Review: ‘We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie’ is bursting with joy and charm

wegotthiscovered.com:

Hello. It’s me: the most biased possible writer to be reviewing this game. Want an anecdote? I got bullied in the fourth grade of elementary school for reading the inner pamphlet of We Love Katamari on the school bus. Maybe because it looks like this, or maybe because those kids didn’t know the joy of the Katamari. Whatever the reason, my spirits were not dampened. We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie brings me back to one of my all-time favorite games as an adult, re-experiencing the unfettered joy of playing it again for the very first time.

There are a lot of Katamari games now, but only two of them were helmed by series creator Keita Takahashi: Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari.

We Love Katamari is a delightfully reluctant sequel. Spurred by the success of the first game, Takahashi makes several light jabs at the audience clamoring for “more.” Nonetheless, the Prince and his hot, abusive father, the King, are here to deliver the goods.

The plot? The King has destroyed all the stars in the cosmos. By accident, of course. The Prince and his numerous, ill-shapen Cousins must roll Katamari to replace the stars in the sky with celestial bodies of sugary treats, household items, and scores and scores of living beings of varying sentience. Don’t worry, they’re just happy to be there.

Most of these levels involve rolling as big as possible or to a certain size as fast as possible — and these are where the game shines brightest. The core gameplay of rolling items only a little smaller than you to gain size quickly works best when your only objective is getting as large as possible.

Other, more tenuously-enjoyable levels involve meeting some criteria, like getting as close as possible to a target size. Another asks that