Katanagatari did not meet those expectations so I was pretty disappointed after watching it. I'd highly recommend, unlike me, watching Katanagatari first and then the Monogatari series, as that may significantly impact your enjoyment of this show.
----- Characters - 6/10 ------
Many people say that the characters are where Katanagatari really shines. I feel that's a horribly ironic statement, given that the majority of the 30 or so characters exist for all of one episode and disappear so fast it's hard to remember anyone's names. If Katanagatari really wanted to focus more on the development of the two main characters, I'm very confused why they spend about half the show on characters that bear practically no importance to the series as a whole (AKA the entire Maniwa Corps).
As an important note, each episode of Katanagatari is a little over twice as long as your normal episode, so consider how you would feel watching 12, 24 minute scenes of filler just so you could see the "good half", which I can't say is all that good to begin with.
The character development of the show is also frequently lauded, but I'd say any development has a huge, fatal flaw -- the main characters of the show, and the only ones who are developed to any significant extent, are by far some of the least interesting characters in the whole story. The majority of the cast all have fairly interesting and detailed backgrounds, yet they remain largely undeveloped. Unlike them, the two the main characters' backgrounds can be summed up in one sentence.
We can't learn more about the characters as the story progresses as we already know almost everything about them from the first episode. Yes, they do change and grow as their journey moves forward, but these changes are extremely predictable because we already know everything about them. There's nothing hidden and there are no parts of their personalities we don't know; as such it's really difficult for any development to catch you by surprise.
What Katangatari really excels at though, is the ways in which it depicts the main characters attempting to learn and make sense of the world around them and people they meet. If Katanagatari had done more of this and spent less time on worthless characters (or actually developed those interesting characters instead of throwing them off to the side...), I would likely have a totally different opinion about the series as a whole, but it doesn't.
Many people also say that the dialogue between these characters is where Katanagatari shines. Again, considering half the series is spent on characters that bear no importance, I feel that this is a very tough statement to defend. This is really exemplified by the first episode, which has about 20 minutes of straight taunting. And what is the build up of those 20 minutes of taunting? 2 minutes of fighting... Not exactly worthwhile to listen to all that. The dialogue in the last few episodes does actually become pretty interesting, but I can't say it was worth the wait.
----- Art - 6?/10 -----
Okay, so this one is pretty hard to compare as it's of a totally different style than most anime. As this is dialogue heavy though and has very few minutes of battle time, it definitely can't compare to some of the spectacular animation that's been produced in the past few years.
Monogatari has lots of crazy shots, angles, and compositions that hold you out through the long bouts of dialogue, as well as many, many insane action scenes, but Katanagatari does not have any of the former and only has a few minutes of good action the entire series. The other 10 total minutes of action in the show are negligible.
----- Sound - 7/10 -----
The sound really blends in well with the art and tone of the scenes, enough so that sometimes you don't even notice it. There's at least a few really good tracks, including the main battle theme.
----- Story - 3/10 ------
Easily the worst aspect of this series, it can entirely be summarized as "12 episodes, 1 for each sword". I'm fine with stories that are intentionally simple and focus on other aspects of the show, as many stories can become overly complex and increasingly filled with plotholes as they progress. Unfortunately, Katanagatari has a very strange focus on the story in the second half of the series, where the initial simplicity becomes an unnecessarily complex beast, with significant chunks of time spent on explanation and exposition, and yet we still have many questions left unanswered by the end of the it.
The point of this complexity, as far as I can tell, is for the extended metaphor that underlies the whole show. While normally this would really peak my curiosity, it's practically spoiled by the very title of the show and repeated many, many times throughout the series, in such a way that all of the impactful scenes of the show are not unexpected, which really brings the impact way down. There are some surprises in the series, that being said, but few of them really impact the characters in a meaningful way.
----- Enjoyment - 3/10 -----
You know, I'd probably have enjoyed this more if half of the dialogue wasn't idle banter of no comedic, emotional, or plot value. With a show so dialogue heavy having so much useless dialogue, it's not surprising that I fell asleep many times in the middle of episodes and eventually actually used this show as a means of getting myself to fall asleep at night (I'm not even joking when I say this actually helped cure my insomnia).
----- Overall - 6/10 -----
There are things Katanagatari does really well. I wish it did more of those things. Unfortunately, it spent half the show on useless characters and another chunk trying to make the story more complex, instead of on the things it does really well.
