Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

Genre: Action / Strategy / Tower Defense

Players: 1

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Review:

Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!

Kunitsu-Gami, released in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and then ported to Nintendo Switch 2 alongside the console’s launch in 2025, is a game that combines Third-Person Action, Strategy, and Tower Defense elements in a setting apparently based on Japanese myths that has players taking the role of a sword-wielding spiritual warrior working alongside a shrine maiden to fight and seal away malicious spirits called Seethe that have attacked the people living on a mountainside

The presentation here is quite good. I don’t think this is necessarily the most impressive showpiece of the Nintendo Switch 2’s capabilities, but this game does an excellent job giving us detailed characters and environments, with the Seethe being particularly noteworthy for their creative character designs, with many of them and their “defiled” structures seemingly constructed from numerous massive sickly-looking spindly fingers. This is all backed by instrumental music, some of it using traditional Japanese instruments and some using modern Western musical instruments. Overall, it’s pretty good, though it’s odd in that niche sorta’ way that games based on Japanese mythology often can be.

The gameplay here is also fairly creative. The warrior that players take the role of is fairly competent, and can generally take on most enemies on his own, making pretty short work of them. However, they have a tendency to swarm in a way that makes it difficult to take them all on yourself. With this being the case, you’ll gradually free imprisoned villagers and then spend spiritual energy you’ve gathered to assign them roles like archers and melee fighters. These fighters can then be sent to stand anywhere within a distance of where you currently are, where they will engage any enemies that fall within their own range.

In some ways, this makes this like a Real-Time Strategy game, as you’re requisitioning and commanding units, and you can also issue commands for all to attack or all to fall back to protect the shrine maiden, and any nearby unit can be reassigned to a new location at will. However, your limited ability to command units not near you, or send them to a position farther away, means that you’ll have to be strategic about where you position them, as you may not have a great opportunity to issue specific commands to them again for a while. Add to this the fact that the monsters are racing towards the shrine maiden and protecting her is of utmost importance (your ultimate goal is to guide her to the monster gate and seal it alongside her), and you can see why many have said this is a Tower Defense game in disguise.

I do think this is an interesting take on the respective genres that isn’t quite like anything else out there, and that uniqueness is one of this game’s bigger selling points. It’s a good thing too, because the individual elements the game is built on can be lacking. Your character’s combat consists largely of two-button combos, blocking, and dodging, and can get repetitive and button-mashy. I’ve already mentioned your limited ability to command and assign troops. And as a Tower Defense game, you’re not given much opportunity to customize units or upgrade them in the field – all of this game’s unit upgrades are done through RPG-style mechanics in between missions.

Before closing out this review, I should mention one feature unique to the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, the inclusion of mouse mode, which includes a version of mouse mode that automatically detects when you place the Joy-Con 2 on a flat surface and changes control types. While I appreciate the inclusion, the only time it seems to be used is in menus and while stopping time to assign troop locations, when it’s not all that important to have accurate and responsive pointer control, and I kinda’ feel like it’s less jarring to just stick with standard gamepad controls the entire time. Still, it’s nice that this option is here for those who want it.

In the end, I think Kunitsu-Gami ends up being one of those games that’s greater than the sum of its parts. And as I mentioned, there’s nothing else quite like it. If you enjoy the respective genres that form the gameplay of Kunitsu-Gami, I think this game might be worth a look. It’s definitely a niche game, but it’s a niche I think many players will find to be worth exploring.

tl;dr – Kunitsu-Gami is a game that combines Third-Person Action, Strategy, and Tower Defense in a setting inspired by Japanese mythology that has players taking the role of a warrior accompanying a shrine maiden seeking to rally villagers to fight off malicious spirits and seal them away. While all of these individual elements have areas where they’re lacking, together they form something unique and well worth trying out if the individual parts of this game appeal to you.

Grade: B

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