A reader makes a recommendation for one of the more obscure releases of the year but one he feels is also one of the most original.
I haven’t played many new video games this year, I will have to admit, so maybe my recommendation doesn’t mean much, but I truly believe that Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess is the best game I have played for a long time.
Although they praised Capcom for creating something new and obviously Japanese, GC’s review of the game was fairly negative and they complained that the strategy was too simplistic and that the levels were too short. But for me, who has never really played a strategy game before, I found it all to be fascinating and very different from what I’m used to.
For those that don’t know the game, it’s set in medieval Japan and has you guarding a girl who is able to purify a defilement that has infected a mountain and brought endless waves of demons that appear through a scared gate every night. It’s your job to get the girl to the gate but she can only move (very slowly) during daylight and has to be protected when she’s standing still at night.
There’s quite a bit more to the game than that, as you can also order around villagers that you rescue, and they have lots of different class types and skill trees you can unlock. Plus, you have your own even more complicated skill tree and lots of buffs you collect on the way, although you can only have a few active at once.
This is all on top of your character being a good fighter and while there’s not that many moves there’s always a lot of enemies around, so making sure you prioritise the right ones is very important and, I found, one of the most difficult things.
In fact, I found the whole game quite difficult, which maybe people who have more experience with strategy games wouldn’t. But it was hard in a good way, where I felt I was learning how to play something new and coming up with different tactics for how to deal with it all.
I liked that there was no set solution either and I went through a whole bunch of strategies on some levels until I hit something that would work, even though I think some of the others probably would’ve done it if I was a bit quicker or better at the combat.
I found the variety between levels to be very impressive, with the ones set on the boats and poisoned lake, and the one where the girl couldn’t move… It is a very good game, I thought, and so different to anything else out there.
I played it on Game Pass and would not have heard about it if not for GC’s review, so I don’t know how I’d feel if I bought it, but it seemed a good length to me and has reasonable replayability. I’ve already started the New Game+ and will probably try to beat it on another loop round, although it is even harder this way.
Maybe there’s better games that have been released this year but not that I’ve played. Even if there are ones that are technically better I very much doubt I’ll play anything as imaginative and different and downright weird as this. And I mean that very much as a positive. So if you’ve got Game Pass I would 100% suggest playing this and even if you haven’t I think it’s well worth the money.
By reader Gannet
The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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