Working through the theory that there is an “Appropriate Sequel Scale”, and just so long as your sequel stays at its proper spot, you are going to do fine.
Here’s the scale.
And to elaborate on each point.
The original Mega Man franchise is the platonic ideal of iterative sequels. Starting with Mega Man 2 and extending into 2027, you get eight robot masters, associated levels with general theming (Top Man would own a garden center) a collection of Dr. Wily stages, and a final fight for the fate of the universe. Go from Mega Man to Mega Man 6, and you will see graphics improve, scenarios become more complex (“I’m walkin’ on the ceiling, Pa!”), and Wily plots include additional feints (which is how you keep your elderly adversaries active). But end of the day? You could be playing a Mega Man 2 or Mega Man 4 stage, and the average person would not be able to tell the difference. Sure, that robot snail needs a mega buster to make any sense, but couldn’t you just use Atomic Fire? I am someone that could tell you the subtle differentiations in how pellet bouncing works between different Mega Man titles, but for the average person, Mega Man and its sequels may as well all be the same game. And this happened later in the franchise, too! How many Mega Man Battle Network titles featured the exact same fight against GutsMan.exe? The answer absolutely will not surprise you!
The other side of the spectrum is the Final Fantasy franchise. Final Fantasy started as something that was iterative. Yes, Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy 2 were two very distinct games with separate plots, characters, worlds, and even ultimate spells. But looking at those battle sprites, you could tell you were still performing the FIGHT command against some familiar goblins. This was the standard for about ten years, and then Final Fantasy 7 stomped onto the stage and changed everything. Polygons meant it was time to toss out the musty, old sprites and build a new house (that would eat you). And, since Final Fantasy 7 was an unmitigated success, “throw it all out” became the franchise watchword. By Final Fantasy 10, recognizing that Shiva had a familiar name was about the best you could hope for with internal consistency. By Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy arguably wasn’t even in the same genre anymore, and it might not have been for a while. But that’s fine! We have had decades of Final Fantasy games that are barely related to their ancestors. So if Final Fantasy 17 turns out to be a racing game where Leviathan is a car (oh, wait, that already happened), you will not be surprised. You know that you do not know what to expect.
Since we defined the extremes, we are going to give the exact middle to Mario. There are a lot of Mario games! And, while we have at some extreme outliers (looking at you, Doki Doki Luigi), the Mario franchise has generally leveled out over the last few (twenty) years. There are the 3D games, the 2D games, and the “let’s try something vaguely new” games (see: Maker, Mario), but they all boil down to the same general result. Mario is going to control the same, he is going to be trekking through several gorgeously/distinctly themed levels, and he is going to beat Bowser in a boss fight that is simultaneously epic and dimly disappointing. But there will be something new! Mario has a new hat! Or he can get really big! It is a sequel, it is mostly the same, but there is one new gimmick to give us all something new to chew on. It is the Mario Way, and it is the middle point between “iterative” and “completely redesigned”.
Once Upon a Katamari is bad because it betrays its place.
The Katamari franchise had a good thing rolling. First, there was Katamari Damacy, a surprise “budget” release that turned the world on its head with simple, fun gameplay. Roll ball, collect stuff. It did not need to be more than that! Then that was immediately followed the following year by We ❤ Katamari and Me & My Katamari. We ❤ Katamari expanded the general concept of Katamari Damacy to much larger arenas, and rolling up a whole solar system was finally in the cards. Me & My Katamari was the mobile port of the franchise, and… Well… it was not terrible, it just needed to be on a system that was a little more conducive to possessing two viable analogue sticks. From there, that is about what we saw from the Katamari franchise: we would either see an iterative sequel with games like Beautiful Katamari or Katamari Forever, or we would see attempts to adapt Katamari gameplay to other devices, like with iPhone’s I Love Katamari or Vita’s Touch My Katamari. Nearly 15 years after the franchise premiered, we started to see “sequels” that were remakes for modern systems, like Katamari Damacy Reroll or We ❤ Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie. After those two “rerolls” released, we finally saw a completely new title, today’s featured game, Once Upon a Katamari.
And that whole “completely new” thing really screws the pooch.
Once Upon a Katamari is still definitely a Katamari game. You are The Prince, and you must roll up a series of increasingly larger objects to populate the night sky with as much garbage as possible. The distinct challenges of any given level are traditionally “make it big” or “make it fast”, but there are still stages with unique trials. Sometimes you have to acquire a bunch of roses, icicles, or gold in them thar hills. There are the occasional (hated) levels where you have to properly measure an “exact size” Katamari. And, presumably just to annoy anyone that remembers the good ol’ days of the “instant kill” task, the ever-popular bear/cow contest returns. These are all good(ish), well-established reasons to roll your Katamari.
