We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Splitscreen)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Much like the original Katamari Damacy Reroll, We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie is a remaster of a family-friendly PlayStation 2 classic (this one originally released in 2005) brushed up with high-definition graphics and a few added features, and released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

The second game in the Katamari Damacy series, We Love Katamari plays like an even wackier take on the already quite-wacky formula introduced in the original, framed as a tribute to the fans who made the first game a surprise success, with this game’s levels all based on “fan requests” of various people appealing to the series’ quirky King of All Cosmos (who initially outright refuses until he hears the fan compliment him and then completely changes his tune to respond to whatever odd request they had, including theme levels with bizarre locations and levels where the gameplay is mixed up with a different goal than usual.

Those who haven’t played the original game are perhaps better off starting there, but it’s certainly not required – the oddball story isn’t likely to make much more sense having played the original, and the gameplay here is largely the same – you play as the diminutive Prince of All Cosmos (or one of his numerous unlockable cousins and other royal relatives) pushing around the titular “Katamari”, a ball that grabs up anything it touches so long as it’s smaller than the ball currently is. This means that generally speaking you’ll be aiming to grab up various objects in the environment to make your ball bigger to roll up bigger things, and so forth. Later levels in the game see you start out the size of a mouse using your Katamari to roll up board game pieces and stationary strewn around a small room, gradually growing big enough to roll up that cat who was batting you around a moment ago, then growing big enough to roll up the family, their car, their house, the neighboring skyscrapers, and then whole countries – one of the joys of this game is seeing this progression unfold in real-time in the same level over the span of 20 minutes.

The gameplay here has you using both analog sticks as if you were controlling tank treads – push both sticks up to move forward, push them both down to move backwards, and push one up and one down to turn. There are other inputs you can use, such as pushing both the analog sticks in to hop over your ball and push it from the other side, but for the most part once you get a feel for how the controls work it’s all pretty simple and straightforward – most of the complexity here comes from the level design, as well as the irregular shape your ball takes on as it grabs up particularly odd-shaped objects.

However, players who don’t care for the default controls can also opt for a simplified control scheme where you direct the ball where to go using one analog stick, as well as a Nintendo Switch-specific motion-control method using two Joy-Cons, which is a fun inclusion, but largely gimmicky and most players will undoubtedly stick with one of the more traditional control layouts.

While the gameplay here is surprisingly compelling, it’s enhanced by the game’s extremely eccentric and very Japanesey presentation, headed up by the galaxy-size cloud cuckoolander King of All Cosmos himself, but with the game being full to bursting with oddities, with each level filled with a garbage dump full of seemingly random (and often very Japanese) junk to roll up. This is all presented using extremely colorful, but generally fairly low-poly, 3D visuals. These visuals definitely look better in this updated re-release, but make no mistake – they are all still deliberately simple and at times blocky-looking.

And here’s where I have one of my first major complaints about this remake – the original game had occasional load times as you transitioned across specific size thresholds, and those loading times are preserved here. It would have been really nice to see this game take advantage of more modern hardware to smooth out these transitions and make them more seamless, but sadly the visual upgrade here is fairly modest. I’ll also note that the Nintendo Switch version of the game suffers from a bit of slowdown at times, though thankfully it’s not so severe it ruins the game.

These visuals are backed by an outstanding soundtrack that’s similarly quirky and diverse, but all delightfully expressive and catchy, including the seemingly Tom Jones-inspired Katamari on the Swing, the superb J-Pop song Everlasting Love, the relaxed Houston, or the delightfully silly Killing Hot Savannah in which synthesized animal sounds bark, meow, oink, quack, baa, and whinny a medley of songs from the first game. One of the best improvements that this release offers is the ability to not only play any song in any level, but to create a playlist of your favorites. Players wanting to take full advantage of this game even opt to spend $10 more on the Special Edition of the game, which adds in a variety of songs from throughout the series.

The one other improvement here is the titular Royal Reverie, five “new” levels, though these are largely just remixes of other levels from throughout the game packaged within a framing device of exploring the King of All Cosmos’ difficult relationship with his own demanding father (the Grandpa of All Cosmos, perhaps?). This makes for a nice bonus, but definitely don’t look at this as a massive addition.

Overall, We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie refines and slightly improves what was already a great game, but it doesn’t actually transform it. This is still largely the same experience players had all the way back in 2005, albeit polished up a little. However, since that original experience was a truly outstanding game, and has aged remarkably well, this is still an absolute must-have game for anyone who’s open to the silly and bizarre. And while I’ve heard varying opinions on whether the first or second game is the best in the Katamari series, I think most will generally agree that this one-two punch is an absolutely joyful mix of great gameplay and fun presentation, and it’s a delight to have them both on Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie is a remaster of a family-friendly PlayStation 2 classic Arcade-style game that has you rolling a ball to pick up various objects to make your ball bigger to roll up even bigger objects. This is the second game in the Katamari series, and takes the concept to even kookier places than the first game, but overall remains a great blend of surprisingly compelling gameplay and a delightfully silly nonsensical presentation. This remaster adds a few improvements, but mostly this is a fairly minor update of the classic game rather than an entirely new experience. Having said that, it’s still a joy to play, and I highly recommend it.

Grade: A-

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Splitscreen)

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Review:

The Katamari Damacy series has never been a graphical powerhouse franchise. Where it’s impressive is in the sheer number of things it has on-screen at any given time, and how scalable they all are. So how does this game fare on Nintendo Switch 2?

Well, the resolution and framerates seem unaffected. The main difference is in the loading times. On Nintendo Switch, it took 17 seconds to load into the game, 8 to load a game save, and 20 to load into a level. On Nintendo Switch 2, those loading times have shortened to 4, 3, and 8.

Not exactly transformative, but it’s a good-sized reduction in loading times that makes this an all-around more enjoyable experience. I would have liked a framerate bump, but otherwise, this is a decent improvement over the Nintendo Switch version.

tl;dr – We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie is a remaster of a family-friendly PlayStation 2 classic Arcade-style game that has you rolling a ball to pick up various objects to make your ball bigger to roll up even bigger objects. This is the second game in the Katamari series, and takes the concept to even kookier places than the first game, but overall remains a great blend of surprisingly compelling gameplay and a delightfully silly nonsensical presentation. This remaster adds a few improvements, but mostly this is a fairly minor update of the classic game rather than an entirely new experience. Having said that, it’s still a joy to play, and I highly recommend it.

Grade: A-

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