The heart powerups are a nice wrinkle in the gameplay (and make for a neat instakill trap on certain levels) and while I thought jumping was really stupid at the beginning of the game, it ended up being more useful in one game than dashing did in all 4 of the games I've played. It can make for good shortcuts when used properly and serves as a good safeguard if pinned.

All but 3 of the game's levels are recycled, which is pretty lame. At the end of the day though, it's a Katamari game with simple, satisfying gameplay. The levels are still fun, and the game can be an avenue for people to enjoy the whole series up to that point if they didn't have any of the previous games. I also really respect how they a lot of the franchise's harder levels. I had a lot more trouble in this game than KD, WLK, and BK combined. Given that isn't saying a whole lot, but the effort is still there.

If anything, this game works as a celebration of the Katamari Damacy series. The game's a showcase of many of Katamari's greatest and most interesting levels. The art style is also sublime. A lack of new content is kind of a shame and it's as such my least favorite so far, but the game's still amazing.

9/10 - A great game with a disappointing lack of new content.

Also, they brought back the campfire level, which is absolutely amazing.

This is the most distinct classic Mega Man game for sure in its structure. Stages are longer but bisected by a checkpoint screen. There's a shop, but bolts are finite. There are multiple sections where Mega Man is on a vehicle of some sort. E-Tanks are gone. Rush now has 4 abilities that range from great to garbage. It's definitely a departure from past classic Mega Man games.

However, the game's still a blast. It's pretty easy aside from the first Wily Tower boss, who is an absolute bitch. The robot masters suffer from Spark Mandrill syndrome quite hard in most cases (save for Frost Man and Sword Man), making them pathetically easy. If the game was a bit tougher, I would've probably liked it more.

Pretty damn adorable. It's a very competent 2D Zelda clone that's hindered by some items being clunky and the game being pitifully short. (This and A Short Hike make 2 games that I bought which were way too short for their price point. I am gullible lmao) The premise is really stupid and amazing. If this game was called anything else, I wouldn't have played it. Otherwise, the story is undercooked. The world is really interesting, but very underdeveloped.

At the end of the day, I do like this game though. I'm a sucker for 2D Zelda (The only 3D Zelda game that wasn't lacking was Majora's Mask), which I'm sad has gone by the wayside. In a way, this game did to 2D Zelda what Bug Fables did to the original Paper Mario duology (however Bug Fables was way more substantial), taking a game formula Nintendo has neglected and giving it a cute and charming spin. Plus, this game gives me Minish Cap vibes, and I love that game.

8/10 - I really liked this game, but it's also really short.

Not much to say here. This game's just better than the previous 3. There's good variety in the levels. No boss is unnecessarily cheap, but they're mostly all challenging. The music slaps like always, and the arsenal of weapons is varied.

If I had to gripe about one thing, I'd say the weapons aren't all too balanced. In a level, all of them are good except for the skull barrier, which is easily the worst shield in the series so far. Just try using it as Dive Man's weakness without wanting to die. Overall though, most weapons are decent or great.

My issues lie in the endgame bosses. Of all 9 non-robot master bosses, 7 of them are weak to one of three weapons: the Ring Boomerang, Pharaoh Shot, or Dust Crusher. One of the outliers is weak to the Drill Bombs and the other to the Mega Buster. This may seem nitpicky, but it ends up feeling like the other 4 weapons were afterthoughts outside of being a weakness to a robot master. 3 weapons wreck everyone's shit and the other 5 don't. I feel like some bosses could've been cleverly designed to be weak to the other weapons while still being tough. It's really disappointing, but a nitpick. This game's still really great.

8/10 - Really good, but with a flaw that, to me, keeps it away from excellence.

I played this game quite often from chapter 1's season 4 to season 7, back when it was all the rage (especially among my 7th grade classmates) and before it was hot garbage. Then my Switch's storage was too full to fit season 8, and I dropped it. I re-downloaded it when a few friends of mine wanted to give it another stab, but then I almost instantly deleted it.

For what it's worth, when you look past all of the annoying memes and cringey 9 year-olds, the game was, from my experience, pretty solid and fun. There's a reason this game got ridiculously popular after all. I keep seeing ads for new expansions over time and they just look worse and worse. The map I played on frequently has become so disfigured and the tie-in skins so tacky (when I saw the Naruto skins in a screenshot on Discord, I thought someone had photoshopped them in to make a meme) that I have no plan to return. The game may still be fun, but it's even more fun to laugh at.

7/10 - I swear I played this game before it was a meme. Please believe me :').

Most of this game's rating comes from it being the original game of a legendary series. The robot master stages are fun, with some of the notorious setpieces in levels being over-hated and better designed than many give them credit for. The only two that are irredeemable are the footholders in Ice Man's stage and Wily 1 for their erratic nature and dodgy hitboxes and the fire wave trap in Fire Man's stage for being too fast for Mega Man to make it through unscathed unless nearly frame perfect.

