them.
The entire process is one of the least engaging things I could imagine. It’s the definition of tedious busy work. There were many times when I completed a level and just had to put the game down for a while because I wasn’t in the mood to deal with all of the bases that needed tending. I have my own chores that I’m neglecting, and I don’t need a game to waste my time like that.
Verdict
Path of the Goddess is a pretty unique game, the likes of which you rarely see come from the AAA branch of the gaming industry. It feels very indie, and I mean that as a compliment. Yet, it also has that polished visual sheen you would expect from a company like Capcom.
The action and strategy combo work great, and it’s a lot of fun commanding the villagers around and working in tandem with them to protect the maiden. The mission structure is broken up by a variety of very cool boss fights that usually utilize the villager system in clever ways.
The villager classes themselves are interesting. You can reassign upgrades at any time between a stage, but there are some serious choices to make for each level, at least until you have enough points to fully upgrade them all. The villagers feel like actual defenders and allies, rather than static defensive objects, and that’s pretty cool.
I do wish there were difficulty settings, so I could dial it up and have more of a reason to return to past levels where I’ve completed everything. But the largest issue with Path of the Goddess is by far the base building system.
It feels tacked on in the worst way. It’s probably meant to break up the action between stages, but it’s done via the dullest method I could imagine. The game just has you wasting time running around with no real gameplay or decisions to make. It brings the entire experience down, and that’s a shame.
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a unique kind of experience you usually only see in indie games. Its core mechanics of being an action-focused mob management game in the veins of something like Pikmin, works incredibly well. However, the time waster of a base building system brings the experience down far too often. All games have their tedious moments, but few have made me put the game down and stop playing the way Path of The Goddess did.
