‘As soon as Upon A Katamari’ is the newest sport within the ‘Katamari Damacy’ collection.
Bandai Namco
I keep in mind importing the Japanese model of Katamari Damacy in 2004, and now, over twenty years later, we lastly have a brand new sport, and it’s principally good.
The premise of Katamari Damacy has you, the Prince, roll a ball (the aforementioned katamari) and gather objects to develop the ball greater so your dad, the King of All Cosmos, can repopulate the sky with stars.
A lot of the early ranges have you ever begin out tiny, however by the tip of the sport, you had been rolling up international locations into a large ball of all the things.
It was a novel useful premise, and it labored very well. Controls had been through the twin analogue sticks and laid out like a tank’s.
So, each sticks ahead moved you ahead, and flipping them in reverse instructions would make you flip. You additionally had a lift, the place you’d flick the sticks in opposing instructions shortly.
Broadly talking, that’s all true for this new iteration. Nonetheless, there are lots of new components right here, some good and others not a lot.
Energy-ups like magnets can help you seize numerous objects directly.
Bandai Namco
This time round, the King has seemingly destroyed the Earth, so now you must journey by time to rebuild every period by, you guessed it, rolling lots of stuff right into a ball so your dad can flip it into a brand new star.
The excellent news is that you’ve all method of power-ups, like magnets (proven above) and rockets, that make accumulating all the things much more simple. Slowing down time can be one other helpful little power-up that’s included.
As for the unhealthy information, properly, in a useful sense, it’s considerably two-fold; the primary problem is that the King is now tremendous chatty. I assumed this was simply the trace system, so I turned it off, however he nonetheless saved popping up always.
The rationale this is a matter is that when the King speaks to you in-game, he takes up a lot of the center of the display screen, and you may’t actually see a lot of what’s going on. He additionally doesn’t truly say a lot in the best way of something useful, both, so it’s simply fairly annoying.
The second problem is that within the older video games, a lot of the ranges had been fairly chill and about rising the dimensions of your katamari. Sometimes, you’d have a extra particular goal the place you’d have to collect sure objects. The timer was additionally quite a bit much less strict and afforded exploration, which was enjoyable as a result of all the degrees had been utterly bananas when it comes to their content material.
The stricter closing dates make the sport extra of a mad rush in comparison with the unique video games on the PlayStation 2.
Bandai Namco
Right here, although, nearly each stage is about capturing sure forms of gadgets, with the preliminary quantity the baseline grade for every goal (topping out at a typical S rank). A lot of the chilliness enjoyable of simply rolling alongside has been misplaced in a mad sprint to search out sure gadgets shortly. That is additionally compounded with golden crowns, which you additionally want to search out to unlock later ranges.
Fortunately, this strategy calms down in a while, and there are some genuinely enjoyable ranges tucked away, however I really feel that a lot of the appeal of the preliminary video games on the PlayStation 2 has been considerably misplaced.
The opposite problem, and this one is fortunately elective, is that the brand new music simply isn’t all that nice. It’s a bit too anisong-esque, and whereas that has its place, the soundtracks to the older video games had been amazingly eclectic. The excellent news is that you would be able to choose the music you need, together with tracks from the older video games, so that is far much less of an issue.
This will all sound reasonably damning, however there’s nonetheless a very good sport right here, when you get into the groove of every stage and begin opening up totally different eras to journey between.
General, As soon as Upon A Katamari is an enormous enlargement over its earlier iterations, however with the added complexity and stricter closing dates, among the appeal and enjoyable of simply exploring has been misplaced. That is nonetheless a strong entry within the collection, however actually not considered one of my favorites.
Platform: PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), Swap, Xbox Collection X|S, PC
Developer: Rengame
Writer: Bandai Namco
Launched: twenty fourth October 2025
Value: $39.99
Rating: 7/10
Disclosure: Bandai Namco despatched me a duplicate of this sport for the needs of this assessment.
Comply with me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I additionally handle Mecha Damashii and am at present featured within the Giant Robots exhibition at present touring Japan.
