Kunitsu Gami

Everyone has their own favorite genres of books, movies, and of course, video games. I like tower defense games, where you build different towers to stop hordes of enemies from reaching and defeating some goals. Capcom has made a great tower defense game in Kunitsu Gami, and it is an awesome game you can play with Xbox Game Pass Subscription.

Art Style

This game has drawn from Japanese cultural aethestics: priestess, samurai, monks and ninjas. The enemies that come out of Torii gates looks like ghosts and beasts from ancient Asian literatures. Buildings are a good mixture of old architectures and temples. I found it very interesting how almost everyone (main playable characters and the villagers) wears masks. Defeating boss and you get a different mask, allowing you to give villagers a new role. It's fitting that you can upgrade those masks in-game, and villagers can take on a new job/role by putting on a different mask. The games textures also include a lot of wood grains, giving everything a very organic and comfortable feeling: not so sterile and no heavy emphasis in projectile attacks. I also liked how the game included 3D models of traditional Japanese desserts, and that the symbol for rations and currency for upgrades is musubi.

Old-School Gameplay Mechanics

It is rather easy to pick up this game and play, and part of the game plays just like a beat-em-up. Progression is fairly fast: you can unlock upgrades but it isn't always obvious what they do. So it is rather enjoyable to try things out, and not have to worry too much about the currencies you invested in unlocking the upgrades. Everything can be refunded so you've only spent the time experimenting. You know you are almost at the end when you have to fight all the bosses again. There is also a new game+ mode for you to replay with higher difficulty, and more chance to earn unlocks. There are helpful hints you can turn on and off by equipping certain talisman accessories, to help you find secrets or objectives. The point is, even if you've never played games like Street Fighter or Final Fight, you can still pull off some amazing moves. And if you are familiar with inputting commands via combinations of joystick and button presses, you can strategize and plan your moves. With the villagers in various roles helping you, you don't have to execute all moves perfectly but your attacks are much more powerful, so you want to do as much damage as possible. You can't just lob arrows at everyone and cruise through all the levels either. So you really want a blend of villagers in different roles, especially if you want to unlock all the rewards. It is nice that the developers achieved a balance so that you'd be trying out different elements of the game. No one role, talisman accessory, or weapon is over-powered and even if you are defeated, the game offers you a quick way to change your equipment.

Great Sound Effects and Music

When the villagers attacks the horde of enemies, you can hear great sound effects based on the roles of villagers and the defense of enemy. The most obvious one is the rifle firing, and you can hear the shots land if you are standing next to the target. Or the bell-armored giant deflecting shots and slashes.

This game has day and night cycles, and you face the enemies in the evenings and must defend until dawn. The music changes based on time of day, so the in-game music informs me when to wrap up my preparations and put everyone in position. The music is in a loop, like all the games I grew up with and it is always nice that the tunes are nice and does not drive me nuts.

The distinct sound effects also tell me when the construction and repair had finished, or when a villager is done with assigned job. You pick up these hints naturally after spending a bit of time with the game and they really allow you to multi-task and prepare of the battle at night.

New Game+ End Boss

New Game+ mode is unlocked after first play-through. It is more challenging and it is great fun for people who enjoyed the initial run and want to try again with different strategies. Now you'll be trying to complete the stages with specific requirements, so that you can earn new talisman accessories and more musubi to upgrade villagers and your abilities.

But that final boss, you are fighting much stronger versions of yourself... I thought I had sufficiently upgraded and didn't think too much about talisman I missed. After struggling for a frustrating week I cheated and read guides online. I had to go back to previous cleared stages to earn stuff to upgrade my villagers and to be able to execute some of the strategies suggested in those guides. Defeating the Cursed Soh boss gives you a different ending, and the one last missing Ema plate. That spot with the plate missing was triggering my OCD, and it was great to be able to fill the empty spot.

The game tells me again after the ending that "new game+ mode is unlocked." I wonder how it'll be different this time? I've already spent 40+ hours on it and I don't know if I can get more stuff out of it? Maybe the last missing achievements? They seem like a real grind...

Photo Mode

I think all games should offer this ability to take a photograph of your game play with depth-of-field effects and other filters. This game's Photo Mode is a little bit clunky... I think I liked Forza's implementation the best. What it comes down to is the ability to focus on a subject and adjust effects later. You could achieve the same thing in Kunitsu Gami, but is not not as intuitive without the ability to focus. In different game, Halo, the photo mode is exposed as part of the replay function, and it is just neat to slowly play the clip to find the event you find interesting.

I Had a Great Time

I am a little biased towards tower defense genre. But that's only a portion of the game. The rest plays a little bit like the most recent Ninja Gaiden games, which I am also a big fan of. The game does seem unfair for some parts, like the developers expected you to just understand how it is supposed to work, like one of the stages where you have no villagers to help you with unlike every other stage in the game, or the stages where you are in spirit-form the whole time and cannot attack. But I think they do shake things up and kept things interesting, and encouraged me to try different strategies. The game does not penalize you for failures: like making you wait forever to retry, or forcing you to keep the power-up configurations you have. You can easily make small adjustments between retries and experiment for as long as you like. The health meters for your character and enemies is also important; they allow you to see the progress you've made. Finally, with Capcom's heritage of fighting and beat-them-up games, there is a lot of timing and decision making involved and everything comes together to make this great game. You should check it out.