Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review

From the start, it was clear that New Horizons was not going to be a typical, traditional Animal Crossing game. The old routine of moving into a town already populated by 5-6 animal villagers (and working at Tom Nook’s shop) has been thrown overboard, in favor of starting from scratch on a deserted island. Just two villagers start out with you, along with the Nooks.

Another big change is the addition of crafting–something that first appeared in Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival. You gather materials such as sticks and rocks from around the island, then take them to your workbench and get building. From tools, to furniture, to medicine for that ugly wasp sting on your face, crafting is the way to get ahead. Crafting can be a life-saver early on in the game.

But crafting has its downsides as well. To be ready to craft what you need, you’re going to have to lug around a bunch of materials on a regular basis. Tree branches, rocks, clay, three types of wood, iron nuggets, and more.

Don’t Be a Tool

But the biggest flaw with crafting, by far, is the tool system. Tools break. Frequently. And not just the “flimsy” tools you make at the beginning. Regular tools also break…and that’s not all. Even hard-to-obtain golden tools, which were indestructible in previous games, now break as well! 👿

To the person or people at Nintendo that decided that golden tools should be breakable: You deserve to fall into a pitfall every time any player in the world breaks a tool. You deserve to get stung by wasps every time you walk near a tree. And when you reach for your bottle of medicine, it should break in your hands. You deserve to live in a town populated by 10 Jambettes, each with the personality of a jilted GameCube villager who is angry that you didn't buy their fruit.

It Gets Better

But despite the tool situation, New Horizons is actually loaded with helpful improvements (large and small) that streamline the way you play. Bells, crafting materials, and many other items, automatically stack in your pockets–saving space and time. Pocket space has increased from 16 in New Leaf to a maximum of 40 here. You can change your appearance at any time without having to unlock a salon and pay thousands of bells.

You can order from your catalog even when the shop is closed. And item storage is astronomically larger than ever before. Item customizations take mere seconds instead of 30 minutes (as in New Leaf), and you don’t need to do it during store hours either. New Horizons has dramatically streamlined many daily activities.

NookPhone

Early on, Tom Nook gives you his own brand of smartphone: a NookPhone. And despite what you may have heard about Tom Nook, he is a generous guy. By reaching certain goals, you can earn Nook Miles–a type of currency you can use to purchase items and even pay off your first debt.

You can earn Nook Miles by doing simple things…and things you would do anyway. Catch a fish, take a picture, water your flowers, plant a tree. Each time you meet a goal, your phone gets a notification and you score some easy miles. Some are long-term goals, but you eventually unlock short-term Nook Miles+ goals as well.

The daily Nook Miles+ goals work like the initiatives in New Leaf, except that when you complete one, it’s instantly replaced with another goal. So there’s always something to do. This reward system can be fun, and even a bit addicting in itself.

Besides paying off your first mortgage, Nook Miles can also be redeemed for a number of outdoor furniture items (much like the PWPs in New Leaf). That includes streetlights, benches, playground equipment, fountains, lighthouses, and much more. But perhaps more importantly, Nook Miles can also be used to visit “mystery islands,” where you can stock up on needed materials and even find potential new villagers.

You can use the NookPhone to access your island map, create custom designs, take in-game screenshots, view a chat log in multiplayer mode, and view your Critterpedia–which shows information stats about each fish, bug, and sea creature you’ve caught (and whether or not they’ve been donated to the museum).

Reshaping Your Island

The most significant addition to the series is the ability to completely decorate, and even transform, the terrain of your island. New Leaf allowed players to put large public works projects (PWPs) outdoors, but New Horizons has taken that concept and ran with it. There are a wide variety of PWP-style objects to place in town, but you can also put regular furniture outdoors for the first time ever.

Outdoor furniture and the new island designer app combine to allow incredible freedom and depth when it comes to decorating your island. You can add waterfalls, reshape rivers, put in a pond, make cliffs large or small, install ramps, erect fences, set up ladders or vines for climbing, push and pull furniture in half-space increments, and customize your island just the way you want it. It’s light years beyond the fussy (and now-archaic) public works project system in New Leaf.

Online Play

One area where the game is a bit lacking is online play. True, you can play with more people than ever before (eight players vs. four in previous games), but there’s less to do. There are no multiplayer mini-game “tours” like New Leaf had, and even the simple fun of dancing at a club is nowhere to be found.

