+it's first-person physics puzzler katamari, which an insanely bold concept on wii, and it's pulled off with relative aplomb. the goal is to capture elebits to charge up your gravity gun, which in turn can activate devices that spit out special elebits which increase the size of objects that you can move around to reveal more elebits. you're allowed to make such a mess turning rooms upside down searching for elebits, and by end game you can pick up some seriously large structures and toss them around easily.
+gorgeous hand-drawn art that's like trembling thin-line characters on top of a pulsating watercolor background. it's the main style used in the cutscenes and looks amazing
+in the latter half of the game there's no map repetition, which surprised me quite a bit. there are objects that reappear frequently, but as far as I'm aware basically every map past the house is unique. especially impressive given that there's 25 main missions.
+bosses are as solid as you could possibly get given the premise, and I didn't find any of them to be aggravating or dull. each one has a separate gimmick and strategy as well.
+there's plenty of content here, with a multiplayer mode where multiple people can compete to see who gets the most elebits, and an edit mode where you can make your own maps. I didn't dive into much of the extraneous content, but the game still took me a little over 9 hours to beat regardless, which was much longer than I was expecting (though that's including all my retries and such).
+being able to stand on your tiptoes or crouch is such a smart addition. initially I didn't think much of it, but I found it to be of great use later on.
+the game swarms you with temporary upgrades throughout the levels, and virtually all of them are useful. homing lasers especially are a must-have in the late-game
+I was initially worried about the turrets throughout the game that shoot at you, because it's not always apparent when you're being fired upon, and it's easy to get momentarily stuck on surrounding objects and not be able to dodge. thankfully their shots move very slowly and you can duck under them as well, making these much less of an issue than anticipated.
+absolute banger jungle/house soundtrack that flirts with salsa, big band, and other influences throughout. sometimes the MIDI-ness of the tracks is a little overly apparently, but there are def tracks that made me stop listening to a podcast in the background just so I could enjoy them. I'll just drop a little sampling right here, here,here, here, and here

-the framerate is never amazing and in the bigger end-game areas it really struggles to keep pace. not as annoying when you're just wildly wrecking havoc and picking up stray elebits, but very annoying when you're trying to do something precise
-the basic gun and movement controls are great but advanced techniques like turning handles, rotating objects, and pulling items towards you are frustrating, especially if you play this sitting down like I did. the wiimote is simply not accurate enough to facilitate these techniques, though at least they aren't necessary often
-elebits vary in how many watts they give you depending on their mood, and if they see you/know you're trying to catch them they get agitated and yield less watts. in theory this is interesting, but the implementation is so haphazard that it becomes a major nuisance. elebits across the map can somehow know where you are while elebits less than a meter from you will blissfully prance unaware of your presence.
-to use items you have to break them by smashing them against a surface, and I never felt like this was consistent. it's especially annoying when they bounce against the surface instead and go flying off.
-certain contraptions have more obtuse requirements for opening them once powered, which usually isn't a big deal since there are plenty of these throughout each level. some early stages (especially the kitchen) had me struggling to figure out how to operate these but ultimately moving on. however, mission 27 had me in conniptions for a bit because suddenly operating each machine is mandatory to power up the gun enough to win, and these puzzles made little-to-no sense to me. it's not intuitive for me to operate a map kiosk by putting a plastic rabbit on top of it...
-early game has a lot of repeated areas since you're within your house for each mission. it makes sense in context, but you spend so much time in the living room... there could've been more variety for sure.

I liked this game quite a bit, especially during the middle section where the levels opened up a bit and I felt like I could go a little crazy in each mission. what keeps this overall concept from being better is the paucity of elebits at times. in katamari, the main drive is to collect as much as possible and always keep picking up items, and it accomplishes that with items being everywhere conceivable. in this game, the mission pacing is much more choppy, and there are points in many missions where it feels like you're trying to squeeze blood from a stone scrounging up elebits to unlock a new contraption. that feeling of not being able to bulk up your wattage or gun power while the clock is ticking down makes my shoulders tense, and it kept me from wanting the do the bare minimum to clear each level. for the most part I'd exit the level as soon as my wattage hit the required amount instead of continuing to build my rank, and that feeling of not wanting to pursue more with the game caps how high I can rank it at the end of the day. it's flawed for sure, but it gets so much right in other ways that I can't help but feel a lot of affection for it, especially since it's a game I remember clearly from my childhood.