We Love Katamari could be the right online game sequel. Dialing nearly each beloved mechanic and element from the primary recreation as much as 11, all whereas ditching a few of Katamari Damacy’s much less beloved points, it’s no shock that this entry is the fan favourite. For higher and worse, its re-release, We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie, asks you the query, “If it ain’t broke, why repair it?” With a handful of remixed ranges, crisp HD graphics, and a smattering of quality-of-life options, Reroll + does its greatest to keep away from stepping on the unique’s toes whereas bringing the almost 20-year-old recreation into the current day in clear, vibrant HD.
That new facelift may truly be We Love Katamari Reroll’s most important addition. That’s to not say that the sport didn’t look nice again on PS2. In truth, its visuals have aged remarkably effectively in comparison with a lot of its contemporaries. It’s simply that in comparison with fashionable consoles the PS2’s coloration palette and graphical capabilities lend a dim, washed-out look to even the brightest, most vibrantly multicolored video games. Anyone who performed the unique again within the day could be shocked to listen to that, however even a cursory search or look at a Let’s Play may shock you.
Jumping 18 years and roughly two-and-a-half console generations into the long run, the distinction is staggering. Even on a non-OLED, launch version Switch, We Love Katamari’s rainbow shines with brilliant colours that pop nearly as a lot as the sport’s charming writing and completely unbelievable soundtrack.
For the uninitiated, We Love Katamari is the second recreation within the Katamari Damacy franchise. Introduced on PlayStation 2 again in 2004, Katamari Damacy made waves due to its eclectic soundtrack, kooky writing, visible design, and genre-defying gameplay. Your father, who additionally occurs to be a flamboyant god, the King Of All Cosmos, has a bit an excessive amount of enjoyable and drunkenly destroys the celebrities within the sky. It’s as much as you to repopulate the night time sky with new stars. To achieve this, you’re tasked with rolling up every part on Earth, which is the whole gameplay loop of the Katamari franchise. Think of it like a dung beetle rolling its ball of… effectively, ; or a snowball rolling down a hill. As your ball (or Katamari) grows, you may decide up greater and greater objects. You may begin rolling up ants or pencils and find yourself gathering whole continents.
The proof right here actually is within the pudding: whereas it doesn’t sound all that particular, an indelible sense of scale and development permeates each single problem earlier than you. Before it, the sport’s kinetic nature could have you hooked as you jam out to a few of the greatest soundtracks within the pantheon of video video games.
Like 2018’s Katamari Damacy Reroll, this rerelease doesn’t contact or take away from something that makes the sport nice. It nonetheless feels nice to roll up all types of bizarre odds and ends, individuals, animals, and the occasional cousin, which function further playable characters. The soundtrack continues to be a banger for the ages (too proper we’re mentioning it once more — it truly is that good), the writing is laugh-out-loud humorous and tinged with some intelligent commentary on what it means to be a sequel, and various problem ranges add some welcome variety to the sorts of ranges you may encounter as you roll up every part in sight.
Beyond some sharp new visuals, this punched-up remaster does roll just a few new options into the combination. The greatest get comes within the type of 5 “new” ranges; the titular Royal Reverie. These further challenges aren’t precisely what we’d hoped. None of them are dangerous by any means, however they’re all remixed variations of present ranges, and a few are simply straight-up reskins of challenges from the principle recreation. While the act of rolling up a Katamari will all the time scratch an itch not quenched by many different video games, anybody anticipating wholly new ranges may wind up a bit upset.
It’s a tricky spot for remaster developer Monkeycraft to be in. On one hand, with out the involvement of the unique recreation’s improvement staff, wholly new ranges can be a giant ask and will very simply result in backlash from followers in the event that they weren’t as much as snuff. On the opposite, this re-release prominently boasts its new ranges. Again, these entries are nonetheless nice enjoyable, however they’re not completely as new because the advertising and marketing for Reroll + Royal Reverie would have you ever imagine.
Other welcome additions vastly enhance the sport’s high quality of life, nevertheless. You can create playlists together with your favourite tunes to jam out to whereas rolling. There’s additionally a brand new trace characteristic that makes development a lot simpler, particularly for newcomers who haven’t nailed the ebb and circulate of a Katamari degree.
Conclusion
In rounding off Katamari Damacy’s rougher edges and upping the ante with extra numerous mechanics and challenges, even goofier writing, and a terrific soundtrack, We Love Katamari cemented itself as a excessive watermark for online game sequels in 2005. Even with out the remaster therapy, the sport’s maintained its luster remarkably effectively however Reroll + Royal Reverie is (an admittedly skinny layer of) icing on an already decadent cake. With various stable quality-of-life updates and sharper, brighter visuals, that is undeniably the easiest way to expertise the 2005 traditional.