But you do not consistently make progress in Once Upon a Katamari by clearing levels. You must find hidden crowns to unlock new stages in Once Upon a Katamari. And adding this task to the proceedings breaks the freakin’ game.
The Katamari series has always had secret doodads hiding around its levels. There were presents right from the start, and cousins joined the fun shortly thereafter. If you have a particular kind of OCD, you could always look at the inventories and see if you found every individual object. Did you roll up a bucket yet? Find that bucket! But the important thing about these scavenger hunts is that they were always optional. You never had to find a cousin, present, or cowbear; it was just a fun opportunity while rolling bigger and better Katamaris. It was something that happened, and if it happened, that was cool.
Once Upon a Katamari introduced hidden crowns, and they conceptually work like every collectible seen before. The only difference is that you must find a certain number of crowns spread across levels to make progress, and if you do not find enough, you must return to earlier stages to find those crowns. Collectibles are optional no more! And the game about making bigger and better Katamaris is now about carefully trawling across every stage every time your Katamari ranks up. You need to find those crowns to unlock further Katamari opportunities, and if you do not, you need to repeat the level all over again. You know, exactly what happens when you die in most other games. The fast, frenetic gameplay of just trying to grab everything all at once is gone, and without technically changing the gameplay one iota, Once Upon a Katamari has accidentally shifted into an entirely different genre. You were racing before, and now you are trapped in a collectathon. Kind all the jiggies, Prince!
The needle on the sequel index moved from Mega Man to Final Fantasy, and the whole thing toppled over. Katamari games are supposed to be more of the same with bigger and weirder levels! Don’t you change the gameplay goals on me! Our Prince is going to be turning into goddamned Ifrit by the next game!
Worst of all, this change to the essential core of Once Upon a Katamari does not even have the courage of its convictions. If you reenter a stage after not finding enough crowns, you will find a radar item close to your starting point. This radar will help you find crowns to make progress. That is objectively a good concession. It helps a player to not get stuck on finding these crowns. Except, when you think about it for a moment, if some unseen hand of The King of All Cosmos is just going to say “it’s over there, stupid,” then why did you bother to gate progress behind collecting in the first place!?
Bah!
Once Upon a Katamari is a fun little Katamari game. It is great seeing the franchise return with a new entry, and I look forward to further Katamari content. But, guys, know where you are supposed to be on the sequel scale. You’re a Mega Man! Not a Final Fantasy! Keep rolling in your lane!
FGC #739 Once Upon a Katamari
- System: Roll it up into your life on PC, Xbox X|S, Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. Does this mean the Playstation 4 never saw a (completely) new Katamari title?
- Number of players: There is some kind of four-player competitive rolling available that I am going to ignore forever. Stop basing stages on it, dammit!
Favorite Time Period: So the theoretical selling point is that you now get to roll up Katamaris across different eras of history. However, give or take a few very specific stages, this really could have just been a “world tour” theme, as stuff like “the dinosaurs” or “the ice age” absolutely could have been presented in any previous Katamari game with zero explanation (and often was). That said, Pirate Era (Voyage at Sea) has some cool stages above and below water, so it’s a Pirate’s life for me.- And since we are complaining: What is the point of time travel if half the stages are going to be in “Ancient” Japan? They are just normal Katamari levels! You could have included one museum excuse for armor lying around, and it would have been exactly the same! Bah! Again!
- Favorite Stage: Traveling back to Ancient Athens and rolling up Action Philosophers is as good as a videogame can get. Second place is the oasis/bring-water-to-the-desert stage. Decades of water-rendering technology were leading to that moment.
- Favorite Item: The magnet drawing everything in to you presents a feeling like no other. Actually, come to think of it, it feels like getting an electric shield in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, and magnetizing every last ring. It is good that someone finally captured that Sega technology.
- Just play the gig man: By virtue of not being on my playlist for multiple decades, I do not believe this soundtrack is as good as the original Katamari titles. With that caveat aside, the music is amazing, and I would willingly download this soundtrack on some shady website.
- Back to Complaining: Absolutely every second of this game is oozing charm and charisma. I am continually struck by how many little details exist on every map screen, and how a thousand little objects have been populated into every stage. That said, give it a rest on the S.S. Prince (your time-traveling homebase) and selecting options from there. I am so damn disoriented by overstimulation every time I boot…
Did you know? The Prince and all his similarly-sized cousins have a little antenna on their heads, but The King of All Cosmos, Queen of All Cosmos, and Papa do not. However, the King of All Cosmos did have an antenna when he was a young prince himself. So… maybe it falls off at puberty?- Would I play again: For all my complaining about progressing in Once Upon a Katamari, once you have unlocked all the stages and can just go zen mode on rolling, this is a wonderful game. It is just that getting there feels antithetical to everything that has come before. So I will play this again, but I will never start a new save file.
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Gitaroo-Man! I’m gonna get you, Gitaroo-Man! Please look forward to it!