The world of Kunitsu-Gami: The Way of the Goddess it aims to look fantastical and from another time, but the game itself also feels like an anachronism. Something that shouldn’t exist in 2024. This is not a sequel to a hit franchise. It doesn’t work in a popular genre. And it’s not pandering to an international audience. It’s just an excellent gameand shows what’s possible when major publishers take a chance on something completely different.
“We believe it is important to meet the expectations of our users with new titles.” [existing] series and remakes, but we also believe it’s equally important to take on the challenge of creating something new,” game producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, a more than 20-year Capcom veteran, told Kotaku in a recent email interview. “As an entirely new title, we are taking on a number of challenges.”
The Way of the Goddess you play as the sword-dancing warrior Soh, who must unite the villagers and protect the maiden Yoshiro on a treacherous journey to banish evil from the mountain. But instead of a simple third-person action game that has you exploring levels and slashing through hordes of demons, The Way of the Goddess is structured as a tower defense game where in addition to killing enemies alone in fluid arcade combat, you can also recruit villagers into unique classes and order them around the battlefield.
One key was to ensure that neither side overshadowed the other and that each was viable in its own way. “We didn’t want to force players to use both elements equally, so we spent a lot of time adjusting the balance between action and strategy,” Kawata said. “Therefore, players can enjoy more [either one], depending on their gear and the villagers’ assigned roles.” It’s an unlikely combination that works surprisingly well and doesn’t sacrifice quality to realize its experimental creative vision. It’s also presented in a context that is unabashedly Japanese.
“I’m a fan of old Japanese folklore and other weird folktales and I thought it would be interesting to incorporate them into a game set in the mountains of Japan where a messenger from the other world appears every night and you have to fend them off and protect the gods,” said the game’s director, Shuichi Kawata, also a longtime Capcom employee. “A major part of this idea was that I thought it would be compatible with Tower Defense. I think we were able to make every aspect of the game cohesive by incorporating the player actions and the connection between the enemies and the Japanese culture.”
The Way of the Goddess features dozens of intricate and emotional enemy designs for the evil spirits you face called The Seethe. Some have heads shaped like massive mouths with tongues protruding from them. Others look like pearly white tumors floating in the air with dangerous hooks dangling from their bottoms. In one stage, you’re faced with a massive damaged tree whose roots come to life and attack you like a giant mutant earthworm. Their variety and level of detail is one of the key ways the game punches above its weight.
But the other main thing that helps The Way of the Goddess it stands out just how bespoke and carefully considered every little detail of the game feels. “Mixing multiple game elements will always increase the complexity of the game, but it’s important to choose carefully what is necessary and what is not necessary for the game,” said Kawata. “To prevent the game from becoming a ‘grind’ game, I think it’s important to let users think about what to do based on the given game materials and the result should lead to a sense of achievement.”
The user interface is carefully integrated with the rest of the game’s look and feel. To access the main menu, you must go to a village and visit Yoshiro’s tent, where a table in front of it holds the various ornaments, artifacts, and other items you’ve collected on your journey that double as game bonuses. status enhancement relics and other unlockable upgrades. You level up your villagers’ roles by decorating their masks, and the save screen is a long horizontal sheet of folded paper that you stamp with each new file. One of the game’s collectibles, a set of desserts, sits in a nearby box for you to explore at your leisure.
There are over 20 stages The Way of the Goddessand each has two phases to it. The result is three to five enemy waves per stage with generous control points. Although no gameplay ideas were rejected during development, testing revealed that most of the stages initially seemed too long and drawn out, so they were eventually made shorter. “Many people commented that this part of the game was tedious and lengthened the playing time, so we decided to shorten it and increase the pace of the game’s progression.”
The game feels stripped down to the bare essentials, keeping only what’s sleek, polished, and significant to the overall experience. When other games become marketing strategy checkboxes, The Way of the Goddess feels free of swelling. It’s the opposite of an open-world RPG with skill trees, gear scores, and random loot that is topped up with extra hours of content just to hit a certain number of How long to beat.
“I think the sandbox on a playground is similar to this situation, and I used that concept to explain it to my team,” Kawata said. “The scope is fixed and the sand usage is fixed, but you’re free to use the sand as you please.” That’s part of the reason I think people keep calling it a PS2 cult classic or a lost PS3 game. It feels made for an era where a good idea, great looks, and fun gameplay were enough to, if not sell millions of copies, at least convince a major publisher to take a chance on something new.
Before throwing The Way of the Goddessdirected by Kawata Shinsekai: Into the Deep, an underwater action puzzle game on Apple Arcade that was later ported to the Switch. Much of this team was transferred to The Way of the Goddessbut developers from other lower budget Capcom franchises like Resident Evil also joined, bringing additional know-how and expertise with the RE Engine that has become increasingly standard across Capcom’s portfolio (Monster hunter also moves towards it with Monster Hunter Wilds). Still, Hirabayashi said the team remains “relatively compact for the size of the production volume.”
Unlike many of these games, however, The Way of the Goddess is priced at $50, just below the next-gen premium price for things like Street fighter 6 and Dragon’s Dogma 2but right above cheaper steam games like Helldivers 2, whose $40 price point is considered by many to be a key component of its incredible sales success. I asked what goes into that call, which anecdotally some PC players feel is still too high.
“As an all-new title, we took on a number of challenges, such as a ‘unique Japanese-inspired setting’ and a ‘new gameplay experience’ that combines action and tower defense,” Hirabayashi said. “We decided to price it as affordable as possible to allow as many people as possible to get their hands on this game.” He emphasized that the game’s size is comparable to a full-price game, but you can see that Capcom is hedging in the fact that The Way of the Goddess is also “free” for paid Game Pass members on Xbox and PC. When I previously asked at Summer Game Fest how this deal came about, Hirabayashi said the goal was to try to get the game in front of as many people as possible, given that it’s an unknown IP in an unusual genre.
I hope it works. We’ve seen that a bold vision that delivers and a cult following from fans isn’t always enough to warrant a sequel or a chance to keep building on the work that came before. This is now the sad story of Hi-Fi Rush, the 2023 GOTY contender from Tango Gameworks. This studio was founded by Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami (Kawata and Hirabayashi were on the cinematographic team of Contagious evil 4the last Mikami directed), who left a year before Microsoft announced it was shutting down Tango Gameworks.
As skyrocketing development costs push publishers to retreat to proven sellers and popular licenses, there is a real fear that the top tier of the gaming industry could be calcified even more than it has already been in recent years through remakes, sequels and live service lottery machines. When I asked if we could see more experiments like this The Way of the Goddess of Capcom, Hirabayashi said he could not comment on the larger company’s policy. “However,” he added, “as an individual, I’m very grateful that there were so many people at the company who agreed with me to bring this title to consumers.”
