how do you take the most joyful, happy video game ever made and make it even better? by giving it a beautiful post-modern story about the first game's surprise success and how nobody can quite figure out what makes katamari fun. by giving it better, more expansive levels with a brilliant variety. by making a soundtrack that doesn't quite top damacy's but has its own set of absolute bangers such as disco katamari. so much more expansive, more adorable, more detailed and smarter than the first game. i love this game so much. pure unbridled weird surreal fun times.

i love how this was the first katamari released in europe so none of the self-referencing would have made any sense

Good:

My favorite Katamari. Much improved gameplay over the first game. Various levels offer new and interesting experiences. Music is cool and eccentric.

Not Good:

Even with various maps, game reuses them every now and then. Wish every level was unique.

Verdict:

9 / 10

I always called this game We Heart Katamari. Anyways, it takes what the first game did and just does it again but better with more interesting level ideas, many of which you have to roll up specific things or have some movement-altering gimmick. All of them work really well, it's an absolute joy to play. The writing being so self-aggrandizing about the first game is incredibly funny, especially when you realize that the lead designer of the game originally didn't want to even do a sequel. He left after this one, which I think shows. Being able to play as all the cousins is fun. It's one of those games that will leave you with a big smile on your face even if you're having the worst day. Great vibes all around. If you just need a good time or something to lighten up, play this, or the original, they're both great. I'll never do that rose level though. Screw that.

Keita Takahashi begrudgingly worked on a sequel to the first katamari game after Namco strongarmed him into it, and even though he didn't like the idea of a katamari sequel, he made one of the best sequels ever. We Love Katamari plays just like the first but adds lots of different ideas to its levels that really help in bettering the initial gameplay loop. The regular levels are still as solid as ever, but the new levels (ie. rolling fires to light a bonfire, rolling up fireflies to make a bright light) really improve upon the first games constellation levels.

The game has fun levels, a stellar soundtrack, and a lovely vibe, as the game spends lots of time complementing the king and thanking him, and by extension the player, for rolling all these katamaris. If you played the first game, you NEED to play this one, especially since the remake just released.

So my emulator file got corrupted about a quarter of the way through.

I won't see the end of this one organically, but I can still vouch to its quality. It's so good. Controls have been touched up just enough to make everything feel smoother without removing the loose feeling of chaotically rolling around.

The music wasn't quite on par in terms of variety to the first game, but who cares. It's all so good.

Finally, the biggest surprise to me was the meta narrative. What an amazing place to take the franchise !

It's honestly a perfect sequel in almost every respect and, I'll say it, I love Katamari.

an amazing sequel to an already amazing game

great new level concepts and ideas while still staying true to the spirit of the original game, almost wholly an improvement in every aspect

probably one of the greatest gaming soundtracks ever

Katamari Damacy was one of the pinnacles of the PS2-era of gaming, a time where technological advancements had finally made ambitious and novel game concepts possible without too many restraints, but also when the cost of development hadn’t risen so much that big game studios still greenlit such projects. But even this period of gaming wasn’t a bastion freed from the yokes of capitalism. Creatives still needed to grease and gaslight executives into greenlighting such creative projects, and if that project became a meteoric success, said studio execs wanted to milk the shit out of that success until all the magic had evaporated. Such was the fate that Keita Takahashi, lead designer of the Damacy games, found himself in.

We Love Katamari is a blatant and self-aware reaction on the roll-away success of Katamari Damacy. Taking place after the first game, instead of reacting with abject horror at the rolling-up of Earth by the King of All Cosmos, mankind has now become fans of the King and ask him for random katamari favours. The King, bored by the prospect of the job but not immune to even the most superficial praise, sends his son and cousins to do the fanservice for him.

It is a satirical frame to what is basically the same gameplay as the previous game. You roll your ball via manipulating both control sticks independently, adhesing small objects to your ball in order to grow it so it can stick to even larger objects. Katamari Damacy used a very logical progression of scale: with every level, you would start with increasingly larger balls until at the final level, you would roll up the entire world. We Love Katamari trades this progression for variety; next to the standard missions akin to the previous games, you are also asked to roll up different types of items like fireflies or snow or tyres, in order to satiate the fans.

And the fans will never be satisfied. Even if you roll up a mission with a high score, you will be chastised by them for not living up to the impossible expectations that they have cooked up in their dreams. It makes them downright more dismissive than even the King, contender for Worst Father in Video Games.

This frame, which would be downright cynical if not for the same absurdist vibe as the previous game, puts you in the shoes of the creator. You feel like, in a way, you’ve been there before.. Even if it’s “”””objectively”””” a better game with more varied missions, a higher difficulty and even more swag for your player characters, this game can’t quite capture the same glee and surprise as the original game because it’s obviously not an original game. It is still a great game, don’t get me wrong, but We Love Katamari also wants you to move on and find joy in the unexpected, rather than the tried and true.