We Love Katamari (2005)

Even though I consider Katamari Damacy one of my favorite games, even though I've read the book, and even though I've played a few other entries (see Katamari Forever and Touch My Katamari), I hadn't played Keita Takahashi's direct sequel till now.

It took a minute to grow on me. Compared to the original, We Love Katamari is a bit more interrupt-y: The King is more talkative, there's more exposition around level selection, and very occasionally a course will abruptly pause (with some banter) to load a new layer of assets.

But eventually, We Love Katamari's strengths far outshone any weaknesses. On the whole, these courses are more consistently fun to play and to replay. And the postmodern narrative is an inspired choice, especially knowing Takahashi's conflicted feelings about directing a sequel. Framing each challenge as a request from a die-hard Katamari fan is a charming, intuitive and tonally perfect framing device.

I suspect I'll always prefer the first game for its originality, its soundtrack and its gradual ascent to an epic climax. But We Love Katamari is a wonderful complement to (and iteration of) that vision.

Katamari is football and the first game is watching Brett Favre* hail mary for a game-winning TD for the first time and the second game is watching Patrick Mahomes tossing the zillionth 50 yard pig. The second is more impressive, but it'll never beat that first experience. I can't help but think that We Love Katamari is the better game, but nothing can top that first experience rolling up a can, then a pig, then a dog, then a kid, then a soda can machine, then an adult wearing stilts, then a telephone pole, then a little car, then a big car, then an elephant, then a truck, then one of them little duck boats, then a house, then an apartment building, then a skyscraper, then a giant spinning Buddha, then God. I list this out because I don't think it can be overstated that you get this wild experience with almost transformative power once. Maybe We Love Katamari is better. But I prefer the first game.

*He is a very bad man who was very good at football.

I told myself I'd buy this when it went on sale after loving the original (remake/remaster? I don't know enough about the original to say, but I played Reroll on Switch (when it was free for a week!)), and We Love Katamari is on sale so I bought it. I've been enjoying it, but you only get the experience of innovation the one time. With that experience missing, the core of Katamari is still a blast. However, the newer elements don't add much. They have plenty of new gameplay styles, but none are as fun as regular old Katamari. I also have just started skipping the story, not out of lack of interest but out of a desire to play the regular old Katamari segments.

Once again, the core gameplay of Katamari is strong. I'm having a good time. The music rocks, I like the art style, and I have a smile on my face basically the whole time I'm playing.

But the game is offering me Rocky Road ice cream when what I really want is regular old chocolate.

Katamari Damacy is one of my favorite games that I have played this year and in my top 20 favorite games of all time. The thing that resonated me the most with it is how universal its metanarrative is. We get so screwed over by higher ups tormenting us that at some point, we just want to say "You know what? Fuck you!" And Damacy serves as that power fantasy both story and gameplay wise. We Love Katamari is the sequel to the original after that game's success and it is even better, but read my Damacy review because it is more of the same and I didn't want to repeat things said in that review.

Keita Takahashi was against the idea of making a sequel, but with the success of Katamari Damacy, Namco instantly went into development of the sequel whether they had Keita or not. Keita begrudgingly went to work on it since he was never really into sequels. We Love Katamari really ups the meta in this game compared to Damacy because the game is straight up about how fans loved Katamari Damacy. Like before, the King of All Cosmos depends on you and only you to do the job of pleasing fans. Like an everyday job, you still keep rolling the ball.

How can you make a sequel feel fresh while keeping a foundation this simple? The objective of Katamari Damacy was to make the ball as big as possible. We Love Katamari answers this question by having varied objectives while still maintining the objective of "roll as much as you can". You try to roll as much valuable items as you can for charity, you roll a sumo wrestler and make him eat as much food as you can before you go against the opponent, you roll up as much fireflies as you can to help a kid study. There are less of the puzzle levels that I wasn't a fan of in Damacy where you roll up one certain item. Environments are much more varied in We Love Katamari than Damacy. In KD, I recall most of the places taking place in basic parks, houses, and cities. I didn't mind it since they manage to add in different things per repeated level, but WLK varies its areas. From a race track making your katamari basically a racecar to a pink flower field with faries, fawn, and fantasy, to a land of sugar, spice, and everything nice.

I went back to play a bit of Damacy after WLK and I never realized how much We Love Katamari spoiled me. Damacy was really harsh with its collision at times; I mean there was a moment where I got stuck and it registered as so many hard crashes that 40 crabs left my ball. There were times where I wanted to climb up, but the katamari crashed instead. Also you lose so much per hard crash. There is nothing like that I recall in We Love Katamari. Hard crashes don't make you lose as much nor were there moments where I got stuck. Overall, it makes We Love Katamari feel much smoother to play.

While Damacy had a greater impact on me, We Love Katamari surpasses the first as a whole in retrospect. If you loved Katamari Damacy, here's more of it, but better. Despite Takahashi being against sequels, it's clear that he put love into this one as a thank you to everyone who loved Damacy. With this being Takahashi's last Katamari game, it's going to go downhill from here, but I'm gonna have fun rolling down that hill.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

FINAL RATING: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED