Can we still have a simple single river that divides the island in to two large parts without all the levels?
I don't want to get lost. I liked the flat town of NL style much better, and for me, would be easier to landscape.
We saw that you can build and destroy cliffs. To be fair, it does look it might take awhile of game play to finally be able to do this though. But when you first move to New Leaf, there is nothing! You have to get a permit and then slowly build things and unlock things!
No one is going to have their ideal island when they first start the game. One of the perks of an Animal Crossing game is making your village really yours! I feel like with all of the terraforming they are giving us with NH, you can literally make the island however you want! You can flatten the land and make a single river!
I think what I didn't like the most besides the plastic blobs of hair, was the 'Nook Miles Tickets'.
Why tickets?
Can't we pay things off and unlock things with good old fashoned AC Bells anymore?
Like someone else has already pointed out, I believe the miles are only to pay of your 'trip' of getting to the island and unlocking a few Nook branded things (they might do more, not sure yet). After that, your house and other things should all be bells.
And the miles are just a nice why to get you to explore the island and do everything it has to offer! I feel like they are a sort of 'tutorial' on how to play the game and let your earn stuff just by playing! It looks like they might also replace the Badge feature that was in New Leaf, but I'm not 100% sure.
The Nook Phone. Bare with me here folks.
I've had only a mobile phone (not a PC) since 2007, and looking at the Nook Phone with it's Nook miles 'tickets', and the bland UI of the whole inventory made me feel like I went from my Android, to another more bland OS.
Eh, I mean this game is rated E for everyone. So I am sure they didn't want to create a complicated smartphone so kids could easily play.
To be honest, the phone is not one of the features I'm excited about. But maybe it will grow on me.
I liked Main Street, and having things in a certain place, though it was good to see familiar shop NPC's, I thought, or hoped they would set up shop elsewhere, as it feels like a themed island will be hard with shops everywhere. Though I think we choose where they go?
I do like the Main Street look and feel as well. It was nice and left you full space in your town to not be bogged down by shops. But I will say it will be nice to not have a loading screen to go by the shops. And yes, they give you full control on where to place all the builds and you can even move them later if you decided you want them to go somewhere else! So you can make your own little Main Street!
This feels like Tom Nook/Nintendo is in full control, and we are under the illusion of being in control.
To be honest, I don't know what could possible give you this impression. I am pretty sure the whole idea of the island is so you can have full control. You get to pick where you live; where your villagers live; where the shops are placed; where your river is; where cliffs are; where ponds are; where grass is; where dirt paths are. From the looks of it to me, we have 100% control of the island. Sure we have to pay a debt to Tom Nook and probably won't be able to unlock things until we pay certain amounts, but that's how it's always been.
I know other have addressed other parts of your concerns, so I'll just leave it at this for now. I do have one question for you though!
What changes were you hoping to see in New Horizons from the previous games? It seems you don't like a lot of the 'new' features but there must have been something you wanted to see different in the game? If you do like a more simple Animal Crossing, what's wrong with just continuing to play New Leaf?
