Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)

Borrowed a roommate's copy early in the pandemic. Never played an Animal Crossing game before in my life. Named my island "Queeftown" and got immediately addicted, collecting sticks and pulling weeds for hours on end.

Dropped it after two weeks and never touched it again. I'm scared of getting sucked back in. I only barely escaped. 4/5 would recommend for the next pandemic

Wanted to play a farming sim but missed the discounts for the story of seasons games so I went back to this. I haven't played the DLC content yet anyway, and I was surprised to discover that there is considerable gameplay there. There's so much to do and I don't know if I can finish it all.

Redesigning and trying to finish decorating my island as well. The fruit forest, Asian restaurant, Keukenhof, and residential zones are going to be replaced with multiple orchards, a community garden, scattered houses with bigger yard space, and other things I haven't decided on yet.

It's fun to be back, and I hope I get familiar again with who the other villagers are.

Full disclosure: I only played this game recently, not during the height of the pandemic when everyone and their children were playing it. I have not put countless hours into it.

This is the only AC game I have tried, so I have no idea how it compares to past games. I thought it was really entertaining and fun to have a list of tasks to complete as I customized my home and island, while exploring the island and making friends.

I did not actually play this game for very long mostly due to the fact that my backlog is fairly extensive and I didn't want to commit too much time to a game that doesn't really "end," if you will. From what I did play, it is very colorful and engaging. I loved the character designs, I enjoyed the "story" as you achieved specific goals, I loved the museum and trying to find new things to go in there, and I love the customization aspects. There isn't really anything I disliked about it, it's just not the right game for me right now, so I hope to return to it at a later time.

liked: every creature in this game is very cute. the flower hybridization concept intrigued me a lot. i can spend SO much money on clothes in this game because they look cute. the museum is stunning. it's nice having lots of control over how you design your island. timmy and tommy.

disliked: especially when first starting...you can only really play for an hour and then there's just nothing to do unless you time travel. some things user experience side are SO frustrating (everytime you buy something with nook miles, you can only buy one at a time and thus have to repeat the whole animation process over n over again. you can only buy one "outfit" worth of clothes at the store, so if i want to try on and buy two shirts i have to go through it twice. it goes on). Why is there tool durability in this game? i cannot water all the plants on my island without it breaking and it's frustrating, especially because some of the watering tool designs are cute and then they just break. only being able to play with friends if you have a nintendo online subscription is ridiculous considering how little you can actually do with multiplayer.

bottom line: i complained a lot but i am still very attached to my villagers. it was very addicting for the first few months but i wouldn't say it was a Must have experience, though i did have fun with many aspects of the game. they simply grew tiresome much faster than i would have liked. hopefully the next update changes things. i'd say this is 2.5-3 stars for me.

This is a fun game overall if you enjoy the genre. However, in the context of Animal crossing games (excluding pocket camp) I feel like this is probably the worst one.

The biggest improvements are:

the beauty of the game 2)the personalities of the new side characters and the fact that many existing ones are more fleshed out (fishing contests, flick, etc) The fact that you can switch between the spinning globe camera view adopted in Wide World thru New Leaf, and the original top down view. But, I have more complaints. These complaints do not make the game unenjoyable, but they leave me with a more hollow and less wholesome feeling when playing. (You may enjoy the game for different reasons, and if so, disregard.)

The character interactions seem to have been dumbed down or have less variety. The gameplay cycle has been chore-ified through crafting and the endless churn of nook miles. Customizing allows standard furniture to have multiple looks, but it seems that variety in unique items has gone down as a result. This makes your house and other villagers less a taste of the person. The seasonal events are basically preying on the compulsion that some players have to collect everything.

All of these things aren't necessarily bad of their own accord, but are negative in the context of Animal crossing to me. You could go into your own world and truly do whatever you want, without much of a guiding goal. The result was a truly unique experience in gaming, where you could sit fishing for hours for no other purpose than you enjoyed it.

If I had to summarize, it feels like Tom Nook's development into a capitalist mogul over the course of the series has intruded into the gameplay and design process in this one. (In some ways, the game feels like a version of the pocket camp app where you can walk around the entire world.)

The original gamecube entry had staying power because it was unlike anything ever before. The DS version had the same because you could now play on the go. I never really got stuck into the Wii game, but it felt like an expansion of the DS game, with increased customization through the city. New Leaf was the best game by far, the pinnacle of the progression up to that point.

New Horizons feels like the game is starting to head in a different direction. You might say it feels more like a New Leaf has been turned over than with the 3DS entry.

I still enjoy this game greatly, but I will be more hesitant of future releases if they stray further.

