On March 20, 2020, one of the most anticipated AAA titles of the generation finally released… oh and [Animal Crossing](https://youtu.be/Ie4WZCLbtVs) came out that same day too I think. Bad jokes aside, New Horizons was a real lightning-in-a-bottle moment for the Nintendo Switch. In a time when everyone was miserable and stuck in their homes all day, New Horizons came out at just the perfect moment to help people cope with not being able to go outside and socialize for the foreseeable future.
And me personally… I just watched it unfold from the sidelines. I’m not an Animal Crossing guy, mainly due to the shenanigans with the real time clock. It’s just not the kind of life sim for me given my IRL schedule. I mainly stuck to Xenoblade Definitive Edition and Fire Emblem Three Houses for my pandemic coping sessions. But I have heard Animal Crossing fans complain about several key things in this game. Namely the durability on your tools, bland villager dialogue, cumbersome menuing, and limited online options.
This game was also a victim of the “free updates” model that Nintendo loves doing with their multiplayer games. Wherein they put out a new entry for full price that’s considered half-baked compared to previous installments, and hope players keep playing long enough to download the free content updates whenever Nintendo decides to finally put them out. Remember Froggy Chairs? Nintendo eventually did.
Thankfully the free updates, infrequent as they were, did apparently add enough substantial content back into the game to satisfy longtime fans. All of this culminated in the Happy Home Paradise DLC in October 2021, which is also available for NSO Expansion Pack subscribers as well. I’m sure this was a magical game for a whole lot of people, and no one should take those memories away from you. But now that the world has returned to some semblance of normalcy, I thought it’d be a good time to look back at this game a bit more critically.
by Asad_Farooqui
45 Comments
Just when the game started getting good and the level of content was starting to catch up to New Leaf they dropped supporting it and it’s been such a bummer. I hope one day they randomly drop a new, unexpected update years later like they did for New Leaf
It’s a bummer that such a popular title got so little support after launching. Especially considering how long the time between AC launches are.
I had fun with the game and played it for longer than most of my friends did. I’ve got about 350 hours in it, so I definitely gave it a fair shake, but I agree with a lot of the criticism I’ve heard. Given how much time and enjoyment I got out of it I would by no means say I wasted my money, but it is very frustrating to think back to New Leaf and realize how much better that game was than New Horizons.
New Horizons, like many Switch-era Nintendo games, has a ton a frustrating problems that seem like they could be fixed with just some small tweaks. Stuff like not being able to craft more than one thing at a time. It has a lot of good concepts, but the execution lacks the polish and quality that I expect from Nintendo. New Horizons was fine, and a great pandemic game, but that’s about it. I never bought the DLC and don’t see myself going back to it.
I really wanted to like it, but after getting to the terraforming I was like “wait this is the whole game?!”
It’s definitely my most played Animal Crossing game (800+ hours) but I don’t know if I can call it my favorite.
It’s still a really great game but there are so many things missing from the game and things they could have added to make it even better.
I’m extremely disappointed that they decided to only do Mario items. I always had so much fun decorating Nintendo themed rooms and houses around all the Nintendo items they had in the other games.
ALL those copies sold and the best they could come up with was that half-assed decorating dlc?
Meanwhile, Splatoon (which won’t see a third of the numbers AC does) sees all kinds of new content.
New Leaf was content rich.
New Horizons was a cash grab.
I don’t like when companies release a unfinished game, then releases a bunch up “updates” with “exciting new content” that’s just stuff that should have been there since the beginning, and on top of that, for no good reason at all, decide to nerf the money making in the game just because.
My heart is still broken and forever will be broken when THAT DAY they released “last major update”…
Unfortunately disappointing. I can see myself going back to every other animal crossing game, but not New Horizons. I’ve never been big on the decorating aspect of animal crossing but ultimately that’s all there was to this game. I want to be able to enjoy living in my town after I decorate it. But it’s just… decorate it, take your cute pictures for social media, and that’s it.
I liked some of the new features but there was some lacking feeling compared to New Leaf, a damn shame. I think I spent way more time in NL.
I think my biggest annoyance with the game is the menus
”oh, you want to leave?”
yes
”you want to go back to your island?”
I JUST SAID THAT
​
still played that game constanly though, and still do from time to time
Surprised by the negativity. I had the opposite reaction: I absolutely loved it, and my wife and I still return to it from time to time.
My wife and I got married right before the pandemic, at which time we moved to a new city where we didn’t know anyone. Then everything shut down. Neither of us had every played an Animal Crossing game before, and when I explained the premise to her she sort of scoffed, “the whole game is just paying off debt? I have to do that in real life!”