You can always set a timer and have a competition to catch fish or bugs. Or just hang out and chat with villagers (or other players). For more variety, players often have to resort to homemade games like sumo, or custom races and obstacle courses.

Fortunately, the 2.0 update added a couple of other things you can do online: You can now drink coffee together and participate in group stretching.

Dying-logue

Another downside of the game is the continuing dumbing-down of the villager dialogue. Villagers often express excitement that they saw me hitting rocks or digging up fossils the day before. Well, those are normal parts of everyday gameplay, so of course I did those things! And then there are the conversations where a villager gleefully informs me that he is sitting down.

Nintendo goes out of its way to make sure the dialogue doesn’t offend or upset anyone. So the rudeness of older games obviously isn’t present in New Horizons. But that doesn’t mean villagers should have to be complete pushovers, either.

When you force a resident to move their house, that would be an ideal situation for some attitude or snark. Couldn’t they express some frustration or admit being annoyed by the inconvenience, as any real person would? Instead, they gleefully look forward to the “new adventure.”

Granted, I have seen some new, better dialogue as time has gone on (likely added via updates). But still, nothing tops the early games in the series for dialogue (namely the GameCube game and Wild World).

Cuteness & Charm

New Horizons has no shortage of cute touches. Villagers will dust furniture in their homes, run around and play outdoors, use a broom to sweep the sidewalk, watch and follow bugs, eat donuts and ice cream bars, exercise, and even sing songs. They don’t just walk around like zombies all the time; they can actually do things. And quite often, they’re adorable.

Granted, they won’t actually catch that bug they’re chasing (though they may swing and miss). But villagers are far more interesting to observe than in previous games.

Better Late than Never

New Horizons initially launched without many previous features and series staples, including works of art, the Roost café, gyroids, Katrina’s fortunes, Kapp’n’s boat ride, and the dreaming and swimming from New Leaf. The game was fun, but it definitely felt incomplete. Fortunately, Nintendo re-added those features via updates after-the-fact.

A number of new features were also added in the 2.0 update. Among them are vegetable farming, cooking, permanent ladders (and vines) you can place on cliffs, storage sheds (to access your storage outdoors), and a new shopping district on Harv’s Island that features a variety of vendors.

Even though the 2.0 update didn’t bring back everything I wanted, it was a very significant update. It’s considerably larger than the Welcome Amiibo update that New Leaf got. At last, New Horizons finally feels like a complete game.

Analogy Crossing: Link to the… Zelda?

New Horizons is the Breath of the Wild of the Animal Crossing series. It does things differently, it annoys you with breaking tools (like the breaking weapons in BOTW), it incorporated crafting (much like cooking in BOTW), and it takes a risk by leaving out some traditional aspects of the series and opting for a fresh approach. But that new approach, while certainly not perfect, largely works.

You feel more involved when you’re starting your island from scratch. New villagers won’t show up early in the game until you’ve accumulated the supplies needed for the house plot, and even furnished the home with indoor and outdoor furniture. The first player may not be called a mayor, but make no mistake: You are the one calling the shots.

Putting the “New” in New Horizons

All the changes result in a game that feels familiar, and yet, new. It’s a breath of fresh air that the series needed. As great as New Leaf was (and still is), the formula was getting a bit stale (at least for long-time players like me). New Horizons made Animal Crossing feel new again.

New Horizons isn’t perfect, but the same can be said for every game in the series. The GameCube game is loaded with charm, interesting dialogue, the best music in the series, and 15-villager towns. But as great as it is, it still has significant flaws that dwarf any complaints you may have about recent games.

New Leaf is also great, and it has some unique features like dancing at the club and multiplayer mini-games. But it still lacks the town designing abilities, outdoor furniture, and the many conveniences added in New Horizons.

But if you judge a game on what it is, and not what it isn’t, just one question matters: Is New Horizons fun to play? And the answer is unequivocally yes. Extremely fun.

Animal Crossing games are typically meant to be played in short sessions, once a day. But with New Horizons, I’ve found myself often playing longer sessions…especially when racking up Nook Miles, visiting mystery islands, or using the island designer app to decorate my island. New Horizons is my favorite Animal Crossing game yet, and the first Animal Crossing game I’m rating 10/10.

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