Capcom’s Kunitsu-Gami combines tower protection technique with the guts of group organizing

When Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess debuted throughout Capcom’s digital summer time showcase final yr, I didn’t pay a lot consideration. It seemed like a high-concept motion RPG based mostly in Japanese mythology that took a few of its inventive cues from one other certainly one of Capcom’s extremely stylized video games, Okami. And whereas I’ve nothing however love for motion RPGs and Japanese folklore, nothing in that preliminary trailer, nor those that adopted, confirmed me sufficient of what the sport was about to be attention-grabbing.

It was solely after making an attempt the sport’s demo at this yr’s Summer time Sport Fest, and later getting my palms on a duplicate, that I lastly obtained it. And rattling is that this recreation price entering into.

In Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, you play as Soh, the guardian of the priestess Yoshiro who you should defend and information via the land serving to her purge it of evil demons. In an e mail to The Verge, artwork and recreation director Shuichi Kawata wrote that it wasn’t intentional that the advertising and marketing surrounding Kunitsu-Gami made it unclear what sort of recreation it was.

“This title is a mix of several genres,” Kawata wrote. “And we imagined the possibility that there would be a range of impressions people would have.”

I defy you to guess what sort of recreation that is based mostly on this launch trailer.

Kawata described Kunitsu-Gami as a “maiden” protection recreation. Gameplay is split into three elements: day, evening, and a base-building cycle. Through the day, Soh goes about mountain villages blighted by demonic corruption. He cleanses the corruption and rescues villagers who will assist him within the evening cycle to return. At evening, demons assault, hoping to make their option to Yoshiro to kill her. To cease them, Soh assigns villagers totally different jobs, every with their very own skills, strengths, and weaknesses, and positions them all through the village to stop the demons from reaching Yoshiro. As soon as Yoshiro will get to the top of a village, it’s completely cleansed, making it a brand new base Soh and the villagers should restore earlier than shifting on to the subsequent location.

I like how Kunitsu-Gami cleverly iterates on tower protection video games. You assign roles to villagers with crystals, a useful resource gained via defeating demons at evening and cleaning a village within the day. Not each villager can carry out each function, and a few roles aren’t fight viable, although they produce other advantages. Throughout a day cycle, I’d assign a few my individuals to the thief function, sending them out to dig up extra crystals or rations that act as well being potions for Soh and the villagers. However thieves are ineffective at evening, requiring me to deplete valuable time and crystals to reassign and redeploy them. Typically, I may not have sufficient crystals, having used all of them to purchase the costly sumo wrestler function — who attracts demons’ consideration to themselves and away from Yoshiro — or the acetic who makes use of their energy to freeze demons of their place, making them simple pickings for the archer’s bow or the woodcutter’s axe.

Along with merely finishing a stage, every village battle additionally comes with a set of particular parameters that, if met, will get you additional goodies. One parameter required that I take advantage of not more than 1,900 crystals. Whereas that originally appeared trivial, that objective obtained rather a lot tougher to fulfill as a result of that stage additionally required that I give 1,500 crystals to Yoshiro to finish it. I used to be then left with solely 400 crystals for my villagers — a particularly tight finances when the essential roles just like the archer and the woodcutter are 50 crystals a pop, whereas the extra highly effective roles value between 150 to 300.

I actually loved that stress between strategic task and deployment. Do I spend the crystals to get the highly effective roles, leaving me with fewer defenders? Or do I danger my bigger however weaker military getting overrun? Kunitsu-Gami can be particular in that it by no means fell into the lure of being too trivial. In different tower protection video games, it’s attainable to set your defenses so properly you can sit again and watch the sport play itself. That by no means occurred for me. Regardless of if I had a glut of sources and well-placed villagers, I at all times needed to keep on excessive alert, typically coming to Yoshiro’s rescue with certainly one of Soh’s final assaults. At each stage, Kunitsu-Gami supplied the sort of problem that makes my puzzle and strategy-obsessed mind sizzle with pleasure.

Whereas it’s not a outstanding function, there’s additionally an attention-grabbing little bit of narrative to the sport. Every villager you rescue has a reputation and a bio, and I loved studying their tales and the way all of them intertwined. These individuals grew to become greater than anonymous models to throw at a demonic horde, however members of a dwelling, respiration group made up of married {couples}, household, and associates. It made for a stupendous message that jogged my memory of the aphorism “we all we got.”

In Kunitsu-Gami, Soh is the one one with martial coaching whereas everybody else is farmers, fishermen, and housewives. As a substitute of ready for outdoor assist or succumbing to the relentless demons, these abnormal individuals took up what little arms they needed to defend their houses and households. In a political local weather that appears decided to roll again protections for ladies, queer individuals, and other people of colour, it’s good to see that message. Assist isn’t coming — we’re the assistance. It’s a sentiment supported by what Kawata shared as Kunitsu-Gami’s principal theme.

“Challenge is the driving ethos for this game,” he wrote. “We face various conditions seriously and push forward without fear.”

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is out now on PlayStation, PC, Xbox, and Xbox Sport Go.