A Relaxing Critique of Animal Crossing: New Horizons

If nothing else, what Nintendo decides to do with the inevitable Nintendo Switch 2 installment of Animal Crossing should be... well, "interesting", if only because I'm curious to see if they'll actually take into consideration people's criticisms of New Horizon, or if they'll dip back into what Animal Crossing games used to be like in contrast to what appears to be the direction they want to go with for the series.

Edit: Mr. Resetti was my favorite character in Animal Crossing, and it sucks Nintendo has downplayed him over the years.

gotta love the still game intro

WHEREEE in scotland are you from???? i'm scottish too but your accent is driving me mad in the sense that i can't for the life of me figure out where you're from.

I never noticed that this game removed errands.

The talk about controls reminds me, I prefer Happy Home Designer over Happy Home Paradise because the former's controls are much easier to use. Why don't many Switch games let you use the touch screen in handheld mode? And why can you search for items in the catalogue in New Horizons, but you can't while in furniture-placing mode?

I have a abandoned my poor new leaf town for about three or four months, im frankly terrified to go back and see which of my villagers are gone. At least my precious little Beau is still there, I ordered an amiibo card a while back and hes permanently on my island.

I just recently played NH and it is so weird being able to trade villagers as if they are nothing but mere livestock

Unrelated but I love your accent!

what's going on with those feline Rs

Oh, cool! You're Scottish. [Unsubscribe]

Small detail but I think Alli the Alligator is such a cutie 🤧

ACNL is better tbh.

I played it a lot for like 3 months, put it down for 2 years and now I’m enjoying it more than I did the first time

I wished so hard for terraforming beeing in godmode and i want to build bridges over chasms. Why can i only build them over water ?!

listening to this til i sleep

That reference to the communism joke was inevitable. This man is bitterly sarcastic for more than seven hours, but he's totally sincere when it comes to calling for a communist revolution is Pokemon. Although, there have been multiple historical Pokemon wars, so, who knows?

"dunno" feels like a genuine prewritten joke. saying you "dunno" where youre going and it turns out thats exactly the name of where you go is magical to happen on complete accident

I've had this game for almost a year now, and I definitely see what everyone's saying about it. I get super annoyed super easily over the villagers constantly repeating their dialogue, not being able to move the museum, having the same things happen every day, villagers being so bland and whatnot, and the TILE ISSUES...

It's really unfortunate, because I finally got the game after so long, and I'm already burnt out on it. And I'm not even through my first year. I'm not deleting my island, and I definitely don't want to abandon it, but man I just don't have nearly as much adoration for it as I used to.

The only thing that's really saving my gameplay right now is a little story I'm writing about two of my villagers. I kinda ship them together (no I totally do), and I thought it'd be cute to write stuff about them. I've only got one chapter written for the fic so far, but it's kinda keeping that flame alive, which is super nice.

I would love to do this with my other villagers too, see where they go within my imagination, maybe add in stuff from "Pocket Camp" since I just got that.

The music thing... I think is also that NH's soundtrack is in general more samey than previous iterations - I think it has too heavy of a leitmotif usage perhaps. With the older games i'd get excited to hear the song change at the hour b/c it was often a banger and the late night songs were whimsical and felt like secrets... But in NH i could NOT tell you what songs played at what hours.

Long shot, I know, but what’s the show in the first 20 seconds?

You getting booted from the UK AC forum for being Scottish made me giggle a little out of the stupidity of whoever banned you. Don't they know that Scotland is in the UK 🤦‍♀

I'm sure you get this a lot but your accent is badass

"I just wish it didn't feel like a chore"

Summed up my feelings toward the whole franchise beautifully there

I feel there are a lot of ways to easily integrate obsolete old features into the game seamlessly. For instance, with K.K. visitng, maybe he gives you a special version of the music, like it's signed or it's in a different format than CDs. That would warrant wanting to collect them for the aesthetic alone.

I consider the flowers to be a bad change, because they've basically filled the role of weeds. Weeds are actually rewarding to collect because they're easily to farm, can stack in very large piles of 99, make some of the more interesting items, and are easy to remove. Flowers.. . . Holy shit.

Let me start with my experience of popping back to a Beautiful Town in New Leaf after about 5 years. Flowers were everywhere, and it took HOURS to get rid of just a chunk of them.

Now move to New Horizons, where Flowers have to be dug up to be removed from the ground, cost shovel dueability, can't stack, and make traversal more difficult as you're likely to have to fill in those holes to walk. It took. LONGER to remove flowers from a fourth of my island than it did to remove them from my ENTIRE New Leaf town.

I also highly disagree woth the drip feed updates, as you cannot play holidays until that annual date passes, and knowing Nintendo's habits of shutting down old shops and WiFi systems, it means that eventually the game will be completely devoid of holidays and new content. They've already abandoned the thought of new content, and the game's only been out for three years.

idk how but this vid made me want to play ACNH again

It's so strange how Nintendo is known for awful quality of life while also being known for amazing polish. Like a huge part of their development cycle is bug testing, but NOT applying feedback from playtests??

Replaying New Leaf made me go back to this video since the differences are night and day at least in terms of the fictional realism you highlighted. Sure NL was a bit of a start to some of the simplicity and a shift in power dynamics, but it was at least grounded and had some variety in villager dialogue (though WW definitely has the best dialogue out of all the entries), plus a lot more character. Being the mayor allowed you to do more than in previous games, but there were enough restrictions to the point where it felt like you were still part of the world. You couldn’t control your villagers, if the “ugly” ones moved in, or reshape your town, you just lived life while occasionally adding in a new building or decoration. Not to mention the loads of content that do help with that illusion of life. New Horizons feels more like the sequel to Happy Home Designer disguised as a mainline entry than an actual normal AC game which only hurts it.

I’m glad a video like this exists that helps more clearly details what the problems are since they definitely go beyond just the usual complaints.

This is the game that couldnt hold my attention span. And its a game that 'should' hold it, a game that everyone said 'held them over quarantine' and that they've put way to many hours into it. I just feel like i cant get on the same wavelenght as these people.

Two years on and I still cackle at "Allie, N O!"

Great video but I disagree a little on the Nook Miles tasks; you get the x2 bonus for the first tasks you do in the day. Many of these tasks are things you're gonna do anyways, digging up fossils, collecting resources, catching bugs, and fishing. At the same time though they replenish so that the player can keep accumulating the nook miles if they want to, if they are looking to make a certain amount. So I don't think that systen is designed to "trick" players into keep playing, I believe its in there like that for the players who want to accumulate more and faster.

great video to watch whilst playing, thanks shay 👍

every video i've watched from shay has him using the word "inconspicuous" to mean something different to what i thought that word meant. it's a habit i keep noticing because it's so... well i'm not sure what word to describe it.

While K.K. Slider may seem useless/obselete in the early game, he becomes much more useful in the late game as you're trying to complete your music collection. Being able to request a specific song from him once a week is huge when you're only missing a handful of songs that just never seem to show up in the shop.

I love his accent 💖

for me, the fossil record doesn't break immersion itself, i find it cute and silly! but it brings to mind something else that bothers me about the game
...they should make bug, amphibian and fish villagers! villagers already talk about talking to bugs in their walls, so why not have that...actually be a thing?

This video and all its critiques/compliments/analysis actually makes me want to open the game again (I haven't played since 2020 aside from the occasional clothing designing)... very impactful vid! Love your voice btw

Ur voice is nice

I’m the most powerful animal crossing player because my favourite villager is considered not very dreamie or desirable

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