Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)

After playing for a good while now - deleting the original save and starting from scratch as the primary player fixed almost everything - I have to say this is alright but I do still feel like it's weaker than the previous installment. While there's some cool creative decisions made and some quality of life stuff introduced, my biggest pet peeve is how much crafting was implemented, almost to the point of it feels like nothing other than Nintendo trying to figure out a way to lengthen the game proper.

"Hmmm...how can we ensure people play this for a very long time? I know! Make them create the town!"

And it feels so boring as a result. Whereas OG Animal Crossing was minimalist to a fault (you move in, do some odd jobs, pay off your house and then just spend eternity hanging out), and City Folk introduced a very neat city mechanic into an otherwise bland town game, I feel like New Leaf really did it perfectly. Yes, you are still doing the minimal thing, but now you're the mayor, and so you can spend hours doing town customization WITHOUT crafting and creating little projects.

This, however? This just feels like Nintendo smashed Animal Crossing together with Sim City, and it's not leaving a great taste in my mouth. I'm still enjoying myself, don't get me wrong, but fuck crafting and fuck everyone who thinks every game needs it because they don't.

So, my girlfriend - in her defense she didn't know - started New Horizons the night we got it just cause I was busy and she wanted to see what it was like. Doing this made her the primary representative on the island, and as such has effectively ruined MY game because she's the one who gets all the projects, island progression building wise and DIY tool guides, while I do not. Nintendo super fucked this game up SO hard, but if it just means resetting the island (seeing as I'm the one who's actually going to play it and she was just curious), then I'll take a few days loss if it saves me years of effort in the long run.

But god damn every time I load this title it pisses me off, and that's not something I EVER wanted Animal Crossing to make me feel :( This franchise was my comfort game for so many years, decades, and now I hate it.

So this is....uh...not sure how to put this considering I'm a superfan who's been playing since the franchise started and has played every iteration but...not great?

Animal Crossing was finally bitten by the "we MUST have crafting!" bug that's long since plagued the industry, much like multiplayer plagued the FPS genre in the 2010s, and while I'm not inherently against it here, I also am not a huge a fan. I also don't like how almost impossible it is to start. There's virtually nothing, there's no citizens, there's no town, there's you and a town and Tom Nook. It's just too much of a departure. A lot of it relies on the Nook miles which feel like nothing more than boring busywork - which is a ridiculous thing to say about a title such as this, I realize, but whatever - and a lot of it feels like they took the most mind numbing concepts from Pocket Camp and implemented them in a supposedly triple a first party title of a famous IP. Not a great look, really.

That being said I'm not gonna throw in the towel. Animal Crossing has always been rather slow to start, but this one just feels...I don't know...empty? And not in a good way. I don't like the fact that you're locked out from other sections of the island simply because there's no bridges. There's nothing here. Just tents and trees. I'm also not a fan of it taking place on an island, but that's a whole different discussion.

So yeah, so far this is a real stinker. Actually, seeing the amount of piss poor almost mobile game-esque releases that clutter the eShop, my opinion of the Switch itself has gone down tremendously since owning one, and I'm beginning to wonder if maybe it would've been better staying a fantasy. It feels like Nintendo will never be as great as it was at the Gamecube, and that's just a fact I have to finally accept.

So I had a vacant home on my island after letting someone move out. I went through my Amiibo cards to see who I'd like to invite since I've had pretty bad luck with letting randos move in. Then I said to myself, "Buy 5 Nook Miles tickets and if you don't find anyone you like after that, do one of the Amiibo cards."

Three island trips later, and I landed Cephalobot!! He's one of the new villagers, but more importantly, he's the last octopus for my octo-crew.

Booted this up again after - as I’ve been informed by my villagers - eight months. I wasn’t surprised that it was that long but it just somehow doesn’t feel that that much time has really passed. I’m still doing mostly the same things as back then. Okay, maybe I’ve gone through a couple of books and games since that time but it’s still the same set of activities, and nothing has changed from my life.

I felt very giddy when I was starting the game even after a long day of work so that was fun. I felt sad though that I do not know almost half of my villagers. I think when I was coming and going from playing last time, I was just letting everyone leave when they requested to and I was accepting all villager exchange propositions from the campsite. I wasn’t really in the best mental state at that time, and now I miss my old villagers. I know of some who moved to my friends’ islands so maybe I can still get them back.

I stood in-game for a good five minutes trying to remember the controls then gave up - only for it to come back naturally when I needed to do that action. I did already spend 200+ hours on this game so I guess the controls have been imprinted to muscle memory. I’m excited to spend a few hundred more or so because I have the motivation again to continue my island plans. So excited for the new things coming.

Island transfer complete without a hitch. I did get nervous for a brief moment when Nintendo flashed a huge wall of red warning text saying that there were playable characters that weren't tied to any user accounts after the transfer, but you just need to link your user account with you character and you're good. I had to do it for my character and my partner's. Now everything is as it should be, just on a new Switch.

On a somewhat related note, I don't know if everyone who owns a Switch needs justify upgrading, but hot damn this OLED screen is beautiful. The difference isn't subtle and games look gorgeous in handheld. Long live the OLED Vita...I mean Switch!