Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Review

It has been quite a number of years since I sunk any decent amount of time into an Animal Crossing game, the Gamecube release being that one, and while I did try to enjoy the Wii version, I barely hit 5 hours before life got busy, so with nearly 18 years between proper investments, is this one that is worthy of the bells or should you invest elsewhere?

The first thing that needs to be understood about Animal Crossing, as a series and not just this entry, is that the game is deliberately slow, removing the hustle and bustle that other games of the type offer up. This lack of rush means that you can just enjoy the game, regardless of anything else and that is perhaps the highest point of the series and New Horizons seems to embrace that far more than the original and previous titles ever did. As one of a few new residents of a formerly deserted island, you have almost complete control of the island, from where you set up your own domicile, to those of the other new residents, to the locations of new facilities as the island expands and as each decision can have impacts further down the line, you have to think hard on them. Once you have built the basics, the rest of the game is all about making the island and your game, all about yourself and how you want to play.

That is where the big selling point of the game comes in, there is no major goal, no big evil to be defeated, just whatever you want to do at that time. Now the game does set some objectives for you to complete, helping build a general store, collecting things for the museum and such, but they are all minor, while you can do some in a day or two, others, like the museum are long term targets and they just give you a constantly moving goal to aim for. Which is enough for now, how it players out nine months for now though, that is something to revisit, but without a larger goal, you might think that there is little to do in the game, but that is where you would be wrong. Like other games in the social-ish genre, your days will quickly establish a routine, from collecting sticks on the ground, shaking the trees for the fruit of your island and more, these actions will quickly become the norm and that is a good thing. Once you have started to collect materials, you can dive into the games new crafting system, which is something we will cover in a bit, the other side of collecting things is to sell them, in order to earn bells to pay back your loan, or trade them with other villagers, or even other players.

Given that the biggest addition to the series is the crafting, you might be expecting some grand system where you need to discover things as you play, if you are, then get ready for disappointment as the game refuses to allow you to craft your own things. Instead you are either gifted set plans through your in-game phone, or you can find the cards that have plans on them, from other villagers, in the shop or washed up on shore. While there is no free crafting, there is quite the large amount of things you can make, from the basics like an axe or shovel, to more complex like a bed or clothesline, and with multiple categories, expect there to be many things to unlock as time goes on. This crafting system does have a major drawback, though it is to be entirely expected and that is the tools that you create, shovels, axes and whatnot, all have a limit to how many times you can use them, before they break. The higher quality a tool is made to be, the longer it lasts, but it is something you need to always consider and while I like the mechanics of it, there are some drawbacks. Now while crafting is a major addition, the game still allows for planting of things, which is perfect to help your bells grow, with bells being the series official currency. Each tree that sprouts fruit will provide three pieces, that you can sell, trade or plant, depending on your choice and each of those can impact the world in other, more interesting ways.

Another big aspect now is that you can take to the skies and visit other deserted, or mostly deserted islands that surround your home island, these islands will be created each time you visit, so no two islands will be the same and once you leave it, it is gone for good. On these islands you can find different fruits and trees, flowers, bugs, fish and occasionally a potential new resident, which makes visiting them a worthy expedition. The catch is that in order to pay for a ticket to those islands, you need to use another currency, Nook Miles, which are rewarded to you for completing some of the most trivial tasks around. These tasks can range from chatting to three residents on the same day, to selling weeds in the store, even breaking of your tools counts towards one of them. With so many different tasks, and more showing up as you complete them, you are always earning Nook Miles, which is good, because apart from the travelling to other island, you can purchase some unique items with them as well.

This brings us to the downsides that I have with the game and while not massive, they are frustrating and they dampen the experience, in ways that honestly don’t need to be there. Perhaps the most complex one is the pace of the game, now I have no issue with it being tied to the real-world clock, it actually makes things more exciting there, but everything else in the game is just slow. Crafting requires you to approach a bench, press the interact button and then wait for the game to ask if you wanted to do that, then once you accept, load into it. The problem is that is the pace for almost everything and while there is no goal or big evil threatening you, the glacial pace that the game is moving along with is just pure frustration, then there are the odd choices. Almost any interaction with the other inhabitants of your world, require you to listen to the games unique speech and while that is entertaining, there is no way to silence it or making it, so it just completes, you have two options, normal and slightly faster.

The game does do a few things well, like letting you sell multiple items at once, though that makes it slightly more challenging to discover their value, but on the flip side, it does not let you construct multiple of anything at once. If you need two chairs, you would need to craft one, wait for the ‘I did it’ animation to play out, then accept the option to continue building and make another, and while you might only need to build one thing at a time more than multiple, given that there are literally some cases where you need more items, being able to set the amount you wanted and then just let them play out, would be amazing. But there are other frustrating issues, the one you will see the most, comes when you change tools, regardless of the method, either scrolling through, or via the purchasable ring, each time you change tools, your character will look at the screen, informing you that they did it. If you are lined up for a fishing shot and your rod breaks, getting a new one out, will have your character look at the screen and then all of a sudden, you are having to reline up your cast again, which can be tricky. There is a whole host of things that can be improved upon, but they are all minor, the core of the gameplay is solid and again, given that what you do and more importantly, when you decide to do it, is up to you, the peace of playing it shines through.

If there was a space, where perhaps the games shines the most, it is with its presentation, charming does not even begin to cover it, from the animal-folk, the islands and most importantly, your own character, there is a look to everything that makes it stand out. But it is not the large and important things on the screen that benefit from this level of attention to their look, the small bugs and fish, and of course the large ones as well, all shine, but above that are the little touches. Elements like clouds, which if you drop the camera down low enough, you can see in the sky above, but it is the shadows that they cast, that are the most impressive, mostly because they can provide height to the world. If a cloud is up high, the shadow lacks sharpness, indicating that it is looking definition between the sun hitting it and the shadow on the ground, if a cloud is low, the sharpness of it is much more defined. Even when the game rains on you and it will, the way that the rain hits the ground looks great, running through the centre of your island, before you upgrade the space of course, seeing the mud fling up as you run through it, is a nice touch.

The audio side is where things can get a little messy, the games music is again charming, but there are only a few tunes that you will hear a lot and the problem is, you can’t modulate the volume of them, without lowering down the overall game volume. The problem with the music is that, as you hear the same tunes in each location, or during each menu, they tend to grate on the nerves fairly quickly, whilst I would have preferred more options or variants on the themes, just being able to quieten them down would have helped as well. The other issue with the audio, is about the speech, like I said earlier, if it could be muted, or even turned down a bit, it wouldn’t be so bad, but as the game tends to deliver a lot of information with it joining the on screen text, it can quickly build up to be annoying.

Animal Crossing New Horizons was a welcome game for me, having not spent any significant time in any entry in the series in over 15 years, it was nice to get back into the fun of a game without a goal. While there is months of content ahead of me, I mean, I have yet to unlock terraforming; I really want to see how everything comes together, and while there are a number of things that I find frustrating, given that I can invest as much time, that I choose, makes each day spent on my island, something I really enjoy.