However, this game isn't too good. The first 6 levels are crafted decently aside from the two instances previously mentioned, with the only other problems being very questionable enemy placement. However, the Dr. Wily stages are ridiculously cheap due to poor boss design and the worst thing about this game, Mega Man's controls.

Mega Man is really sluggish in this game. He outweighs multiple anvils and he slides around like every level has ice physics (ironic, considering there's an ice level, but there, this issue is ampified). Jumps often fail to register and dodging enemies and projectiles is already shoddy enough without jumps failing to work.

Bigeyes are large enemies that alternate between low and high jumps. They take a ridiculous amount of damage and deal it too. However, they are nightmares to dodge due to the sluggish and slippery controls. Like Bigeye, enemies and obstacles are scattered throughout the game that are way harder to dodge than necessary because Mega Man controls so poorly.

This game is the progenitor to an amazing series. I have loads of respect for what it brought to the table. Some parts of the game are fun, but its held back by cheap late-game levels, awful bosses, and dreadful controls. Half of me respects this game for its significance, but another half of me hates it.

5/10 - Only this well rated due to significance.

One thing I doubt anyone knows about me is that I love the Katamari Damacy Series. I've been only able to play half of it sadly (not counting that mediocre mobile game), and the series seems to be dead, but I adore the games of this series that I have played.

Beautiful Katamari also happens to be one of the first Xbox 360 games I played at the young age of 4. The console would go on to give me many great experiences in my really early life and this weird-ass game was at the forefront of that.

Clear nostalgia aside, I think this game is amazing, having only a few flaws I'll touch on in a bit. I've returned to play bits and pieces of it here and there on completed save files over the years and have played the game start to finish a handful of times. Something must be enjoyable about it to keep me coming back, and that's what this review will cover.

There is a story to this game. The King of All Cosmos is playing tennis with his family while on a vacation when he makes a serve so powerful that it rips the fabric of the universe, creating a black hole. Everything except Earth gets sucked in, leading to you, the prince, getting called upon to roll a katamari around to pick up objects and recreate stars, planets, constellations and the like.

The story of this game is simple enough to get you rolling, and that's what it needs to be. However, I felt that it was a bit lacking. The game doesn't need a sweeping narrative or anything, but Beautiful Katamari doesn't really do much with its story.

Compare this to We Love Katamari (the best game in the series), which has a minimal story too, but uses these overly dramatic cutscenes to show snippets of the king's backstory. There may be a story there, but they're presented in such an over-the-top and bizarre way that you can't take them seriously. That's the joke. Beautiful Katamari has a plot, but no fun with it.

The gameplay is more of the same twinstick rolling that Katamari Damacy is famous for. Push both sticks forward to roll forward. Backward to roll backward. Left or right to strafe. So on and so forth. Pick up items with your katamari to make it grow. Pick up larger things as your katamari grows and meet a certain requirement within a time limit. There's not really anything new to make this game shine, and that's okay. The Katamari formula was great as is, and I personally think it didn't need changed.

The music in this game is amazing. It's all very peppy, with lots of catchy J-pop songs. My favorite is easily Sayonara Rolling Star, for taking a more calm and somber tone while still feeling right at home in the game's soundtrack. Katamari Damacy was originally created to make people happy, and Beatiful Katamari's soundtrack embodies that mantra of being happy perfectly.

The game's levels are designed masterfully, being areas with many nooks and crannies, all chock-full with items that will help you meet your goal. You also run across some very weird stuff. The tutorial level, Egg School, sees you rolling up little plastic toy pieces, angels, and even the puzzle pieces that make up the floor and wall of the map, the removal of which show that you're rolling in a building the king is holding up.

However, the most glaring flaw of this game is in its levels as well. The levels lack variety. Aside from one or two levels, all objectives are "roll around and pick up stuff to reach this certain size." This isn't bad, but previous games, like We Love Katamari, had more varied objectives. That makes the lack of objective variety here disappointing.

On a side note, I think this game is a great first game for any kid. The simplistic controls and imaginative environments can appeal to almost everyone and spur a young mind's imagination. I remember my little sister loving Egg School's odd locales as a toddler, and my mind was blown at a young age when I saw you could roll up the whole world in Schloss Kosmos, the game's final level. The game is also pretty easy, but not patronizing.

Beautiful Katamari is amazing. The gameplay is tight. The scenery is weird. The music is amazing. The nostalgia runs strong. However, the game has a story but fails to do anything interesting with it like previous games and level variety is lacking. Also, the game has some minor frame skips, but they're far from common. However, nostalgia aside, I feel these flaws are relatively very minor, and the game was one I'm proud to have been introduced to at such a young age.

9/10 - It's an amazing game that captivated me when I was very young, but is marred by some minor issues.