Well, almost a year in, I'm just disappointed that so many basic features are not in the game. I remember when New Leaf got delayed and I waited for ages for that to release. But when I finally got to play the game, it was absolutely worth the wait. Since at least the Wii U-era, I've been waiting for another entry in the series. I took Nintendo way to long to develop a new entry, but when it finally got announced, I was really hyped.
I expected the game to build upon New Leaf and add e.g. more villager-interactivity, allow for decorations to be more interactive (think about how cool it would be to place a goal or a pool-table on your island and getting challenged to a tournament by villagers. We didn't get any of this as NH took a different direction, which is absolutely fine. I'm not saying I need these specific features. But I'd at least expect the game to have sufficient content. For me, this isn't just about this particular update. It's more about the fact that after almost a year, the game still isn't even close to New Leaf, which is a 7-8 year old 3DS game.
I stopped playing NH when I realized that there just wasn't a lot to do and returned to New Leaf instead. At the end of the day, this is the only new mainline Animal Crossing game we will get for the next couple of years. New Leaf felt like a step forward, NH felt like a step back. Not because the new things they introduced were bad, but because of all the features they cut without any good reason for it. As of now, NH still doesn't have many basic features.
So again, it's not that I expected something in particular. It's just that the overall content of the past updates is so slim. With the prospect of another update in March without any new real content, that's just disappointing. And well, at least a lot of the QoL stuff could be added very easily. I've implemented an option to buy multiple items in the life sim game I'm creating in my free time by just providing "+"/"-"-buttons and a counter. When purchasing an item, you just get the amount you selected. You can even buy different items at the same time and just click "buy" for all of them. This is something really basic, they could at least provide something like this if they don't have more content in the pipeline. There is really no excuse that they don't take a week to do this.
Sorry, I hope this doesn't come off wrong. I want NH to succeed, I love the art style and graphics, the atmosphere is great and it's still Animal Crossing and thus an awesome time. It's just that after waiting for so many years, I expected more than what we got. I hope that's understandable. For now, I keep playing NL, which to me is still as good as I remembered it, and will probably check back on NH in half a year or so. Maybe until then the situation is different.
). Given that, I am glad there is not too much involved additional game play being added, and really like the look of the items and seeing some diverse seasonal items being added. (Not just Valentine’s Day)
