I like the idea of DIY's but find the execution to be a tad shabby. Its flaws are most evident with crafting tools, simply because the idea of tool durability is at odds with the primary mode of gameplay in Animal Crossing. Tool durability in an RPG, adventure, or survival game incentivizes the player to prepare and plan ahead. Being unprepared in these games could make or break your chances of defeating an enemy, or getting the resource, material, or key item that you seek. In Animal Crossing, the limited durability of weapons serves merely as a mild inconvenience when performing a menial task, and--try as I may--I simply fail see how that's supposed to be fun. It's fortunate, then, that it is only ever just inconvenient, provided you've been stocking up on materials daily. But in that regard, the mechanic shifts from being frustrating to something equally troublesome: Pointless. To compound matters, the upgraded weapons only prolong the usability of the tool, but otherwise offers few other tangible benefit. By contrast, in games like Minecraft, in addition to the increased duration of usability, items such as gold and diamonds can only be obtained using a tool made of iron or higher. The player's reward for upgrading their tools is not merely the chance to use them longer, but to increase the array of options on which to use them. Cutting down and moving trees is, of course, only possible through upgrading, but I'm not sure how exactly that alone justifies the mechanic.
For that matter, the actual rate of deterioration for the tools in Animal Crossing makes absolutely no sense. Why does a watering can--a tool whose sole job is carrying water--break more quickly than a shovel or an axe? Why does it even break at all, honestly? I've used the same watering can for my garden for decades. I was a child when we first bought it. It doesn't make sense to me that the watering can would be so quick to break. But at the same time, even the Flimsy Shovel can last up to a week or more with frequent use. It's quite maddening, not because it's frustrating or particularly difficult or even terribly inconvenient, but simply because the tools don't behave at all as one would expect. The increased duration from upgrading them also feels only slight.
I find crafting furniture and cooking to be slightly more interesting, but I do find hunting down all the recipes to a bit of a chore. The thing that makes crafting fun in Minecraft is that even if you have just started a new game, if you know the combination, you can craft whatever you want at any time you want. The crafting book is there for your convenience, but you are not limited to it by any means. It's most frustrating in Animal Crossing when you see an item you want but you can only hope that you'll stumble across the DIY recipe at some random point. It's less frustrating now that you can just order them from the Happy Home Paradise catalogue, but that again leads to the other problem. It's no longer frustrating, but now it's just pointless. And unlike the Nook shop, Happy Home Paradise is open 24 hours, so one can't even make the argument that it's useful as an alternative to waiting for the stores to open.
In an ideal scenario, I think having the DIY recipes is actually a pretty interesting idea as a mechanic that lets you make items that aren't yet available for sale, and because of the personalized nature of the game, that means each person's journey in doing so is going to be different. But a lot of the charm is worn off by the fact that getting these recipes largely amounts to chance encounters and bottled messages, two things that I think should be in the game, but shouldn't be your only method of obtaining them (unless you have Switch Online, to which the game is constantly twisting your arm to get you to subscribe).
I also take issue with how DIY and cooking doesn't really add any depth to your interactions with villagers, but shallow interactions isn't a criticism unique to New Horizons, and of course, I think the interface for crafting is rather archaic, but that's just a minor gripe. I still enjoy DIY and I would like to see it improved in subsequent games, but it has such a long list of problems with it that I can see why it might turn some people off from the game entirely.
