By this time tomorrow, June 9th 2023, it will have been exactly 10 years since the Western launch of one of Nintendo’s biggest titles for the 3DS family of systems and, for many, one of their favorite and most cherished games of all time. The previous game City Folk (or Let’s Go To The City in PAL regions) was criticized for its lack of innovation to the franchise, instead feeling more like a deluxe port of its predecessor Wild World than anything else. And although the game sold over 4 million copies, the future was left uncertain. It was the perfect time for the franchise… to turn over a new leaf.
Officially announced in 2011, [Animal Crossing New Leaf](https://youtu.be/895koqZvihI)’s reveal made waves for the surplus of new gameplay features that fans and newcomers alike can look forward to. The biggest paradigm shift of all is that your character was now the Mayor of the town, equipped with all the responsibilities and resources that come with the role. The game was delayed several times, but it finally came out in the West in June of 2013 to near universal acclaim. Praise was heaped onto New Leaf for its freshness for the franchise, expanded role as the town mayor, and an overwhelming amount of new content at pretty much every turn for players to dig into right out of the box. Many concepts and ideas that were planned but cut from previous entries were finally realized in New Leaf, such as the Dream Suite and Nintendo-themed items. It also introduced the world to Isabelle, your helpful hardworking dog secretary, so it gets an instant 10/10 right there.
But just when you thought this was story was over, nope! Nearly three years later, Nintendo announced that a massive singular free content update was coming to New Leaf, subtitled Welcome Amiibo. On top of the expected Amiibo support, this update stuffed the game with even more content and features right as players were just about to get tired of it. New villagers, two new minigames, a new campground site, Nintendo-themed villagers, streamlined interior customization, and so much more! This one update alone absolutely mops the floor with the barrage of “free updates” that first party Switch games receive nowadays, which more often just added back content that was already in the game to begin with.
All of this secured New Leaf’s place as the second best-selling entry in the franchise, with over 13 million copies sold worldwide as of this writing. Just for comparison, the Wii U itself sold 13.5 million units before being confined to the ash heap of Nintendo history. This game’s popularity endured well into the lifespan of its Switch successor New Horizons, with the new game drawing many unflattering comparisons to New Leaf for its relative lack of things to do and for its post-launch strategy. Heck, New Horizons even got an NPC named after an elderly woman who played New Leaf for over 800 hours. That’s how replayable it apparently is!
As for me personally, I’m not really an Animal Crossing guy. Not that I hate it, it’s just that life sims are a genre I’m not exactly built for, and the extra shenanigans with the real-time clock don’t help my case either. But seeing the discourse around New Horizons back when the game was new in 2020, I have to say: if any entry in the franchise sounded the most enticing for me to try out, it would absolutely be New Leaf. I managed to pick up the digital version of New Leaf Welcome Amiibo for only $13 bucks from the 3DS eShop long before that storefront closed down. And while it’s not exactly a high priority game for me at the moment, I’m sure it’ll bring hundreds of hours of joy and zen to me as I’m sure it did for countless others across the globe.
by Asad_Farooqui
36 Comments
100% the strongest entry in the franchise
Great game, I remember downloading the trailer from the eshop and watching it over and over. Really blew my mind when the character jumped in the water.
I loved the street pass features in this game. It was really cool to see what other people’s houses were liked that you passed by, and then being able to buy pretty much anything they had. I also felt it used the step counter coins well with the Nintendo items.
The always summer island was a great addition and became the go to place to make bells. Though I will say it discouraged me from ever really fishing at my own beach.
Loved the new mayor features… but man were they tedious to implement. First of all, what you could build was unlocked randomly based on villager suggestions, which meant me playing for over 300 hours and still not having all the options. And then the fact that you could only build one thing a day and it was very restrictive in where you could place all the stuff.
Obviously this aspect was improved substantially in New Horizons. But overall it was still neat in New Leaf.
ACNH is a watered down version of New Leaf. After playing ACNH I decided to buy new leaf and play it and was blown away. The conversations between the villagers and the fact that they are more fleshed out was just unreal. I fell in love with the goat jock villager Bam in my town on New Leaf. I still remember him asking me what girls look for in a guy thinking it was all about muscles lol. I loved him so much that I decided to buy his amiibo to have on my island on new horizons but he didn’t last very long. It was awful and reminded me why I never had jock villagers on my island. Constant talks about muscles and protein shakes and no character development. He didn’t last long.
ACNH should have been a New Leaf 2.0. Instead it was a Decorations Are Us game that was designed for those who wanted to terraform and craft and build their islands while the characters personalities got left behind. After playing new leaf second ACNH was so disappointing.
New leaf is head and shoulders a much better game and I hope that whenever Nintendo makes their next animal crossing game that they go back to their roots instead of just making another fancy decorating game
Best in the series by far. New Horizons lost the charm of what Animal Crossing is and had so much content removed for the sake of island decorating.
New Leaf is a Masterpiece for Animal Crossing players. Definitely the best version of the AC franchise.
I personally think it was the beginning of the end for Animal Crossing being a game for me. I started AC off with Wild World and quickly fell in love with it.
For me, the entire appeal of the game was just hanging out in this quirky, comfy village of animal people, getting to know them, and just living a relaxing life, day by day, taking things as they came. I love the wildly different personalities of the villagers and how they initially care very little about you, but you could eventually get closer to them the more you played and interacted with them.
With New Leaf, you became the mayor right at the start and got a lot more power and direct objectives you had to strive for. Everyone starts off by default liking you and kissing your feet because you’re the one running the show, which I really didn’t like. Having an actual goal makes the game less relaxing and ruins the whole vibe IMO.
