I love Katamari and had a great time with this, but of the three I've played so far this is easily the weakest. The original and We Love are both super imaginative and have very well designed progression: you don't have to slowly search an overly large map to find levels and they actually build up in difficulty and concepts over time. Beautiful is fun, and it's Katamari so it's a unique and enjoyable experience that I'm still thrilled to play, but it's not as concise or well designed a game. Most levels feel just about the same difficulty, the gimmicks generally don't meaningfully change how you play, and it feels like the time limit is almost always 5 minutes, making each level very short. Previous games weren't exactly long but this was over in no time.

It's great to have more Katamari to play, Katamari doesn't get boring! I'm still glad that Beautiful finally got made backwards compatible, but it's a shame that it's so inessential after how incredibly good it's predecessors are.