I feel like I know why New Horizons may not have the same longevity as New Leaf...

[catwing]

For me, it’s the music.
New Leaf’s soundtrack was so perfectly cheerful or ambient and atmospheric when it needed to be, whereas New Horizons’ is just brash. I remember when NH was released, I saw a post saying that you could unlock more music later on with nook miles. This was just misinformation of course (sadly), but at the time it made perfect sense to me and I believed NH’s soundtrack was just a basic one you started with that could be replaced as you progressed.

 

[your local goomy]

NL has more longevity to me because it had less decorating features; in NH, I'm trash at decorating and constantly feel inferior to other people, hence why I deleted my save and am just turned off by the game in general. I also prefer the concept of a town to an island, to be honest. I know the whole decorating thing is just me being critical of myself, but it's a valid point imo. When I see these beautiful islands on here and other sites, it makes me not want to play.

 

[-Blue-]

For me, it’s the music.
New Leaf’s soundtrack was so perfectly cheerful or ambient and atmospheric when it needed to be, whereas New Horizons’ is just brash. I remember when NH was released, I saw a post saying that you could unlock more music later on with nook miles. This was just misinformation of course (sadly), but at the time it made perfect sense to me and I believed NH’s soundtrack was just a basic one you started with that could be replaced as you progressed.

The week of starter music was torture. It wasn't even that good. I have no idea why they thought that was a fun idea.

 

[Reginald Fairfield]

I did like going to Club Tortimer to catch bugs, even if I didn't need the money. So many weird people online.

 

[-Blue-]

I did like going to Club Tortimer to catch bugs, even if I didn't need the money. So many weird people online.

I found a lot of my NL friends that way. Totally ran into a ton of weirdos to, but it was awesome how so many people I met were cool. There was even one island where we changed the entire layout to be a scavenger/dig hunt.

The only notable person that was uncool was some guy flaunting how many badges he had. He had everything gold and had just rejoined due to the WA update. Pretty sure he hacked to get them all, but took pleasure in just making fun of/cussing out anyone who joined due to their badge count.

 

[Tiffany]

Tbh, I’m not a fan of either for different reasons, although there’s ultimately a common flaw in both of them: having all your special visitor NPCs in one fixed place ultimately makes the world of Animal Crossing feel smaller, especially if it’s in close vicinity to where your character is living.

Main Street’s key flaws are:

• it’s partially comprised of things that would be in your village anyway
• due to the presence of Re-Tail and the fact that Tom Nook is split up from the rest of the Nook trio in favour of having a real estate shop, you’re ultimately seeing less of these key characters!
• The Able Sisters building is uglier than the classic cottage design of their shops before or after, and Label feels weirdly isolated from the rest of them (in addition to them wasting an opportunity to talk about their family reuniting, or having them reunite when GracieGrace opens in your town)
• Club LOL is an ugly hole in the ground compared to the Marquee from LGTTC and is easily the worst venue K.K.‘s ever played in, and due to you having infinite space for reactions as opposed to the 4 slots beforehand, there’s an endpoint for Shrunk. Admittedly, something climactic where you get a little suit and a dance reaction, but he will run out of use fairly quickly. Also the fact you have to UNLOCK K.K. is horrible… there isn’t even anything like the radio in NH, so you’re going to spend 2 horrible K.K.-less weeks!
• Leif sells much less in terms of stock than the Nook stores ever did. There’s a bigger variety, sure… but he sells much less! But tbf, this is also true of the Nooklings and Gracie, so I’m not going to single-handedly pin it on him… but that still sucks!
• Celeste running the museum shop instead of an observatory is one of the worst misuses of a character AC’s ever done
• one final petty thing: WA changing the colour of the lights outside the Streetpass homes thing is one of the worst things that update did, because it looks much worse than before

Whereas Harv’s island’s flaws are:

• It’s a weird compromise between “having regular visitors on your island” and “having permanent shops for NPCs for convenience’s sake” that doesn’t quite work, because it still means they’re trapped entirely in your island’s orbit instead of travelling the lands
• It’s a wasted opportunity to have a city with the NPCs that actually suit being fixed NPCs like Gracie in there, as well as little cameos for NPCs who don’t fit in NH at all
• Who let that attempted turkey murderer and embezzler Tortimer near my storage? Both in the “Tortimer is the true villain of AC and is not to be trusted under any circumstances” sense and the “it’s a genuinely stupid use of his character” sense
• Harriet, like Shrunk in NL, will rapidly run out of purpose after a while and just spout the same few sentences and vibe
• Reece is worse in that she has no purpose at all other than just going “OMG CYRUS CAN CUSTOMISE SO WELL”
• Saharah does not fit having a permanent shop at all… at least Kicks and Leif fit being market traders, Saharah’s a traveller from the Animal Crossing desert!

the only reason i like saharah as a permanent vendor is the ability to see what she has and buy only what you want/need. having to keep wasting bells buying mysterious crap from her in hopes of getting something u actually want irritated the crap out of me. they should've just made it where you could see what she was selling when she came to your island like every other vendor, that never made sense to me.

