We sure do love Katamari.

Katamari Damacy Reroll already was already pretty awesome, but We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie goes the extra mile and sets out to be a "Best of Katamari". More levels, more variety, more random stuff to roll up, more story.

The entire plot of We Love Katamari revolves around Katamari Damacy being so universally acclaimed in-universe, that children, elders and even talking animals find enjoyment with the game and still want more, so they seek out the King and the Prince to get their wishes granted. Now the game doesn't advance by completing "main levels" anymore, like in Damacy; instead you can choose from a variety of levels available in each chapter. They're accessible by talking to the associated fans in the new hub world and the majority of fans have multiple levels of a reoccuring theme. Once a certain amount of levels are completed, the game will advance chapters and you'll get to see a cutscene of the King's backstory inbetween your rolling. This unlocks new fans on the plaza and the cycle continues.

Speaking of the King, Royal Reverie especially focuses on him by gradually unlocking special levels where you can play as him in the past. While this does sound very exciting at first, pretty much every of his levels is just a reskinned version of the normal levels. A bit disappointing, yet it's just meant as a nice bonus that was added in the Reroll version. His level in the school at night is awesome though, albeit quite difficult to complete if you want to complete it with all five instruments collected.

We Love Katamari Reroll is just a pleasant game to look at and to play. The colors are more vibrant, the remastered graphics have a certain polish to them, it runs in smooth 60 FPS (atleast in the PC version) and you can't get softlocked anymore. In terms of soundtrack, I actually found it to be pretty much on par with Damacy. To be honest, I was conflicted on it at first, since it's not as "quirky" as the direction in Damacy's OST, but it has grown on me! There's some good variety in there and you can customize the songs before each level. Sure, it doesn't have Lonely Rolling Star, but it has bangers like DISCO★PRINCE, Katamari on the Swing and Everlasting Love. Can't forget the new rendition of the King's theme either. The various environments across different levels like the ski resort, underwater sea and flower fields also feel really well crafted in terms of ambience and have a certain warmth to them. There's even a cool racing level, where each playable character has an individual little kart to match their own style! I love small details like that. With "each playable character", I'm talking about the 40 playable characters, which can be freely switched in the hub world after unlocking them in their respective levels. However, I need to say that unlocking all of them was surprisingly tedious at times, since you can only unlock one cousin at a time in levels where you can find multiple of them. Especially having to replay the 17 minute level four times just for rolling up a single character each time is not my definition of fun, so I'd really only recommend grinding out all the cousins if it's actually enjoyable to you, else just go for your favorites and pick up those you find along the way. Remember, this is all optional. Games are supposed to be fun, not grindy.

I'm glad to have discovered the Katamari games. Damacy Reroll still feels great in it's own way, even after completing the sequel. In a discussion, @Wollom brought up a comparison between Takahashi's Katamari duology and the Super Mario Galaxy duology and I found it to be quite fitting in some key aspects. The first entry of each has that unique vibe and atmosphere to it, while the second one has the better levels and polish, while also retaining the charm of the original game - even if it doesn't hit quite the same there. Of course you can't universally compare these two series, since they're not even the same genre. Apples and oranges. I still found it to be a nice observation, considering the Galaxy games are some of my favorite 3D platformers.

Now something unrelated to Katamari. There really have been a lot of five stars handed out by me lately, so I wanted state again that I don't just usually hand them out like candy - many of the games I played recently have just been quite enjoyable, that's all. There also was the case of Rexaura, but I don't want to dwell on my rating system too much here and needlessly justify myself. After all, I'm reviewing games for fun, not as a job. Thanks for reading.