⚡ NEW: App/ - High Quality

This might be the worst Katamari game so far but it's still Katamari

I adore Katamari games (specifically Damacy and We Love, i most recently played the rerolls of them so i will be calling them 1 and 2 throughout because this is essentially 3) I love the music and the art and the humor and the gameplay i think they are fantastic games, i am aware of my nostalgia bias but even without they are great titles for all ages

A major aspect is that when they came out on the PS2 they were very bizarre games, they don't follow typical logic, you aren't beholdant to typical game tropes from the era, it's like getting a game where you walk around an I SPY picture or a Where's Waldo book. Just little gags with 3D models and you pick them up and they wiggle and you got this light hearted music playing while you destroy a town and bring everyone together. and then you occasionally do a level of "grab all the birds" or "only grab one bear" and your score was your score and it was more about the metaphor of bringing people together. It's like the anti-hikikomori fantasy (this it more about 1)

and if 1 was about building up to be as big as the moon, 2 was about building out. it's very meta where everyone you meet glazes you about how cool the first game was and then you do a bunch more of those themed missions where you gather all the candy or all the students in the school or help the sumo eat. very cute, very funny, I liked 1 more but 2 feels more like an epilogue or a piece of dlc. It's a hat on the first game that makes it look even better than it already was. 3 is a hat on that hat.

I START TALKING ABOUT ONCE UPON HERE
1 built up, 2 built out, 3 tries to do both and it just ends up feeling empty because of it. they do a thing where you time travel and katamari in different eras like cowboy and dinosaur and pirate, i like that a lot. it's a good excuse to play around in a bunch of different set pieces. the problem i have with that is you don't *get* to play around in them before you get yanked away to go to a different themed challenge somewhere else. And it's not funny in a meta way where "the king butted his way in and threw me somewhere else" the game just want's you to do what it wants when it wants. The levels where you get as big as possible are very far and inbetween and theyre my favorite kinds. and when you get to them you still feel very confined to your area. it feels linear which is the last thing a katamari game should feel like. the devs kinda have a predetermined path they want you to take to get big, and you can get big fast doing it, but it's like the same path every time, you bounce off of *way* too many things. and that kills replaying the levels which is double bad because this game REALLY wants you to replay every level. Not only is there a clear D-S ranking system that clouds your hud all the time there are challenges that unlock after you finish the level for the first time. and every one of those challenges is... roll up x amount of items. and challenge 2 doesnt unlock until you beat challenge 1 and finish and same thing with the third. so every level is actually 4 of the same level that you take the same path every time in order to get the most items to get coins for the gachapon that gives you emotes and that's kind of it. and some levels are even gatekept if you haven't found enough crowns in the other levels (theres three crowns per) so that's more replays of the same linear level you have to do in order to find all the crowns. but never fear; that search will be trivialized immediately thanks to... POWERUPS!

I really don't like the powerups in this game. not only do they feel like they don't belong in a game like this, they arent good powerups. you get a magnet with no reach, a speed boost that is defeated by your dash, a time stop that freezes the map but i've only found use in shaving time off my runs, and a radar that spawns directly in front of you after you beat the level and tells you the exact locations of all the crowns, presents and cousins in the level. and you can't pick up two or one doesn't replace another, if you accidentally pick up a radar or SPAWN with one when you want a magnet even though you got the collectables already you need to pop the radar, *wait the 30 seconds for it to expire*, then you can finally pick up and use another item. and i don't like the items, you just need them sometimes because the level designers made the path intending you to use the items.

And to top it all off the controls just feel wrong. old katamari felt like you were moving something dense and rubbery. you bounced when you fell or ran into a wall and you had momentum. Here you feel light and plastic. theres no texture to the things you grab, moving items can phase through your hitbox, and every once in a while youll get kicked or bumped and pushed around like in an old katamari game but because the momentums don't match it feels like you're on rails when that happens.

Other than that it is a katamari game. the art is katamari, the music, there's new cousins, the king is doing his thing and it's classic king (at least in the cutscenes) but other than that it's kinda disappointing. I dont care about online stuff, I'm sure pvp is what some people are looking for but not me. all they had to do was rip the engine from one of the rerolls, they got the feel good, and give me more maps to get big on, a few themed ones like gather treasure with the pirates or sm, and not clutter the screen with all the tips and tricks and powerups and sure keep the king comments in the middle because that ls his personality but just make him a little smaller and talk a little faster. and don't bar the soundtrack behind MULTIPLE DLCS THAT COST MORE THAN THE GAME. They gilded the lily and i'd rather have just a bigger or more flowers. This started as a thumbs up but the more i thought about it the more i realized it just felt wrong. I'm probably gonna try to 100% it like the others because that is the kind of beast i am but if it burns me out I might just go back and play the other 2 again. I'm not heart broken this game isn't what I wanted because i still have my old friends in my library, but because I like the message of the games I am bummed I can't make a new friend. And I always have room for more friends.

I bought this for my girlfriend for an early Christmas present and she already has almost 40 hours of play time in the week and a half since I bought it. She never plays games so this one is special.

My son bought this for my wife on my account and now I can't play Arc Raiders.

Same formula, more cousins.