We Love Katamari REROLL+ Royal Reverie Special Edition

I put a few hours into the original We Love Katamari on PS2 and never expected a remaster to make it feel this alive again, but here we are. This is a remaster of the 2005 sequel to Katamari Damacy, rebuilt with overhauled graphics and a revamped UI, and it carries the same absurd energy that made the series a cult classic in the first place. The core loop is deceptively simple: you push the Prince of All Cosmos around increasingly chaotic environments, rolling up everything from thumbtacks and bottle caps to telephone poles, sumo wrestlers, and entire buildings. The katamari can only grab objects smaller than itself, so you're constantly making quick reads on what to chase and what to dodge, and that little puzzle layer quietly underpins every single stage. What sets We Love Katamari apart from its predecessor is the variety crammed into the level design. Some stages ask you to grow as massive as possible before time runs out, others set a target size with no clock so you can take your time. Then there are the stranger asks: keep a fireball rolling without touching water, fatten up a sumo wrestler by collecting food items, roll up a thousand paper cranes. A selfie mode and the Eternal Mode (casual, no time limits) round out the quality-of-life additions for players who just want to zone out and snowball the world in peace. The Royal Reverie campaign is the headline new content, putting you in control of a young King of All Cosmos across five brand-new challenges. The context is fun and the lore is a nice callback, but the quality of those stages is uneven. Some reviewers found the difficulty spike in Royal Reverie genuinely frustrating, with certain missions introducing pseudo-stealth conditions or strict sixty-second windows that feel out of step with the breezy main game. If you go in expecting the same warm chaos as the core stages, a couple of these will push back harder than you want. Treat it as bonus content rather than a second campaign and the disappointment is easier to manage. The controls are a two-stick affair that mimics steering a small vehicle: both sticks forward to roll straight, opposing sticks to spin, rapid alternation to dash. There is a genuine learning curve here that trips up new players, and a few longer stages in the twenty-plus minute range can overstay their welcome. But the moment the controls click, the game opens up into something genuinely satisfying. The post-stage size comparison screen, where the game tells you your katamari was as tall as 54,000-odd pencil sharpeners, is one of those small design touches that makes the whole thing feel crafted with real care. The Special Edition bundles in the Little Prince Costume, Little King Costume, and a 25-track Katamari Damacy Series Music Pack with custom playlist support, which is worth it if the soundtrack is already living rent-free in your head.

Alex · Scout Team

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