After wrapping up very good remakes of Katamari Damacy and We ❤️ Katamari, Bandai Namco moved on to make an all-new Katamari from scratch. Oddly, they went with a totally different studio than the one that led development of the remakes, but it looks like the team that led this – RENGAME – was involved with the remakes, just not leading.

It’s More Katamari. The thematic gimmick for this outing is that you’re now rolling through time, with levels split across different eras like Edo period Japan, Prehistoric Times, Ice Age, Wild West, Ancient Greece, etc. Gameplay is very basic Katamari fare, you’ve got large-as-possible, fast-as-possible, collect-specific-objects, hit-the-target-size, largest-bear-or-cow, and the ever-hated “What if Katamari was a competitive multiplayer game???” mode. Every era has 4-5 levels (except Edo, which has like 10+), and every level has 3 hidden crowns, 1 or more cousins, and a present. After you beat a level you also get 3 tiers of “challenges” which typically amount to “collect n different items”.

Its… fine. The fundamentals of the game are sound. There are a couple things that bother me, though.

  1. Scoring has moved to a Rank system, where unless you get completely lost (or waste a bunch of time hyper-focusing on trying to pick up a very specific item), the game is basically no-fail, because you’re almost certainly going to get large enough to qualify for a D-rank. Fast-as-possible levels in particular basically are no-fail, because the D-rank requirement is a time of like 5-99 minutes. You have to be trying to fail those.

    It’s fine but it makes it real easy to blow through some of these levels and just never go back to them because like, do I really want to go back for an S-Rank? Do I actually care that much?

  2. Something is wrong about movement. I probably wouldn’t have noticed this myself, but I read a comment and now can’t un-see it. Or un-feel it. Or whatever. The Katamari now feels like it “snaps” to 8 unseen directions, rather than being completely fluid. This may have been intentional to make it easier to roll in a straight line, and it certainly is easier to roll in a straight line now… but I don’t want to roll in a straight line I want to be able to quickly wiggle around to pick up more stuff.

    This may have been a side effect from implementing the “simple” controls that make movement one-stick, but unlike those new controls it does not appear to be optional.

  3. The Katamari is now more sticky. It’s now rare to shed a bunch of parts because you slammed into a wall or something. This is probably another difficulty thing, because punishing people when they run into walls sucks, but also like… why? It was never super punishing before, so why change?

    The Katamari also seems to “reorganize” itself more frequently, like smooth out to be a non-lumpy misshapen mess, which just seems unnecessary. This does have gameplay impact: you can get stuck in areas that you’re just barely too large to get out of, and now you can’t slam into a wall (or dinosaur leg, or whatever) until you can squeeze through.

  4. The object-culling – at least on the Switch 2 – is excessive. Like, if you do the quick-180 turn you’re going to have object pop-in even for stuff that ends up immediately ahead of you. The draw distance is also pretty shockingly short, often times feeling shorter than the original PS2 releases.

  5. There are some late-game level unlocks that have some truly absurd unlock requirements. One of the pirate/ocean levels requires you to complete a secret optional version of another level, and doesn’t explicitly acknowledge this alternative mode even exists. Others seemingly require you to find literally every cousin, and just… no. It’s too much. Cousins are supposed to be Weird Little Guys who you pick up as optional fun things, not a required unlock criteria.

Now, there are some extra things added to make all this collection a little bit easier. There’s a rocket power-up that lets you run around super fast, a magnet powerup that auto-collects everything nearby, a stop-watch power-up that freezes movement and gives you a little more time, and most importantly for collecting – a radar power-up that highlights collectables that are presently zoned-in. But even that is sorta weird because if a level has a transformation or loading zone, if you pop the radar immediately it’s not going to show you stuff that hasn’t spawned in.

The new music is pretty good, and there are two DLC packs worth of historical music… but while you can play the classic music from the start of the game from the Music Menu, you can’t actually play with like a shuffle of your favorite-ed music until post-game.

It’s fine. I liked it, but I ❤️ Katamari. You have to really screw up a Katamari for me to have that much of a problem with it. But it’s also hard to say like, yes, this is the one, stop what you’re doing and go play this now. If you need a Katamari game, go get either of the Rerolls. If you absolutely must have more, this game is Fine. Recommended.