
Katamari Damacy returns with a brand new game featuring time travel, the King of all Cosmos, and some of the strangest gameplay of the last two decades.
Katamari Damacy is not a game that ever warranted a sequel, so the idea that it should become a franchise with 17 different entries, including spin-offs, is madness. The original 2004 title is one of our favourites of the PlayStation 2 era, but it is a one and done concept, a game where the whole appeal is how weird and unique it is. A sequel, by its nature, immediately eliminates that appeal and now, over two decades later, the joke has not only run thin it’s died of malnutrition.
Series creator Keita Takahashi agreed to make the first sequel on the understanding that Bandai Namco would do it without him anyway, but wisely flew the nest after that and now makes even weirder games as an indie developer, such as the recent to a T. Even he couldn’t figure out anything else to do with the idea and so it’s not surprising to find that neither can anyone involved in this new entry.
Again, that is not really a complaint. Once Upon A Katamari is probably the best entry in the series since the originals; the problem is that making a new game is entirely pointless, especially when there are already perfectly good, and very recent, remasters of the first game (which was never originally released in Europe) and its sequel on modern consoles.
If you were wondering, Katamari Damacy (pronounced damashii) roughly translates as ‘clump spirit’. You play as the Prince of all Cosmos, a Smurf-sized deity that’s always having to clean up after his dad, who has a nasty habit of accidentally destroying all creation. He manages the feat once again in the game’s opening and decides the best way to reverse the damage is to send the prince back in time to roll up enough objects to make new stars and planets.
The original game was a gentle satire of Japanese culture and commercialism and that’s still technically true of this new game, but the wilder appeal was simply how weird a concept it was and how amusing the campy, semi-animated, cut scenes were. And while the prince never says anything the semi-coherent ramblings of the feckless King of all Cosmos are frequently hilarious.
In terms of gameplay, the basics are strange but very simple. In a manner clearly inspired by dung beetles, the prince rolls around a katamari – essentially a very sticky ball – picking up whatever object he runs over, with the default goal being to reach a certain size of katamari within a set time limit. In some levels you start at the standard 3cm in height, rolling up dice and sweets from the floors, but depending on the length of time you have you can progress to furniture, people, and vehicles – eventually all the way up to mountains and continents.
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It doesn’t necessarily sound like it, but this does require a certain amount of skill, because the traditional way to control the game is with tank controls, where you have to push both analogue sticks forward to move and then pull one in the opposite direction to turn. Once Upon A Katamari offers an optional, simplified control system that instantly makes the game vastly less interesting, although there’s still some mild time management concerns, as it’s easy to get distracted from what you’re meant to be doing.
In the earlier games there was only a small amount of variation in the mission goals, such as collecting specific types of items, but there’s a lot more of that in Once Upon A Katamari, where you might be ordered to collect high value items or to specifically clear up a set number of smaller objects (the king is obsessed with tidying up, as long as he doesn’t have to do it).
There’s nothing wrong with trying to add variety, but the original games didn’t have to worry about that because what kept you playing was seeing what the next level would look like and what scale it’d be at. All that novelty has gone now and trying to treat this like Call Of Duty, where you’ve got to think up something – anything – new to justify another sequel goes completely against the carefree attitude of the originals.
Other new additions include various special items to look out for in each level, such as crowns and the prince’s cousins, who you can play as – and customise – if the fancy takes you. There’s also a small range of power-ups you can collect, including a magnet to collect all nearby objects, a clock to temporary freeze time, a sonar device to find special objects, and rockets for a turbo boost.

The structure of the game has also seen some change, with the time travel conceit seeing you unlock new levels in each era you visit, before you gain the ability to visit a new one. Individual stages are access from a small map, reminiscent of Super Mario World, but it’s an unwanted complication that feels strangely restrictive, even though the original games were even more linear.
Nevertheless, the time travel element is the best part of the game, in that it inspires more unique stages, such as a Pythonesque one in Ancient Greece, where you’re rolling up philosophers, as their various quotes flash up on screen. That’s easily the best one but there are other non-standard examples, such as one where you’re rolling around in the desert with a waterlogged katamari.
These ideas are fun, and we have no issue whatsoever with the work developer RENGAME has done. It’s the concept of the Once Upon A Katamari we have a problem with, more than the game itself. Although it is sad to see the original soundtrack – one of the greatest in gaming history – being dragged out and remixed to death yet again, with the jazz and samba focus of the first couple of games now diluted by every genre of music imaginable, almost all of which is instantly forgettable.
We live now in a world where no franchise can ever truly die. At best it can lay dormant for a few years, like Jason Voorhees chained beneath Crystal Lake, but anything that has ever made money at some point in its life is always brought back from the dead. Which means no story ever ends and every innovative idea is run into the ground, before the publisher waits a few years for a back-to-basics reboot and the whole process begins again.
For some games, like multiplayer titles or franchises such as The Legend Of Zelda, that are broad enough, and infrequent enough, to allow for constant reinvention, this isn’t necessarily a problem, but it makes no sense whatsoever for something like Katamari Damacy. The whole appeal of the original was that there’s nothing else like it, except now there’s 16 other titles that are exactly like it.
Once Upon A Katamari isn’t a sequel, it’s a tribute band. And like all such endeavours you can’t help but admire the enthusiasm, even as you accept it’s no replacement for the real thing. Except in this analogy seeing the real thing would cost you half as much, considering the remasters are right there. So if you’re new to the series that’s definitely the place to start, whereas if you’re an existing fan, like us, this is both a superior sequel and a perverse inversion of everything the original stood for.
Once Upon A Katamari review summary
In Short: Yet another entirely unnecessary sequel to a classic game that should never have got any follow-ups at all. But if you want even more of the same old thing there are few small sparks of imagination here and there.
Pros: Katamari Damacy is still a fun and amusingly surreal experience, especially if you’ve never played one of the games before. The ancient philosophers level, and a few others, are unique and clever.
Cons: Not only no significant new ideas but the fact that the original concept is still being repeated, over 20 years later, is strangely depressing – not to say pointless, given the original two games are already available as inexpensive remasters.
Score: 6/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £34.99
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Developer: RENGAME
Release Date: 24th October 2025
Age Rating: 3

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