Can't say I'm too happy with it. It feels akin to the direction the Fire Emblem series has taken since Fire Emblem Awakening's release in 2012.
As someone who has played and is fond of the older Fire Emblem games, the series post-Awakening has felt like a downgrade in terms of the aspects that made me a fan of the series. Awakening and Fates had terrible, messy plots with tropey characters I couldn't bring myself to care about, they turned up the sex appeal and the pandering, your main character is now an Avatar self-insert and all of the characters in your army won't shut up about how you're the best person ever. It just felt like a transition into particularly bland, boring anime. The game they initially advertised as Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem ended up becoming a game about the Japanese idol industry, despite Fire Emblem being a series involving war and the politics thereof and Shin Megami Tensei being a series that tends to involve angels, demons, and other mythological beings and gods clashing, humanity in the midst of apocalypse or a world resultant thereof and caught in the struggle, and your protagonist needing to make choices about whether to ally with Order, Chaos, or taking a neutral stance. Echoes: Shadows of Valentia had the best presentation but some of the worst gameplay, and Three Houses has good aspects like characters and some gameplay elements, but the problems pile up the more I look at it. Meanwhile, the older games had stories and settings I could invest in and characters I thought were cool, they had good map design and more varied objectives for completing them, and they just feel like they have a different tone.
The deserted island setting of New Horizons is nice to a degree, but a year later and with the future uncertain it personally feels like more of a negative than a positive. It makes sense to have less of the special characters and shops in this setting, but they provided a sense of life and vitality which is now absent and the void they've left is making itself very apparent now. Terraforming and decorating your island to make it #aesthetic is all well and good if you care about that, and to a degree I enjoy decorating the island too, but personally the thing I want to decorate is my house. Unfortunately tons of furniture from the past twenty years is missing, the rooms are smaller, and the homes feel like they've taken a backseat. Not to be too negative though, there are still aspects of New Horizons which I like and there are some ways it is superior to New Leaf even if I personally enjoy New Leaf much more.
With growth comes change, some good and some bad. I don't have a problem with people finding a new series to enjoy, but in these two instances it has come at the cost of aspects of the games which to varying degrees are what I liked the franchises for in the first place. I can see myself dropping the series in the future depending on a number of factors. If I do, oh well, nothing lasts forever. I wouldn't hold contempt for the fans who came in. Wouldn't hold contempt for the game designers either, however much I might not agree or gel with the decisions made. Just take solace in the good times, keep playing the games you do enjoy, and move on.
