Approaches for multi-hop knowledge graph reasoning with reward shaping include a system and method of training a system to search relational paths in a knowledge graph. The method includes identifying, using an reasoning module, a plurality of first outgoing links from a current node in a knowledge graph, masking, using the reasoning module, one or more links from the plurality of first outgoing links to form a plurality of second outgoing links, rewarding the reasoning module with a reward of one when a node corresponding to an observed answer is reached, and rewarding the reasoning module with a reward identified by a reward shaping network when a node not corresponding to an observed answer is reached. In some embodiments, the reward shaping network is pre-trained.