Personally, I really do love this katamari thing

Katamari Damacy was, in my humblest opinion, a straight 5/5, shit rocked. How do you follow-up perfection? You can't reinvent the wheel, you can't vastly change the gameplay, all you can do is expand on the perfection, and that's what they did.

(Note: I chose this version over the original release because I wanted to see the Royal Reverie content, and there's enough quality of life improvements to justify it.)

Now, this game takes the formula of the original and puts it in various new lights, with unique and engaging scenarios that really shake things up for the player. Both games are excellent at continuously delighting me with new and fun ideas. I personally don't like some types of levels where you have to guess or only pick up specific things, I'm more of a roll up literally everything kinda guy, but the variety is what was needed, and it goes down nice and easy.

As for any downsides, I kinda wanted more maps to be honest? Or some maps are just not used to their full potential, like there's some really awesome levels you only see maybe twice. Give me more of that please? Also, I was kinda hoping the story was more expanded on, but really we just get some king lore, which is neat I guess.

One of the biggest detractors is the soundtrack. There are some good tunes in this game but man, the first games soundtrack absolutely SMOKES this one.

The ending also felt very abrupt, the final levels didn't really feel like you were getting close to the end like in the first game.

also on gameplay fronts, there's a lot of in-game loading and object pop-in, which can kinda break that flow state you get in. I'm obviously nit-picking here but y'know, I'm trying to explain why this is a slightly inferior sequel.

This game really just functions as an expansion to the first game rather than a full-on second game imo. Still though, we really do love Katamari, and this is an easy recommendation for anyone.