 

[Xara]

man, i miss tortimer’s island so much lol. i used to farm beetles and rare summer fish for hours as well, and i miss it so bad. it was one of my favourite things to do in new leaf. however, i don’t feel like that, or a lack of grinding in general, is the reason why new horizons doesn’t have the same longevity. if anything, some of the grinding that is in the game (ex. hunting for seasonal diys) merely increases the risk of burnout. in my opinion, i think it has to do with how decorating and terraforming centric new horizons is. sure, it’s fun and it’s awesome that we have more creative freedom in this game than in the others, but there’s really only so much of it you can do before you either finish or become bored, especially since like @/Corrie said, new horizons came out during a period where a lot of people had plenty of free time.

i feel like the lack of multiplayer options also has a lot to do with it. i played new leaf without becoming bored for much longer than i did new horizons without visiting club tortimer or playing minigames with others often (i liked playing them by myself, though lol), but those features are make-or-break for some people. in this game, there really isn’t much incentive to visit people or have them visit you unless it’s for trading, and again, there’s only so much of that you can do. new leaf had club tortimer, katie and her mom, snowman bingo cards in the winter, special photo cutouts during certain events (the amount of tinier events such as april fools day and winter/summer solstice also increased the game’s longevity for me and made it feel… warmer, if that makes sense), needing a certain number of town visits to unlock train station customization, minigames, club LOL, etc. granted, people have been really creative with coming up with their own games and activities in new horizons, but there was just so much more you could do with your friends in new leaf, and that helped keep people coming back.

new horizons is an amazing game and i adore it with all my heart, but to me, it kind of feels like another wild world of the series because of how much it’s missing from its predecessor. it’s still animal crossing, and it’s still great, but it just feels… sort of empty at times.

 

[moon_child]

Both of the games have their pros and cons that have been extensively discussed since game launch. Some factors, one is better than the other, some not. There’s so many things I hated in NL that was addressed in NH (grass deterioration, PWP request grinding, villagers leaving without you knowing, villagers moving in randomly wherever they want, etc.) so I was pretty happy with NH—- for a while. After playing the game for a year though I started missing NL a lot. Lolll. And I realized that for me, what matters most is the overall charm of the game. I missed NL music. I missed opening the game and not knowing what I’m gonna see. I haven’t played in a month…will my villagers hate me? They will for sure say something to me. But if I time travel back they’ll label me as a time traveler and shame me?! Is Marshal still there? I will cry if he moved away!!! Did a new neighbor ruin my perfect tree orchard? Is the new neighbor ugly? Oh my gosh what if it’s someone I hate? Are my flowers wilted? Do I still have grass I can run in? I don’t? Oh man now how am I gonna build a snowman??!?? These were all the things I didn’t like before but I missed them. I also missed going to Tortimer’s island and whacking the hell out of that toy when I had a bad day. And I missed fishing and bug catching. So it turned out, I’m pretty much tied to the game’s life sim aspect more than aesthetics and control. I enjoy designing for a few hours. But I get bored of it easily. There’s something inexplicably charming with NL and I think it’s because it’s more immersive in a way that your town will unfold and have a story not completely written by you because there’s so many things beyond your control. The surprises make everyday interesting and some unexpected events can happen. Those are all lost in NH. So I guess that’s my personal reason. I guess NH being so design centric and less focused on the life sim aspect of the game lost a lot of its charm and soul at least in my own personal experience.

 

[Mairen]

I think the reality of the situation is that each new game is going to bring some new features, but also drop some old features from the past game(s). And it's the kind of situation where you just cannot please everyone.

Of course with that in mind, I am still a bit disappointed they never chose to incorporate more of a multiplayer feature (like tortimer island from New Leaf).

But on the other hand, I also vastly enjoy all of the decorative freedom we've been given in this game. I have this worry that while the next game will continue to let us decorate outside to our hearts contents, I dont see terraforming as a feature that will come back (would love it if it did though!).

 

[-Blue-]

But on the other hand, I also vastly enjoy all of the decorative freedom we've been given in this game. I have this worry that while the next game will continue to let us decorate outside to our hearts contents, I dont see terraforming as a feature that will come back (would love it if it did though!).