But we got it, and we really loved it. It was an extremely pleasant and calming way for us to play a game together in a very strange time. We would sometimes play together, and when we played separately we would see what the other was building and help out, or give each other gifts or messages. And we were able to make some really elaborate stuff, like restaurants and movie theaters and a volley ball court, a complete farm and orchard, and a castle and a Mario course. We don’t play so much now, but we do revisit the island from time to time to take a look at what we built together.
All in all it was a very calming and pleasant island decorating game. We probably won’t play another animal crossing game–it was very much a COVID thing for us. I think I’d change my mind if they added some sort of physics engine, that would allow you to actually use the things you place. But that’s not really likely, but that’s ok. That’s not what ACNH is, and we really enjoyed it.
I wish they had supported it better, I’m still kinda pissed about how small Nook’s shop ends up. That said, I had a fun time decorating my island and turning it into a communist dystopia. IIRC decorating your island was a new feature of ACNH so while it’s disappointing that the series stepped back in some ways I think it made some great new changes. Though island lag is a big headache that I really would have liked them to address…
It was a great thing to bond with people over during the beginning of COVID, but it didn’t hold my attention much once I hit the “ok now just make your island pretty” stage.
Forever tied together with Tiger King as “stay home and try not to think about the end of humanity” entertainment
it’s a great building/designing game but as an ANIMAL CROSSING game, it felt very weak. what i liked about new leaf was how much i could talk with villagers and hear new things, even if i go back to it now. in new horizons they kinda just babble the same few lines over and over
The emphasis on home design was a huge misstep. Game is fuckin soulless. That said, I put hundreds of hours into it and got more than my money’s worth, so, uh, give it a 9/10.
Should’ve kept supporting it
I was seriously hyped for this game and enjoyed it enough for a while, but I only was able to put in a few months worth of play before it really started to lose me. It may be due to me getting older and maybe my interest in the series is declining, but I really found this one to be the least engaging game in the series. I found everything to be super homogenized and flat – the villagers had very little personality, there was next to no progression compared to previous titles, and overall the experience felt a little lifeless. I’ve felt that the direction of the series has made great strides in QoL improvements, but is missing the charm of the older games in favor of bland, cardboard “niceness”
The whole game is centered around designing your island, yet they give you hardly any space and limit you to only one island per console.
I love every Animal Crossing game, and New Horizons is no exception. I have recently picked it up again and I have close to 900 hours put in. … But I still prefer New Leaf. This game raked in SO much money and had people buying second switches just for them to do one big update, a DLC of MORE designing, and then drop it completely.
They made a huge mistake by stopping with the updates. I have had a lot of fun decorating my island, but it feels like decoration is the only big selling point of this game.
I miss the island games from New Leaf!! It made multiplayer so much more fun. I try to still play with friends but there is not much to do besides walk around each other’s island and then just go home. Give me back my island games!
I also wish they would add in more villager dialogue and give options for customizing the town square, and maybe even the stores.
Next to Pokémon, Animal Crossing is my favorite series. It just baffles me that the 2nd best selling video game on the Nintendo Switch and the 14th best selling game in history received so little QOL updates. Yes, the 2.0 update was nice but all the other updates before that had been adding things that should have been in the main game to start with.
It’s really disappointing. Especially considering that people have purchased multiple consoles to have second islands since you’re limited to one island per console.
If it didn’t come out when it did (right at the start of the pandemic) I wouldn’t have played it half as much as I did. Once I dropped it I haven’t been able to get back into it
Personally I think it’s an OKAY game.
There are definitely better animal crossing titles, it definitely needs some work, however some of the ideas like being able to place furniture outside and having more than one head piece should stick in the series and it’s next game (*whenever that is*)
I just wish there was more villager dialogue, it was fun and interesting speaking to my animal friends in new leaf. Now it’s so bland and lackluster of personality I don’t even want to speak to them.
Don’t even get me started on how changed the holidays are. I loved being able to figure out what villager was afraid of what thing for Halloween and getting prizes if I have Jack a lollipop. I also loved speaking to them for toy day and seeing what they asked for jingle. Now it’s just for DIY products which don’t get me wrong wasn’t a bad idea for the series it was the execution that just didn’t stick with me.
Disappointing considering we only really got one new feature that was actually new. New Leaf is just better even with the new additions Horizons gave.
Idk, for me the older animal crossings were kind of a life simulator game. Really enjoyed going in, talking to npcs, attending at events and stuff.
