Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)

This is my first Animal Crossing game and it's really neat. It's fun, but not in the same way that playing a game with strategy is fun - it's fun like lounging by the pool. I've learned that trying to optimize my time playing it is a lost cause and just ruins the experience. The trick is to play it for 20 minutes at a time and then give it a break, otherwise I naturally start to rush through everything. And as soon as I do this, it starts to feel like a job!

I can finally say, however, that I understand the obsession with Animal Crossing. "Just 5 more minutes" is something I've said out loud many times now and the game's only been out for a week!

Got my "Town Hall" today, and so I can finally start building bridges and ramps at will. My island is Besaid, so I'm gonna work on making the town tune either Besaid or Sight of Spira (since that's one of my favorite tracks and the music that plays in the actual village).

I still have two questions, though:

1. Where are the gyroids?!
2. Is there going to be a wetsuit?! I feel like removing the swimming/diving of New Leaf from a game based ON AN ISLAND wouldn't make sense, but what do I know. The way that new stuff is added to the phone, it could just become an addition to the critterpedia...

Also, I dunno if anyone has made a wand yet, but I'm not a fan. :( I was super excited about the ability to have an outfit wheel, but it ended up being even more disappointing than the tool wheel not taking the items out of your normal pockets. Basically, you can set the outfits to the wheel, but it removes those items from your wardrobe. Meaning, you can build an outfit using, say, blue loafers, but then they're tied to that outfit and ONLY that outfit on the wheel and won't show up in your wardrobe when you go to build more outfits. So if you want multiple outfits with a specific item, you need to own multiples of that exact item. That's the dumbest shit.

The wand outfits also act as "transformations" and not just swapping outfits. So if you've got a "transformation" on, you can't even try on any clothes that you might buy or get from a neighbor. You can take it off and whatever you were wearing underneath with still be there, and then you can try on an article of clothing, but that's...just dumb.

On another note, though, I was able to buy a space parka today!! I love galaxy-themed stuff, so I immediately built a cute outfit around it. <3

Man, this gaaaame. I've been having a blast, and there's so much to do. I'm so happy that I've got a lot of time to play right now.

I just wanted to note a few things that I'm enjoying as a longtime fan (I've played every game since the first on GC, including Amiibo Festival, HHD, and Pocket Camp), and some things I'm not such a fan of. There have always been improvements to each iteration of AC, from replacing the screen shift of the first game to a smoothly-curving town navigation, to new shops, being able to wear accessories and different shoes, bigger house expansions, etc. This game is no different.

We'll get the cons out of the way first: (maybe spoilers?)

1. I love the crafting addition, but I feel like other major aspects of the game took a hit because of it, namely villager interaction and the music. (It also significantly slows down progress because, I'm assuming, they want it to feel like you're really developing an island, but that isn't a bad thing in my opinion.)

----> One of the unique features of this series has been the hourly music. 24 different hourly tracks, plus the rainy day versions. I've been playing since midnight Friday, have a museum, a shop, a bridge, 5 animal villagers, and the residential tent is going to be upgrading tomorrow. I've paid off my house 4 times as of this morning (1 with Miles, 3 with bells; and no, I haven't been playing nonstop). THE MUSIC HAS NOT CHANGED. It is literally the same song, all day, every single day. I know that it DOES change eventually, I think with Town Hall, but man, this was a ridiculous thing to modify. Hearing new hourly music was one of the things I was super excited about with this release, and that's been a major disappointment.

----> Animal villager interaction has also taken a hit because of the constraints on new neighbors moving in. Because they won't move in until you do a lot of other work, you're stuck talking to the same two for a few days, and they aren't even giving you any errands. This is another huge part of what makes Animal Crossing what it is, so I'm not sure why they felt the need to limit it so much (disregarding new animals moving in--just give me fetch quests, dammit!).

Honestly, that one large complaint is the only one that I have. (Tool durability is a little annoying, but it's not the end of the world. I just don't like that some tools are made with the iron nuggets, which are already infrequent, even with mystery islands.)

I think a simple list of the new things that I love will suffice: crafting, moving whole trees, different ways of navigating (pole vault/ladder, even though I'm pretty tired of it now), the more streamlined friend features (even though I'm not really a fan of playing with others when I play AC), the phone, the sheer number of options of clothing types for customization, THE DAMN MUSEUM IS EVEN MORE GORGEOUS THAN EVER, the Nook Miles (which is basically the CAT machine added to the updated New Leaf, but a million times better), and, one of my personal favorites: being able to customize your looks from the start, and any time after just by having the mirror.

I'm probably forgetting like 100 things, but still. I'm blown away by how beautiful and engrossing this game is, and I've put an exorbitant amount of time into this franchise.

...Also, perhaps a discussion on your thoughts about time travelling in Animal Crossing?

This is the first AC that my boyfriend has played, and he's been time-skipping all over the place, like days at a time, through April. It's a little infuriating, but I'm trying not to nag him about it, and we typically play in different rooms anyway. Plus, it's not up to me how someone else enjoys a game, but this one hurts my Animal Crossing-loving heart a bit. I've been trying to avoid seeing a lot of what he's got because I want to get there myself. I'm not totally above time-hopping, especially in the previous games when you couldn't do much during a day because the shop was upgrading, but it was really never for more than that. I skipped ahead one day myself yesterday to get my 5th villager because I was over waiting on more to talk to, but then I went back. It's the AC hipster in me being a hypocrite toward a newbie to the series. I called him disrespectful and he was just like, "I DON'T LIKE WAITING."