This got exponentially worse in New Horizons where you get all the control to the point of being able to terraform the land and manually direct rivers. Like most people, NH was part of how I coped with being quarantined during the pandemic and a fun way to connect with friends I couldn’t meet face to face with for basically an entire year, but I almost guarantee you if 2020 was a normal year, I would have played NH for a month, gotten frustrated by the forced Main Character Syndrome, and put the game down.
Still the best entry in the series IMO.
I heavily prefer the social sim aspect over customization and decoration, so I like New Leaf and GC Animal Crossing way more than New Horizons.
Still better than New Horizons in many ways.
The definitive Animal Crossing to date.
New Horizons did bring some interesting ideas when it comes to making your island/village unique, but ending up making the villagers just walking props instead of quirky gamified tamagotchi brimming with soul.
Though my only complaint would be I do miss some of the eeriness of Population Growing and sass from certain villagers.
I loved it. Honestly, Wild World is my personal fave just because I feel like the villagers’ dialogue was a lot more fun and lent itself to a more immersive experience. But New Leaf is a close second.
It’s definitely the best Animal Crossing game for me, although Wild World comes a close second. Also, as someone already said, I miss the sassiness of your neighbors from the Game Cube version; but still, it was a fantastic game overall. I loved “building” the main street.
Still my favourite in the series. *New Horizons* has some good ideas that I hope future entries carry over, such as the crafting and terraforming, as well as nice quality of life improvements such as villagers only leaving if you agree they should (as someone who burns out on *Animal Crossing* and will return from time to time, seeing my faves leave is disheartening and makes me not want to pick it back up).
However, in terms of raw content, *New Leaf* is easily still the best one, especially the little shopping street north of your town with past residents shopping there.
What I’d like to see from the next *Animal Crossing* game, whenever that may be, is an experience closer to *New Leaf*, maybe upgrading the shopping street to be more like the city from *Let’s go to the City*, with the quality of life improvements and crafting features *New Horizons* did bring in. *New Leaf* with *New Horizons*’ island customisation options would be perfect. No more breakable gold tools!
I’m of the opinion that I actually prefer NH over it unlike a lot of people who talk on the internet. I put a lot of time in new leaf though, don’t get me wrong. It definitely was an of the time game for me, perfectly encapsulated to when I began playing it. I actually would argue that here is the start of the shift away from villagers that New Horizons gets a lot of complaints about. This is the first animal crossing I really started to notice villagers having the same dialogue. Not to pretend it isn’t more than NH of course. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to it just cause of the QoL of NH as well as the start of animal crossing games being so slow but it was a lot of fun when I played it. I do hope that the next one does go back to an established town while keeping a lot of the new things NH added.
Still the best animal crossing game by a landslide
ACNL fans try not to shit on ACNH challenge IMPOSSIBLE
ACNL is one of my favorite games of all time though. Absolute classic and literally life changing.
Animal Crossing got me through some of the roughest points in my life. ACNL is something I will always hold dear to my heart, along with many of my friends.
Amazing game. Best in the series at giving players the 15-minutes a day experience for long-term rewards.
One of my favourite games on the 3ds
New Leaf was my favorite entry in the series.
I had a unique experience with New Leaf: I played it as a citizen, not as the Mayor. It best captures the experiences of all the prior games:
It has a city from City Folk.
It has the island inspired by the Gamecube, real-life holidays, Resetti still exists (and can be optionally made permanent), cards featuring villagers you can get items from (remember the E-Reader?), and the train.
The only two shortcomings in my opinion are that the villagers aren’t ever as mean as in the original, and there aren’t NES games to unlock.
My second favorite after the original! It’s got the best mix of QOL updates while keeping most of the original elements intact. In saying that, it’s got the blame for why NH is kinda crap. When we became Mayor, the first thing I thought was “there’s no way we’re going back to any less control” and I was right.
I was seriously scared that it had been 10 years since New Horzion
I think it’s a good game, but (and I will definitely catch some heat for this) I prefer “New Horizons” because of the lack of requiring a stylus pen.
If I had to rank them, New Horizons is second, and New Leaf is first.
It’s still the very best game in the series, and the only one that’s been able to hold my attention for more than a year. (Four years in my current town and counting)!
ACNL > ACNH
The music alone elevates it several levels.
Man, I remember downloading this game at midnight and playing through it in the morning. Where does the time go?
Very good game, but I think it solidified Animal Crossing as being a game about designing your own town and grinding for fashion and furniture rather than a game about starting a new life in an unfamiliar place and sense of loneliness that comes with it.
New Horizons really doubled down hard on what New Leaf did and while I get the appeal, it’s not really what made me fall in love with Animal Crossing.
I loved slowly befriending the initially prickly animals that lived in my town, or the heartbreak of seeing one of my oldest neighbors moving away. Nowadays the villagers are so meaningless that people literally trade them online to get the ones they like the looks of the most.
A worthy evolution from wild world
Still the best one
Best in the series in terms of content. I still think the personality is just a BIT sanded off and the dialogue is bland, it’s nothing but “you’re the best mayor ever and my best friend”, and the towns are a bit small for my taste, but there is SO much to do and discover. And the music is phenomenal
I miss the Museum exhibits. My favorite feature of all time.
ACNH is great, but New Leaf did it much better. Streetpasses immortalizing random passer’s house in my game was also really cool. I really hope Nintendo brings back Streetpass.
Had way more content than ACNH meaning it is the best one imo
New Leaf was 100% the best one in the series
I still play it daily!