Oooh, it’s been a while since the last KATAMARI game. Well over a decade, really, and the urge to roll up everything into a ball has been in the back of my mind—springing out to bother me every chance my subconscious gets. While the remasters and remixes were all right, I was in the market for a new game: and that’s where developer RENGAME and publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment come in with ‘Once Upon A KATAMARI’, a game that not only continues the delightfully absurd concept of rolling up everything into a katamari, but blasts you with a cacophony of screams, crashes, and explosions of love rolled up into a colourful visual and audio package that I can only otherwise describe as a studio album you only see once a decade.
These KATAMARI games are deceptively simple: all you gotta do is roll a ball, and things are no different in Once Upon A KATAMARI. Here, players take on the role of The Prince, son of The King of Love and the Queen. During what I can only surmise was a designated Spring cleanup day, The King accidentally lets forth a scroll that warps space and time itself, sending all the stars into disarray, the Queen’s crowns across eras of time, and inadvertently turning a chore into a ball of fun. Of course, we’re here to clean up The King’s mess, all the while he proceeds to be the mizukusai father he’s always been—expect to be put down a lot!
(RENGAME/Bandai Namco Entertainment)
Things are considerably easier this time around in Once Upon A KATAMARI. Players can choose to either use the series’ original control scheme or go for the simpler one analog stick movement, which helps with rolling stuff up quite a bit! But if you want to really get that katamari roll feeling, I highly suggest the original control scheme, which you can basically think of like if you were moving a giant ball with your bare hands (well, without lame things like physics getting in the way)—it gives you more control, especially when navigating tougher terrain. See, your katamari starts very small and bumping into something larger than you can send you flying or worse, make you lose pieces of your ball that you worked hard to roll up. Essentially, your goal is to work your way from a small little rolled up thingamajig into something massive, all while under the pressure of time limits or other unique stage conditions.
Rolling things up sounds pretty easy. But soon you’ll find yourself skirting the time limits as you race to pick up anything and everything to fill your katamari. For a game that’s all about love and connections, there is an odd sense of unease you’ll feel when the air grows quiet for even a few moments as you fail to find things to roll up. Part of what makes these games replayable is just this however—finding the optimal path that lets you roll past the minimum size requirement and towards an S-rank may occasionally take a few tries, but you’ll have a lot of fun doing it. Having to collect Crowns to advance the game is slightly frustrating, however, as the larger your katamari grows the greater the chance you could miss one or two in a level. Considering that Once Upon A KATAMARI features some of the largest maps in the game, you’ll likely want to roam the level first and find the locations of the Queen’s crowns so you’re not short of the game’s occasional collectibles check. There are other things you can pick up that do let you customise your player character, so it’s a good idea to crash right into those!
As you complete levels, you’ll open up the various eras available in Once Upon A KATAMARI. From Edo-era Japan to the Stone Ages, each zone has a decent selection of levels and feature differing objectives based around that setting’s theme. One map, you might be just rolling things up! But in another, you’ll have to roll up specific objects to the tune of your client’s desires. This helps keep the game fresh, even though I’d be more than happy to just roll things up into a massive katamari. However, a major annoyance I had with this game was how frequently cutscenes and level transitions would interrupt gameplay. In some stages, as your katamari grows in size, new zones will open up to you as you’re able to roll through their barricades, but the game will happily take control away from you multiple times to show you obvious exits and the like. And in those very stages, as the levels open up, you’ll be taken to a brief loading screen that really shouldn’t be a thing on a console like the Xbox Series X.
While these frustrations are short-lived, they do break up the flow of gameplay at the most inopportune times. I already have to deal with The King’s massive text boxes when he’s got an opinion he’s just got to let you know about—why can’t I just roll in peace?!
(RENGAME/Bandai Namco Entertainment)
Of course, this wouldn’t be a KATAMARI game without the surface-level nonsense the series is known for. While you’re on rolling duty, the Queen herself is out on a series of short misadventures you’ll have the pleasure of seeing in the occasional animated cutscene. The King will also indulge himself on whatever bit of entertainment he can find in Edo-era Japan, with both the rulers of the stars making a mess of things for everyone involved. But no one gets hurt—in fact, through the screams of terror the people of KATAMARI let out, there’s not a single complaint about being rolled up into a ball. Sure, things happen just so you have an excuse to make a katamari, but once you learn that the rolled up abomination of things is more than the sum of its parts—a collection of cultures, people, events that happened—that realisation that this is a game about love will hit you like a wrecking ball.
And no KATAMARI game is complete without a stellar soundtrack. Old artists reprise their roles in the story of love, such as the immutable KENJI NINUMA and the charming Shigeru Matsuzaki while new vocal talent comes in to give the franchise a much-needed modern voice. DAOKO, Kocchi no Kento, the world’s loudest idol-in-training Saki Hanami (voiced by Aoi Nagatsuki), and more aren’t just here to give their takes on alternative classical, techno, and anison genres, but they’re essential to the noise and chaos that is Katamari Damacy.
(RENGAME/Bandai Namco Entertainment)
Once Upon A KATAMARI is exactly what I wanted it to be. A game about rolling up the world, bringing people together (in a non-traditional sense), all the while being a treat for the senses. It’s easy to pick up and can be challenging to master as you navigate levels with twists and turns that can be best described as “the world’s messiest rooms”. You can’t go wrong with The King of Love’s latest and long-awaited game, methinks. ∎
Once Upon A KATAMARI
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Timeless KATAMARI gameplay is as fun as ever.
- Incredible music from old and new artists to the series.
- Plenty of unique objective types to take on.
- Lots of customisation articles that can be earned.
- LOVE!~ 繋がりたいんだ！
CONS
- Crowns can be annoying to hunt down.
- Level transitions and cutscenes interrupt gameplay.
- The King's insists on taking up a lot of precious real estate for his nonsense.
