Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Review + Steam Deck Performance (2024)

Review

Kunitsu-Gami was provided by CAPCOM for review. Thank you!

I remember seeing Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess for the first time in a trailer, and I was blown away by its gorgeous, colorful visuals. I had no idea what the game was, and I had little idea of what it was like until I played it at Summer Game Fest, but I am a sucker for vibrant spectacles, and this game was perfect in that aspect. Then, I played the game for myself, and I was genuinely hooked. Not only did the colors hold up, but the gameplay was a wonderful mix of action and tower defense with some gorgeous world and enemy designs. Now, Kunitsu-Gami is here, and I think it's a game everyone should experience.

Before going into the gameplay loop, I really want to talk about the visuals. Kunitsu-Gami is one of the most beautiful games I have played this year. I did mention the colors a lot every time I talk about the game, and for good reason, but apart from them, I want to talk about the enemy designs. Each enemy feels very distinct from each other, and even the smallest grunts still look awesome. I do love the bigger enemy designs, especially the boss ones like the centipede monster.

The environments themselves look a little monotone during the day, but this is specifically designed due to the world's corruption. The parts of the corruption that exist during the day are a little vibrant, but nighttime is when all of it really shines. The attacks you do, the dancing goddess behind you, the enemies coming at you, the ground around you, every bit of the level oozes in color and visual splendor. If you buy this game just to look at the world, I wouldn't blame you. It's also so nice to listen to, and I feel the world's atmosphere is a very high point for the game.

The story of Kunitsu-Gami is told more by your actions than spoken word cutscenes. As the protector of the goddess, you are tasked with cleansing the corruption on your mountain and returning to the shrine you were kicked out of by monsters. It's interesting how the story is told. It's a tale of restoring a balance or harmony with the nature of the mountain that is primarily told through the environment, text in menus, and trippy, silent cutscenes, and it all adds to the awesome, weird, sometimes creepy atmosphere that envelopes the game. It's a fantastic way of handling the story and fits this game perfectly.

Then, we have the gameplay elements, which seem weird on paper but work extremely well. It's a mix of real-time combat and tower defense, but you have to constantly move your people around while protecting the goddess, who is dancing from one end of the level to the other. At each level, you will run around and start by freeing villagers and cleansing spots across the map to get crystals, which act as your currency. You will then use the currency to assign roles to the villagers and carve the path that the goddess needs to walk to cleanse the gate at the end of the level, which is what you need to do to beat it.

You have the daytime to find and cleanse the map, assign villagers their roles, and then nighttime hits. This is when the onslaught of enemies comes out of the gates to which we are bringing our goddess. It's essentially split, so daytime is management, while nighttime is the fighting.

It sounds weird on paper, but it's phenomenal. I love the micro-managing of the villagers, and since assigning them roles and figuring out which job they will have is streamlined and easier, the constant moving around is much less of a chore and much easier to figure out. I also like the idea of cleansing all the spots around the map to get different items to upgrade your character and create new ultimate moves you can use. Maps are not generally big, but I like the small emphasis on exploring and giving us currency and motivation to find everything we can for upgrades.

The actual combat isn't very complex either, but I felt it struck a nice balance with what I would expect from a game like this. You have two buttons to attack and can use them to combo for bigger moves that can hit multiple enemies. You can also have different ultimate moves that can obliterate enemies around you, which I wound up using strategically on the monsters with more health or the bosses.

Outside of these levels and boss battles, you will set up bases to rebuild and get different currencies that can be used to upgrade the villager roles you acquire or your character, sweets to display, equipping different talismans for different effects, or different story bits to fill out the lore of the world of Kunitsu-Gami.

This is probably the game's weakest point and can feel a bit like a chore to go through. There are some nice benefits, like extra currency to upgrade and such. Still, there are different bases, and making sure you go through each one after every level to maximize the rebuilding process and get some small bonuses feels underwhelming. I like the extra reward you get from rebuilding bases, which usually amounts to an increased currency stock to assign roles, which helps when in levels. However, going into your multiple bases was still a lot to maximize efficiency. I would have rather selected rebuilding projects from a menu for each base instead of running through the bases to find what was completed and what to assign next.

Overall, I didn't expect to love Kunitsu-Gami as much as I did, but overall, it feels perfect to play on the Steam Deck.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess - Steam Deck Performance

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is really enjoyable on the Steam Deck, and I was expecting it to be due to Capcom developing it. The RE Engine they use is phenomenal and offers a lot of flexibility for lower-powered devices, including the Deck. Because of it, I was able to make a couple of groups of settings ranging from what I personally liked to higher framerates and high-quality visuals.

One thing that isn't required, but I do recommend, is changing the color space. The game supports HDR and different color spaces, but extremely colorful visuals are a big appeal, and you get that the most with the Rec.709 color space. You can change this in the Display options, but the HDR must be off.

I also recommend making sure your anti-aliasing is set to FXAA+TAA. By default, the game has the anti-aliasing set to FXAA, and I found it to be extremely grainy, so FXAA+TAA fixes that. I tried using AMD FSR 3 upscaling, and it fixed it. However, the game does have considerable ghosting when using it, and it was enough to bug me. Changing it this way fixes it while not having to use FSR 3, and with the right settings, the changes will have similar or better visuals with almost no battery life difference.

Recommended Settings

Let's start with my recommended settings; this one doesn't fall into any specific category. I made several changes to balance visuals and battery with a stable framerate. It combines high textures, lower shadows and ambient occlusion, and slightly higher mesh quality to reduce pop-ins. We also have a 30 FPS framerate limit and an 80% resolution scale to keep battery life down. This isn't a noticeable difference from 100% and saves some battery while keeping the framerate stable.

After toying with the settings, I also found this was the best way to play regarding battery life. I was able to keep a TDP limit of 10 while still having a beautiful and stable game, but trying to go any lower would severely impact the visual quality and still need at least a TDP limit of 8. It isn't much of a difference in the end and requires too many compromises, so I felt it wasn't worthwhile to try finding anything lower.

40 FPS Settings

Next, I went to find the best settings to play at 40 FPS. The game feels significantly smoother with the higher framerate, but the slight dips here and there and the high battery drain stopped it from being my preferred way to play. It does need lower-quality settings and no TDP limit, but it does work and is great for the most part.

Quality Settings

Finally, we have the quality settings. This was a bit hard since I still wanted to balance a stable 30 FPS framerate, but it can be done. With a 100% resolution scale, some settings that were turned on, like subsurface scattering, and others that were bumped up a peg, we have a gorgeous-looking game that shines throughout. It has a large battery drain, but if you are going to be near an outlet and plugged in often, these visuals are worthwhile.

Accessibility

As for accessibility, there is a specific tab in the settings that allows you to change subtitle settings and colors around the map. You can also change button icons, cursor lock, inverting controls, camera controls, audio sliders, and language. There is also a photo mode.

The game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, and it has cloud saves and controller support. There are HDR settings that you can turn on and off at will.

Conclusion

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is not a game I was expecting to fall in love with, but here we are. The blend of real-time tower defense and RPG mechanics to upgrade yourself and the villagers create a compelling gameplay loop that I loved. Taking care of the bases is a little monotonous, and some of the upgrades aren't as useful as I would like, but these are small in the grand scheme. And the visuals/sound are glorious, especially when it comes to its vibrant colors.

Then, we have the Steam Deck playability. The game can run very well on a portable device, and I recommend playing it this way. Whether it's the recommended settings or our 40 FPS one, there are some great ways to enjoy this wonderful game on the go, and I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to play it like this. This is definitely a necessary Steam Deck game that I very much recommend.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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