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Katamari is a series of roll-em-ups and the first two games released for PlayStation 2. The series has moved on to other systems over the years and all the games I’ve played so far have proved to be a fun time. From the concept to the art style to the music, it’s a very fun and unique series. The concept is that your character pushes a katamari or ball around and rolls things up, hence the term “roll-em-up”. I would also classify these titles as collect-a-thons because everything you roll up is added to your collection. I find that there’s something euphoric about it and I’ve been looking forward to Beautiful Katamari. Developed by Now Production and published by Namco Bandai Games, Beautiful Katamari was released for Xbox 360 in October, 2007. For this review, I played it on a Series X. Beautiful Katamari is actually the first game in the series I played. This is the one my friend showed me to introduce me to the series. It was years ago and at the time, I played for a little bit just to check it out. So I’ve been looking forward to jumping back in for the full experience.
It should be noted that DLC was released although saying “released” may not be appropriate because it’s already on the disc. Because the DLC is on the disc, you’re simply spending money to unlock things. Some DLC unlocks things you can already acquire in the base game but other things like certain stages does actually require you to own the DLC. Ain’t that some shitty business.
The story goes that while playing tennis, The King of All Cosmos hits the ball hard enough to rip through the fabric of the universe, creating a black hole that sucks up everything except Earth. Once again, he commands the Prince to roll stuff up in order to recreate the universe. This is yet another game in the series with a simple plot featuring Katamari’s unique brand of humor. While the story is different than that of the previous entries, it’s still clearly just a setup for the gameplay.
The mechanics in Beautiful Katamari are basically identical to those in the previous games. You control the Prince or one of the cousins and push Katamaris around environments, rolling up items in the process. Small objects, people and animals, buildings and landmasses, and even planets. Anything you roll up is added to your collection and I would classify the game as yet another collect-a-thon. You roll things up to grow the Katamari and a bigger Katamari means you can roll up more and bigger things. The hub area or base in Beautiful Katamari is called the Princedom. From here you can access the different stages, view your collection, change cousins, change accessories, and access the different game modes including the standard solo experience, Co-op, Vs Battle, and Online Vs Battle. I was only able to play through the solo experience.
Beautiful Katamari is a relatively easy game to actually beat or get through. Collecting everything and achieving one hundred points or more in a stage will most likely result in playing through stages repeatedly, but completing the primary objective in each stage and making your way to the credits isn’t all that difficult. In typical Katamari fashion, most stages require you to grow the Katamari to a certain size. However, Beautiful Katamari places a big emphasis on earning points. Most stages will task you with rolling up specific types of items and you earn points for what you roll up. My research tells me you earn more points for rolling up the types of items your tasked with collecting.
Every stage has an Eternal Mode and to unlock it will require you to acquire one hundred or more points and to me, that’s the most challenging aspect of the game. That’s what will eat up most of your time here, trying to acquire the most points possible in each stage. Just growing the Katamari to the required size seems to be all that’s necessary to actually complete a stage and doing so unlocks the Time Attack mode. In this mode, the objective is to grow the Katamari as big as you can within the time limit and your size will be posted to the leaderboard. Without the DLC, there’s very few stages with unique objectives. That said, the game does lack objective variety, at least when compared to We Love Katamari. The DLC does add some more, although nothing we haven’t seen before like growing the Katamari to a specific size without the size measurement on the HUD. However, this game does put a visual indicator of how big it should be on the HUD which makes it a little easier.
There are different environment types in the game including stores, homes, a town, and later stages will have you rolling the world and other planets. You will visit some of the same locations and areas in multiple stages and as expected, the environments are designed to reflect real locations but the portrayals of life are often bizarre and comical. You’ll see people and creatures doing strange and humorous things and items are littered about everywhere. Your Katamari typically starts small and the bigger it gets, the more areas you’ll be able to access. You can find and roll up cousins which will unlock them as playable characters and also find and roll up presents. These unlock accessories that you can equip the characters with. Some cousins and presents can be tough to find so exploring is encouraged or you can just pay for the DLC that unlocks these things for you.
Beautiful Katamari’s presentation is colorful and it retains the series unique visual style. Each environment is distinct and, overall, it’s a very pleasing game on the eyes. As for the audio, the soundtrack features many great memorable and catchy tunes although I do feel the music in the previous games is better. That’s not to say any of the songs here are bad – in fact, there are some real bangers – but I think the prior games had better selections overall. Nevertheless, some of the songs here have become some of my favorites in the series. On the technical side, the game ran smooth and I encountered no major issues and I want to mention again that I played this on a Series X.
I had fun with Beautiful Katamari but I admit I’m a little disappointed with it. It’s more of the same and the way the DLC is handled is shit. I think I just expected more out of it. But it still provides the fun Katamari gameplay that I fell in love with. I don’t think it tops We Love Katamari as the best game in the series but I feel it would make a good gateway to it. Then again, most of them would with Me & My Katamari being the exception. It’s not a bad game by any means but I don’t recommend newcomers start there. Beautiful Katamari is an easy game to pick up and play and if you can get into it, it offers fun and addictive gameplay. This is definitely a game that should keep you coming back. Whether you’re trying to collect all the cousins and presents, earn as many points as possible, or are simply trying to grow the Katamari as big as possible, these are all valid reasons to return. And we can’t forget the multiplayer modes and leaderboards, either.
I do recommend Beautiful Katamari. If you’re not a fan of the previous games, I’m pretty sure you won’t like this one because it’s simply more of the same. It feels good to play, at least on a Series X, it looks nice, offers excellent tunes, and provides fun and addictive roll-em-up gameplay. Much like its predecessors, Beautiful Katamari can be a relaxing experience and offer something a little more intense, that is if you’re going after a lot of points. It delivers on both fronts. Definitely check it out if you’re interested.