*Kunitsu-Gami* has been a blast to play to be honest! It reminds me of Okami. God I miss Okami. But that's not what this is about! It's a PS2 game trapped in the graphics of a PS5 game. Simple and ~~clean~~ effective, you run around in a real-time Strategy-RPG as Soh[^1], protecting a priestess from demons by leading her from one end of a stage to the next. Soh has the ability to cut stuff up with their sword, but the strategy part comes in by saving villagers and giving them powers so they can fight the demons too. With a simple button press you can direct villagers to attack in a Pikmin-sort of way. It's very simple and not too overwhelming, which is nice because I'm pretty bad at real-time strategy stuff. The game pauses while you think about where to place villagers, but you can also just do that to get a view of the stage you're on, and see what demons are flooding in from where. There's a pretty satisfying loop to the game, with basically zero fluff. For real, there hasn't been a line of dialogue that isn't related to game mechanics since the initial cutscene. You beat a stage, which then becomes a base which you can repair. You hang out with the goddess to level up villagers and equip various charms that let you customize your playstyle, then head on out again. That's literally it! The game has an absolutely beautiful Ukiyo-e aesthetic to its UI and design. The RE Engine continues to prove its worth with gorgeous colors and animations. It's also fun to see the villagers hang out in your base. You can't interact with them outside of making repair requests, but you can still find them farming, lounging in the sun, or just talking amongst themselves. There are lots of different unit times, though I've yet to unlock them all. It's pretty standard fair at the moment, with your regular soldiers, archers, healers and tanks, although I've also gotten a shaman that can freeze demons in place every few seconds, which is neat. As far as bad stuff so far: sometimes the game can get a little too busy visually, making it hard to see stuff. The text can be a little too small on a TV too. I'm also a little miffed at how long it takes to equip multiple skills. I'm 6 hours in and still can't use more than one, which sucks, because I've unlocked a ton of new ones that I'd like to play around with at once. Also, missions are getting pretty long. This would be fine, but repairs are tied to stage completion, and each base gets more and more stuff to repair. Rather than repeat the longer missions, I've been going back to the first boss because I can kill it in under a minute, which is kinda silly! You could use this as an opportunity to do the optional challenges that appear after each stage, but they can be very annoying, with things like "don't let soh and/or the priestess take damage," so I haven't bothered with them. Besides that, though, I'm having a fantastic time with *Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess*. Capcom seems to be hell-bent on maintaining the good will its accrued over the years, and I appreciate them for it. I'll update here if my thoughts change as I get to the end of the game, which I do plan on reaching. [^1]: who has they/them pronouns, waow!