when Kunitsushin ~The Path of the Goddess~ It debuted at Capcom’s Digital Summer Showcase last year.I didn’t pay much attention to it: it appeared to be a high-concept action RPG based in Japanese mythology, with some of its artistic cues seeming to take from Capcom’s highly stylized games. WolfI love action RPGs and Japanese folklore, but neither the first trailer nor any of the subsequent ones really conveyed what this game was about.
After trying the demo version of the game, This year’s Summer Game FestAnd later I got a copy, and finally Understood. And this game is really worth playing.
in Kunitsushin ~The Path of the Goddess~In it, players play as Sou, the guardian of the shrine maiden Yoshiro, and must protect her and help guide her through the land to rid it of evil demons. The Verge, Art director and game director Shuichi Kawata said, National God It’s unclear what kind of game it is.
“This work is a mix of several genres,” Kawada wrote, “and I imagined that people might have different impressions of it.”
Check out this launch trailer and see what kind of game it is.
Kawada said, National God As a maiden defense game. Gameplay is divided into three parts: day, night, and base building cycles. During the day, Sou travels around mountain villages ravaged by demon corruption. He cleanses the corruption and rescues villagers who help him in the following night cycle. At night, demons attack and try to get to Yoshiro to kill her. To stop them, Sou assigns villagers different jobs, each with their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and places them all over the village to stop the demons from reaching Yoshiro. Once Yoshiro reaches the edge of the village, the village is permanently cleansed and becomes a new base that Sou and the villagers must repair before moving on to the next location.
This is how I do it National God It’s a clever iteration of tower defense games. You assign roles to villagers using crystals, a resource you get by killing demons at night and purifying villages during the day. Not all villagers can play all roles, some roles are not suitable for combat, but have other advantages. During the day cycle, you might assign a few of your minions to the role of thieves and send them out to dig up more crystals and food, which act as health restorers for Saw and villagers. But thieves are useless at night, so you’ll have to spend precious time and crystals to reassign and redeploy them. Sometimes you might find yourself short on crystals because you used them up to buy the expensive role of a sumo wrestler (who draws the demons’ attention to himself and away from Yoshiro) or the role of a monk, who uses his power to freeze demons in place, making them easy prey for your bow and arrow or lumberjack’s axe.
National God It offered a challenge that excited my puzzle- and strategy-obsessed brain.
Rather than simply clearing the stage, village battles have special parameters that, if met, grant additional perks. One of the parameters is to not use more than 1,900 crystals. At first, this seemed easy, but as the stages progressed, that goal became much harder to achieve. Also To complete it, I needed to give Yoshiro 1,500 crystals, which left me with only 400 crystals left for my villagers – a very tight budget considering basic roles like archers and lumberjacks cost 50 crystals each, while more powerful roles cost anywhere between 150 and 300 crystals.
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I really enjoyed the tension between strategic allocation and placement: do I spend crystals to gain stronger roles and reduce defenders, or do I risk being overwhelmed by my larger but weaker army? National God is also special in that it doesn’t get too trivialized. In other tower defense games, you can set up your defenses nicely and then sit back and watch the game progress by itself. But that never happened for me. Even when I had plenty of resources or well-placed villagers, I was always on guard and often had to go and rescue Yoshiro with Saw’s ultimate attack. At every level, National God It offered a challenge that got my puzzle- and strategy-obsessed brain buzzing with excitement.
Though it’s not a standout feature, the game also has an interesting narrative. Each villager you rescue has a name and a background, and I enjoyed reading their stories and how they intertwine. These people become more than just anonymous troops to throw at the demonic hordes; they become members of a living community made up of couples, families, and friends. It’s a beautiful reminder of the adage “we are all us.”
in National GodSo is the only one trained in martial arts while everyone else is a farmer, fisherman, or housewife. Rather than waiting for outside help or succumbing to an unrelenting demon, these ordinary people took up what few weapons they had to defend their homes and families. It’s nice to see this message in a political climate that seems to be rolling back protections for women, queer people, and people of color. Help doesn’t come, we help. It’s a sentiment echoed by Kawata’s words as a “helper.” Kunitsukami Main subject.
“Challenge is what drives this game,” he wrote. “We take different situations seriously and move forward fearlessly.”
Kunitsushin ~The Path of the Goddess~ Available now on PlayStation, PC, Xbox, and Xbox Game Pass.
