An incredibly solid Metroidvania with fluid, fast-paced platforming and plenty of fun ideas to spice up traversal. I admittedly wasn’t very impressed with this game at the very start of it, but I continued on from all the positive press it was receiving and I’m so glad I did. The game truly begins to shine once you have a few more abilities under your belt.

Mount Qaf is a fun map to explore, there are tons of secrets scattered everywhere, and many precision based platforming challenges that are extremely satisfying to pull off. Enemies are of course walking around as well, and the combat can feel deceptively simple. What begins as basic three-hit combos can turn into long stretches of juggling the enemy into the air and dishing out serious damage. The true example of the combat are the bosses, which are fantastic and ask you to utilize everything in your arsenal. There are some truly unique ideas here in how the abilities you are given become crucial to platforming puzzles and for avoiding boss attacks.

The main issues I have with this game is that the story is pretty weak. Thankfully, not much time is dedicated to the story and you’re given control for the vast majority of the time but it still needs to be mentioned. The graphical style is bright and is absolutely serviceable, but it’s far from a high fidelity showcase - but the environment is always easy to read with your eyes, and enemy attack queues make sense and can be read, so it ultimately works for gameplay purposes. My game also crashed/froze up on me on three different occasions. I haven’t seen anyone else mention this, and it didn’t ruin my time with the game as saves had happened recently but it’s important to note. This was on PS5, and I feel confident the devs will patch these issues.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was a pleasant surprise to kick off 2024. I think anyone who has recently enjoyed games like Hollow Knight or Metroid Dread, and wants more of something like that, would be missing out by not playing this game. It’s absolutely worth the time for lovers of the Metroidvania genre, but also a fantastic and fluid place for newcomers to start. Surprised by how much I ended up loving this at the end of the day.

Short and sweet game that is very fun and totally unique even to this day. I appreciate how much this game really leaned into the weirdness of everything and hardly felt the need to ease off of any of it.

The gameplay loop of rolling a tiny ball into a bigger ball, so you can then roll it into even bigger things is fantastic and I was always surprised by how the scope of the level changes drastically as your katamari gets bigger and bigger. What starts as a level in a park that has you smaller than people and dogs will eventually have you growing large enough to roll up sentai characters, islands, and even forces of nature like tornados. The concept is realized so well and the length of the game keeps it from getting stale.

My main issue with the game is how everything is tied together. I can get behind the idea of this massive King sending his Prince to gather items from Earth, but the quirky nonsensical dialogue didn't do much for me - especially since the writing before each level was nearly identical. Hit detection and the controls for the game could also be a bit finnicky, but the silly nature of the game and the extremely lenient progression requirements keep it from getting too frustrating.

Katamari Damacy is a staple in the history of gaming and for good reason. It's cheerful, fun, ridiculous, very chill, and has an incredible soundtrack that should be considered mandatory listening. I'm glad I finally got around to this title and I can finally understand the love it has received over so many years.