Mini Review: Once Upon a Katamari (PS5) - An Eccentric, Joyful Time Capsule

Once Upon a Katamari brings back Bandai Namco's cult classic franchise with an all-new game that feels ripped straight from its PS2 prime.

By and large, this is the same Katamari Damacy madness we all fell in love with 20 years ago — roll a ball around each stage, gathering up myriad objects to make it as big as you can.

With slightly different objectives per level, odd little cutscenes to enjoy, and simple world maps to explore, this will be very familiar to fans of the series in all the right ways.

However, this iteration really comes into its own when it's trying new stuff.

The whole premise of the game sees the King of All Cosmos screw up time and space, sending the Prince back in time to restore order to the universe — and create new stars from katamaris while he's at it.

This allows for a good variety of stages, as we go through various historic periods — feudal Japan, ancient Greece, the Stone Age, and more present players with lots of interesting settings and objects to roll up.

It's a great idea executed well, and with all the humour you'd expect from the series.

On top of that is a range of new power-ups, and these feel like pretty natural extensions to the gameplay.

The magnet is an early favourite; it attracts all appropriately-sized objects to you within a wide range, allowing you to quickly grow your katamari.

There's the rocket, which increases your speed, a timer that pauses moving objects and creatures, and a radar that shows the location of collectibles and other important items.

These are neat additions that fit in nicely.

Other than that, you know pretty much what you're getting here — it's another Katamari game, and fortunately it's a good one.

On PS5, it also has crisp, colourful visuals and a smooth frame rate of 60 frames per second. We didn't notice any inconsistencies there.

Much like the remasters before it, Once Upon a Katamari is a great reminder that there's still nothing quite like this series, and it feels as fresh today as it did with Keita Takahashi's original over two decades ago.