Capcom’s Kunitsu-Gami plays like a lost PS2 cult classic

polygon.com:

For a while in the mid-2000s, Capcom enjoyed an explosion of creativity that’s rare to see from any major, settled publisher. A crack team led by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami oversaw a series of original titles characterized by bold design and even bolder visual direction. First, there was the “Capcom Five,” a series of initially GameCube-exclusive games that included Resident Evil 4 as well as Hideki Kamiya’s side-scrolling brawler Viewtiful Joe and Goichi Suda’s gonzo shooter Killer 7. Then, Mikami and Kamiya formed the rebel in-house unit Clover Studio where each of them directed a masterpiece for PlayStation 2: Mikami’s revisionist beat-’em-up God Hand and Kamiya’s gorgeous hand-painted Zelda-like, Okami.

There was just one problem: The games pretty much all bombed. Capcom closed Clover in 2007, and Kamiya and Mikami left to form PlatinumGames, which inherited some, if not all, of Capcom’s genius spark from this era. But over the next 17 years, this unique run of games only grew in influence and reputation. Now, a revitalized Capcom, enjoying unparalleled success on the backs of Resident Evil and Monster Hunter, is starting to feel the stirrings of that creative spirit again. You can see it in its daring triple-A gamble, Dragon’s Dogma 2. And you can definitely see it in Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess.

Kunitsu-Gami is a relatively small-scale, defiantly odd game that could have been ripped straight from that 2000s heyday. With its sequence of small, confined stages, focused action, and a tight gameplay loop, it feels more like a remaster of some lost PS2 game than a true product of 2024 (complimentary). Its richly detailed, grotesque art is inspired by traditional Japanese folklore and illustration styles, and that aesthetic combines with the premise to create a unique atmosphere that’s both eerie and beguiling. It’s a true one-off.

Capcom calls Kunitsu-Gami an action-strategy game — or, to be more precise, a “Kagura Action Strategy” game. Kagura is a