Because of my incredibly limited audience and my desire to foster my love of video games, I decided I would leave a written review for everything I play. But this one eludes me!

I don't think I have anything particularly interesting to say about this game! I'm sure there is essays to be written and even research to be done on Animal Crossing, especially now that it is a phenomenon rather than a cult classic, but I'm not sure I'm needed there.

What I will say is that besides this games delightful creativity and endlessly renewable possibility (something Nintendo rarely but splendidly does, moreso recently than in the past) it feels as if Animal Crossing has lost some of its peace to its sales.

It's been with the series since City Folk or even Wild World (I can't remember at the moment), but the constant updates, the exclusive content, the community sharing all seem to take away what first enamored me so with the game and found me and my siblings staying up late into the night to mosey around town, fish, and catch bugs for hours. Animal Crossing was not an escape, as it is so often labeled with this installment. It was a study of purpose. It let you live in an environment with little to no direction and little to no reward.

Sure, build up your house, collect those bells. I'll be over here arranging my gyroids and doing favors for Savannah, the zebra who lives next door. Now we have bland villagers and a stricter pacing that is at once a playground for the creative mind and a departure from the pastorale of those first few installments in the series, singular in their newness and charm.

I will probably keep coming back to this from time to time, but I am going to "call it" now because I went from playing EVERY day since it came out to not touching it in over a week and no real plans to return to it.

Still, I got a LOT of great slice-of-life gameplay. I had good times with friends online. I made my island exactly how I wanted it. (Though I only got 3 stars)

The annoying bits (the time to "travel", text repetition, DIY-ing multiple copies, limited storage space, etc.) are very annoying but the charms of the animals, the addiction of collecting, the beauty of the game and its buildings and biomes are all wonderful and I appreciate my time with it.

So honestly, given the time I've spent with it, the game probably earned 5 stars, but I think if it loses momentum, it could easily become a disappointment, so I'm going to give the review, as of now, four stars, with a potential for it to jump up if the game keeps getting a steady stream of content patched in.

But it's probably no surprise to a lot of people here that this game has taken on a particular life, especially with its extremely timely release. With people locked inside, trying to hide from the world, this game is exactly what people needed.

I've played both the original Animal Crossing (or at least the American original), and Animal Crossing New Leaf, and I got bored of both, and I didn't expect to pick this one up. But the previews tweaked my interest just enough that I went ahead and grabbed it on launch day on a fluke.

I've now put almost as many hours into it as I have into 3 playthroughs of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

The game just has a lot of little things to do, and while it's definitely not for the kind of people who need a constant stream of action, it's a great way to just find little tasks to do. The aesthetic is cute and I think a big part of why I love New Horizons over previous entries is because it finally has the looks to back up its heavily aesthetics-based gameplay.

Both the original and New Leaf always looked like a blocky/fuzzy mess, and just couldn't really pull off the same sensory appeal that New Horizons does. The music and sound design is wonderful, the visuals are great, and while the gameplay can be tedious in a lot of places, I often find a lot of enjoyment in the little things.

The game definitely needs more content, but with the recent 'Earth Day' update, I have hope we'll see a steady drip of content, which is exactly what I want from a game that wants to keep me playing every day for long enough to catch all these bugs and grab all these seasonal things.

So, as long as they keep adding things to keep the title alive, this will go from a four-star entry to a five-star in a few months time.

Early in Animal Crossing, your character plops down an ugly yellow tent on a barren island and says the following:

It seems comical. But here I am a month later, and I can't say that isn't true. My island has a real "Big Little Lies" aura (as I want it to have) including how I am going to uproot my unsuspecting neighbors who I don't like through my machinations. The once weed infested deserted rock is now a close knit neighborhood with beautiful scenery and beautiful people. I mean my neighbors are animals, but, baby, we're all just wild animals at heart.

The game has its fair share of frustrations. Options are guarded by repetitive dialogue. You can only craft one item at a time. Wonderful portions of the previous games are missing in the base game seemingly withheld for drippy drop releases. Visiting friend is unnecessarily complicated. Terraforming lacks the options of home decorating... The list goes on. But these are all minor issues. They are speed bumps on the road of doing whatever you want. These issues will not stop you from DOING WHATEVER YOU WANT.

I have been playing AC almost exclusively for the last month. I'm over one hundred hours into this wonderful game, and I imagine I'll put in a hundred more before I'm done. I haven't exhausted what I've wanted to do. Even writing this review feels like it is taking away my time I could spend in Georgetown. I want to get back there again soon. But before I leave, just know that Animal Crossing: New Horizons is worth your time and money. It's a charming game with funny friends, crisp visuals, relaxing/transcendent music... and you can do whatever you want.