We Love Katamari REROLL+ Royal Reverie

Oh my goodness, this is the best game ever from the Katamari Damacy franchise, and far better than the original one—Katamari Damacy Reroll. I really had a great time with this game, and I almost cried too. It’s got playable cousins! Oh, how I spent my time playing as my favorite cousins, especially Nik, Lalala, Fujio, and Johnson. I also played as Drooby (she’s really helpful in the Bird and Elephant stage) and Can-Can (he won’t give up trying to light up the campfire in the Camper Man stage during the second and final round), because both of them were disliked so much in the voting poll results. I’m very grateful for them, though. What makes the gameplay really interactive is that there’s a camera mode where you can take photos or selfies (you can customize your expressions too!), including the cousins who were minding their own business before being rolled up, like when the Prince and Slip were messing around with a photocopier machine in the Mini-Sumo stage. The King of All Cosmos? Well, he’s got his own private stages if you interact with the electrifying bamboo sword. You’ll be playing as his younger version, and he’s really cute! (screams) The downside? Well, for each stage, you've to retry in order to roll up each cousin, as they won’t appear simultaneously. What are the most difficult stages? 1. The Camper Man 2. The Bird and Elephant (you've to roll up to 500 meters) 3. The Cowbear Farmer (you've to roll up Daisy, but at the same time, you've to avoid rolling up any cow-like or bear-like objects, because once you do, the stage will end) 4. The F1 Racer (the ball won’t slow down unless you roll up enough to make it heavy) All in all, this is the perfect game from the franchise because it’s not strict, making it suitable for anyone new to Katamari Damacy. 10/10

Mechanically and quantitatively, this is everything you'd want in a followup to Katamari Damacy. There are more levels, greater variety in those levels, more gimmicks that don't outlast their welcome, smoother katamari handling, and even co-op where two players roll the same ball. I know a lot of people who understandably prefer this to the original game. I enjoyed it a lot, and if you also enjoyed the original, this is pretty much a must-play. That said, I honestly prefer the original for being more cohesive as a whole. It has a way better sense of scale and escalation, as you gradually roll up larger and larger katamari to repopulate the sky, and basically every aspect of the game is tied into its weird-ass characters and themes. We Love Katamari, on the other hand, is a self-aware followup where you roll around a bunch of disconnected levels to try to appease fans of the first game. As funny as it is, it trades a lot of the first game's tone and moments of odd beauty for an intentional insipidity. A great example of this is, of all things, the level results song. Compare the first game's track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-pkWd05puM to the second one's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaDXtsFl6Ts The first somehow perfectly matches the entire gamut of feelings from barely scraping by and disappointing the King of All Cosmos to genuinely impressing him. There's a real awe and beauty to it, even if the King himself is a farce, and you really feel the sheer difference in scale between you and him. Regardless of your mixed feelings on the man himself, you genuinely want to live up to his expectations, and this track is a huge part of that. The second song, on the other hand, doesn't even try to hold a straight face. This is reflected in the accompanying dialogue: the King doesn't really care all that much because he's just clocking in to appease his new fans and stroke his ego a bit, and the in-game fans are much more demanding and arbitrary than he ever was. It's decently funny and well-made, sure, but lacks the tonal and thematic complexity that made the original even funnier. We Love Katamari is ultimately "just" a mechanically good, postmodern sequel to a masterpiece, and it's fine with being that. A lot of people are beyond fine with that, and see it as the best game in the series. But as much as I enjoyed it all myself, I can't help but wish that it shot just a bit higher and became another true masterpiece.

This is an absolutely GOATED game. It runs well on lower-powered devices too. The game is goofy, the story is great, and the extra content is a nice addition to the already 10/10 PEAK game. I absolutely love Katamari Damacy, and I have since I was a young boy. BANDAI NAMCO PLEASE MAKE BEAUTIFUL KATAMARI REROLL