This game feels more like a minecraft building game, i mean its cool that you can customize your whole island, but for me the building aspect is too prominent and the main reason to play this game. If you aren’t a fan of terraforming like me i guess, the game just kinda gets boring fast.
I played a lot of it just because I’m a huge AC fan, but it felt pretty soulless after awhile. I enjoyed new leaf more.
i am probably in the minority here, but i liked animal crossing better when you had less control over the island. it made it feel more realistic as a slow game / life simulator, and less like a game about designing things. not that there’s anything wrong with that kind of game, but i’m not that interested in that kind of play.
My family and I certainly dropped an insane number of hours into this game, especially early in the pandemic. We definitely got more than $40 worth of value out of it.
The new things added in New Horizons were excellent, but the villager interactions feel very hollow and repetitive (compared to previous games) and it was missing a lot of the stuff from New Leaf at launch. Some of that did get added later in updates, but I burnt out on New Horizons after playing it every day straight for two months after launch (until Xenoblade DE came out and became my life for another two months). I returned to the game a couple years later and played through to the credits again to try to get back into the game, but I got burnt out much quicker with it.
Overall, I got my money’s worth out of it and enjoyed it a lot, but I’m probably not going to return to it ever again
I’ve played every AC since the Gamecube and have definitely dumped more hours into NH than any other AC game. I have many of the same complaints as others (mostly wishing that multiplayer was better and that the villagers had more range in their personalities), but it’s hard to complain about a game that I’ve happily spent this much time with.
It helps that my wife and I play together, so we always have some new project we’re working on together in game. Currently trying to hunt down the last 3 or 4 museum items (the art takes so long… even with Red on Harv’s island) and finishing a complete revamp of our island inspired by the place we live. 🙂
I was disappointed there weren’t many upgrades to the island buildings (specifically the store) but I enjoyed my time with it! Filled out all the fossils and fish in the museum.
A bit light on content, but I played it for like 200 hours. Can’t ask for much more tbh.
I’m still playing and enjoying it plenty, it’s a great game to play often, and I’ve really been having fun with the DLC. I played it a lot in the early part of the covid era (just like everyone else) and have chilled out since then, but its nature makes it an easy game to return to
Super fun at the start but after a few months it’s just the same 5 things over and over, the DLC was cool but honestly not enough to last.
Def needed more content, mechanics, and areas.
I hadn’t played the game in nearly 2 years so I decided to play it again, and I got bored within 30 minutes. I never really got bored of new leaf but it really feels like there’s no content in this game beyond sandbox stuff
New Leaf is still the best Animal Crossing game. It has more items, better villager writing, and much better holidays.
The series has turned from a focus on life sim towards a virtual doll house.
It’s not bad, but I wish they focused more on the life sim aspect.
There’s some serious QOL issues with the game. Not to mention a lack of content from previous games. The 2.0 version of the game is better, but definitely lacking on the whole.
And, the fact that you can’t help your friends actually build on their island completely diminishes the product since that’s the entire direction they took with the game.
I played the turnip stock market, used to visit other peoples islands to sell – kept an eye on the prices and over the course of about a month, I had over 10 million bells.
So I didn’t need money anymore. So that took away all the fun of rare fruit picking for cash or anything really. There really was nothing to do.
Honestly, it’s been a major disappointment. Biggest AC disappointment for me, and yes I mean that I enjoyed City Folk more than I did NH. There’s a lot to love about NH, but it was released unfinished, cut much of the life sim, and just got way more repetitive than NL ever was. Fuck, I believe they made terraforming time consuming to pad things out. If they just made terraforming a simple blueprint design you went over at town hall and added many of the features from NL it would’ve lasted just as long and been the best AC around.
It kept me busy, and was fun way to connect with friends while dealing with the pandemic.
I played it every day for two years. the Island Home Designer expansion was fantastic and kept me busy for days.
But…
There was no… personality. The residents of my island were so incredibly bland. I would have loved some story moments, or tangible progression other than “you’ve talked to me enough times to earn my self-portrait.” I wanted my residents to form bonds beyond fetch quests I had to perform. I wanted characters to have backstory, even a little bit. But every personality group shared the same lines, jokes, complaints… no one felt unique…
I would have loved more shops and buildings and restaurants to flesh out my island with. I would have loved if the coffee shop wasn’t in the museum, or if the museum was spread out into multiple buildings. It would have been cool to set up my OWN shop, or to have a part-time job where I’d go and have a ‘story’ event. But no. It was a lot of chopping trees, planting flowers, fishing for an octopus because Bubbles asked for one.
Multiplayer was pointless most of the time. Friends came over and… well, we chatted on discord while collecting stars. Where were the mini games? Why couldn’t we get cool fetch quests specific to hanging out with a friend? Why couldn’t we go to mystery islands together?
Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed AC immensely. I played it for a LONG time. But for a game that made absolute bank, you’d think they’d have given us more content? Created a richer world for us to explore? The game is still selling thousands each day… why not give the old players a reason to come back and engage with the new players?
I have a lot of mixed feelings on it, I think it is a good game, and I’m very happy with a lot of the new features in it, but I also feel like it has a lot of shortcomings holding it back from being truly great.
My pros:
* Character customization is the best it’s been in the entire series. There are tons of options for things like your hair and eyes, even the wardrobe options are very expansive.
* Outdoor customization is a great addition, placing items outdoors feels so natural, and the island designer tools especially help with making your island pop. With how many things I’ve built on my island, I feel like I can never go back to the older games, where my villages are taken up by fruit trees and benches.
* DIY projects are very versatile, and I love making basic decorative furniture to put all over my island.
* Happy Home Paradise is a great add-on, I never got to play Happy Home Designer on 3DS, so I was very happy to see it come to New Horizons. Designing getaway homes is very chill, and is a very fun showcase for how to make your home on your island look even better. I especially like that it gives you the option to even customize your islander’s homes, because a lot of the homes on my island really needed a facelift.
* Presentation wise, this is the best Animal Crossing game to date. The colours are very vibrant, the UI is very nice and easy to navigate, the soundtrack is great, and I love all the little details thrown in, like wind effects.
My cons:
* My biggest problem is that the content feels spread very thin, which I feel can be fixed by just add more items and customization options, and reducing time limits on things you can do on your island. Terraforming your island can takes hours of time, and the whole process of moving houses/buildings/bridges/slopes takes multiple days, unless you’re willing to time travel. DIY projects are good for a lot of things, but I wish there were further expansions to the Nook Store, or an expansion to the online marketplace for buying items, furniture, and clothing. DIY can only get you so far, and when you’re sitting on a lot of Bells, you kind of wish after a while that you could just hop onto a marketplace and buy something that you want.
* Interacting with your villagers feels incredibly hollow once you build a rapport with them, which is very evident by how much repeating dialogue there is. I’ve had people who were really into New Leaf tell me that this was a bit of an issue in that game too, but in my experience with the other games, I’ve never experienced it at this level. I’ve had several jock type villagers on my island before, and each of them have told me that they have names for their ab muscles at least 10 separate times each.
* Tool durability feels a lot like BOTW’s weapon durability, which is a concept that makes sense when you’re carrying tools made of sticks and stones, but overstays its welcome when you have a gold tool break after 100 uses. I feel like once you get a gold tool, it should just never break again.
* This game is a nightmare for completionists, especially in the case of DIY recipes and Redd’s art pieces – the fact that you can get duplicates of both of these things just becomes very frustrating after a while. There’s so many DIY recipes to get, and it becomes unenjoyable when you can go days or even weeks without getting a new recipe. It’s especially annoying when Redd finally shows up at your island, and has none of the art pieces you need for your collection. Unless you’re willing to time travel back and forth for *hours* at a time, it can take you several years to collect the art pieces and recipes *alone.*
I feel like most of these would be pretty minor issues for most games, but with how much the game wants you to come back and replay it, those minor problems start to snowball, and just make you wish the game were just a little better. I don’t want to sound too harsh on the game though, I think the best thing I can say about it is that it served as a very great distraction during the initial wave of the pandemic. I (and I’m sure many others) are thankful that it came out when it did, the game was a very good way to just chill and take my mind off of things. I really wish that it got more content though, it’s one of the highest selling games on the Switch, and I feel like the amount of content should reflect that. If I had to give it a number score, I’d probably give it a 7/10.
It’s got the best customization in the series, but most other things it’s the worst in.
There’s less to do and less to see.
Compare it to New Leaf. That game had more fruit, including perfect fruit, minigames that could be played in multiplayer, (island tours) shop upgrades, more than two shops, Club LOL, minigames playable on the 3DS and Wii U furniture items, fortune cookies and more Nintendo-themed items than just Mario, the toy hammer, the megaphone, Katie, Copper, Booker, Blanca, Dr. Shrunk, Phineas, and actually cool triangle shades.
It still is no candle holder to Wild World
Terraforming – A+
The rest of the game – C
The NPC system – F
Overall I spent 350 hrs in the game so I guess it was above average, but I’m still disappointed with how underwhelming the NPCs are in the game. How come Stardew valley has entire storylines for every character, but AC can only manage to give theirs 4 sentences? The game felt like a colorful graveyard.