Although it has only been a little under a month since I beat Katamari Damacy, I have thought about it at least once a day since then, as I've been listening to the soundtrack very often (with "Que Sera Sera" and "Roll Me In" being on repeat in both my mind and my computer) while also checking out speedruns and world record rolls. All of this has made me incredibly excited to check out the game's sequel, We Love Katamari, and I was curious to see what it was about the game that made so many people consider it to be the better experience, and the ever-so-sweet Japanese box art featuring the game's development team posing in front of Namco being another motivator to finally give the game a go. Like the first game, I was won over by the charm of We Love Katamari right when I saw its intro play for the first time, and not only did this game retain the spirit of its predecessor, but it also brought so many new ideas to the table that I can't see it as anything other than the definitive Katamari experience.

Whether you were grabbing everything in your path, trying to collect a specific kind of item, or trying to grab the biggest single item while avoiding its smaller lookalikes, pretty much all of the levels in Katamari Damacy end up with you rolling the biggest ball you possibly can, and while those level types are still here in the sequel and are as fun as they've ever been, We Love Katamari features a lot more variety in terms of levels and objectives. We Love Katamari takes the core mechanics of the first game and expands on them through its constant recontexualizations, and moving on from cleaning up after the King of All Cosmos' mess and instead doing freelance work for the fans of the previous game means that you're completing tasks such as cleaning up a kid's room, helping a sumo wrestler eat enough food to prepare for his next match, rolling up a head for a giant snowman, or even trying to light a bonfire while also keeping your own katamari's flame from going out. Not only do these new game modes make the already unique concept of the first game feel fresh again, but one of the original modes involving rolling up a certain item type was made much more interesting, as collecting flowers in a beautiful meadow or rolling up a gingerbread house for Hansel and Gretel was infinitely more compelling than collecting objects simply because the King of All Cosmos wanted you to. Speaking of which, We Love Katamari featured a lot more locales for its levels than the first game, and while the satisfaction of learning your way around each level so that you can get bigger in a shorter amount of time is still here to an extent (especially with the addition of alternate objectives for completed levels), I still loved just how new almost all of the levels felt.

Like I mentioned earlier, We Love Katamari focuses on paying tribute to the fans that made Katamari Damacy the surprise hit that it was, and while the first game was already filled with joy (save for the verbal abuse coming from your in-game father whenever you fail a mission), this felt like a game made out of pure love and passion, and my mood would improve immediately whenever I sat down to play it, including the times where I was in an already good one. We Love Katamari retains the timeless artstyle and surrealist comedy of its predecessor, and its quirky look really got to shine during the grandiose, gorgeously animated, and often hilarious cutscenes that showed the King of All Cosmos' upbringing and how he fell in love with the Queen of All Cosmos. As expected, the shibuya-kei soundtrack was absolutely phenomenal, and while I'm not sure if I can decide between the music for this game or Katamari Damacy just yet, I will say that the song "Angel Rain" from the flower and firefly levels might just be my favorite individual track out of both of these games. Because this was essentially a direct improvement on the original game in pretty much every way, I'd go as far as to say that We Love Katamari is one of my favorite puzzle games, and while I'm not all that interested in checking out the other games from the Katamari franchise due to the lack of involvement from its creator, Keita Takahashi, I do want to eventually play some of the games that he made on his own, including his upcoming game To a T.