If they bring it back, they need to do a QoL overhaul on it. Terraforming is just way too slow and tedious. Like even something as simple as an indicator where you're about to terraform could greatly improve this game, yet they didn't bother with some of the most basic gaming 101 things.

Like tools breaking. Sure fine. It doesn't add anything and interrupts gameplay, but why do we have to worry about when it will happen. Why can't we know when it does? It's little oversights like this that bothered me and frankly hurt the game in my favor. All the other games had axes that broke and they it showed signs of wear/cracks, but in NH all the tools break and they couldn't bother adding cracks, black smoke coming out of it, it glowing red? Nothing? I know they took this page from Botw, but even that game had the tools tell you they were about to break, get bright red, and smoke.

There was a video I watched that explained it well. Each game had something that was their core strength. WildWorld/AC was the villagers, NewLeaf the progression based charm of the game, and NewHorizion is the world designing simulator. Which is fine, but it's not what I bought the game for and I can get some mileage out of it, but I wanted more out of the game. Whereas with the other games, if I didn't want to do mayor duties there were a bunch of different distractions that could pull me in any direction and WW/AC I kept coming back to chat with the villagers to see what wild things they would have to say.

With NH it was just designing and that's just not enough for me.

 

[Flicky]

For me, it felt more like NH was geared towards social media rather than social play like NL, hence the addition of different camera filters and the absence of mini games. So if uploading your island to the world wide web and receiving comments from (usually random) people isn't your thing, you'll probably find yourself drawn to NL more, where you can just relax and play with friends.

As fun as it can be, I don't want terraforming to return unless they sit down and really think about how to streamline the process. I mean, they technically know how to do it - the Happy Home Paradise has a super easy, super quick terraforming tool, so why they couldn't bring it over to your main island after you complete a certain amount of homes, I'll never know. I really think they wanted to pad out playing time as much as possible, which leaves me with concerns as to whether or not they'll amend that in the next game.

 

[-Blue-]

@Flicky Yeah I remember when this game first launched, people were on a rat-race to drop the perfect island right away. It turned me off from even looking online for anything about the game. Not because I would compare my island to it, I barely even started until mid-fall, but because it just got old and felt like the game had lost its way from what made it so unique in the first place. To see it just become a Insta-gram sensation bothered me at the time.

I think terraforming would do well with a pay for the upgrades sort of thing. Like you start off with the basic slow version, but could pay in-game currency (like bells) to buy QoL packages. Or something like that.

 

[kemdi]

I said a while ago in a very long winded post that New Horizons wasn't New Leaf's sequel, it was Happy Home Designer's sequel. And seeing as how Happy Home Paradise is Happy Home Designer 2, I stand by that statement completely. With that said, I think the reason New Leaf has a bigger impact is because it follows the traditional AC theme of building your community and relationships, whereas New Horizons is literally building your world, and has community and relationships taking a backseat. In my opinion, even if all the features from New Leaf were to return, it wouldn't make much of a difference, if those two features don't come along with it. If you need proof, see the New Horizons versions of Brewster, Kapp'n, and the shallow cameos of the other returning NPC's. A lot of the little things that New Leaf(and the older games) did to remind the player of how far they'd come is absent in New Horizons, as this game doesn't really focus on relationship and community progress. New Horizons seems weaker than New Leaf because IMO, it follows the Happy Home theme line of decorating.

Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing, since I love decorating and I spend more time on the Paradise island than my own island. But for people who love making connections with other players and the villagers in their towns, it can be understandably shallow and frustrating to know that the bonds they were trying to form won't be there. The games at Tortimer island for example, were great ice breakers for meeting new players, and seeing your villagers warm up to you over time in New Leaf was a great experience that New Horizons players won't have. And with Nintendo basically confirming that this is just it for the game, I can understand the disappointment.

Personally, in the next iteration of the game, I would love to see the relationship and community aspect, both for PvP and in-game, come back to the forefront. I'm not saying that I want the decorating part of Animal Crossing to disappear, but I'd love for this particular theme to be dialed back a bit so that more of the spotlight and autonomy can be returned to the villagers in the game.

 

[moon_child]

I forgot to talk about one of my favorite NL features which is when friends visit your town, your villagers will straight up brag about it like it’s the best thing in the world and they’ll tell them all about you and how great you are and then show them the letters you’ve written to them. It’s such a small thing but made the game so charming. I don’t think I even wrote more than two letters in any of my NH islands.

 

[McRibbie]

I said a while ago in a very long winded post that New Horizons wasn't New Leaf's sequel, it was Happy Home Designer's sequel. And seeing as how Happy Home Paradise is Happy Home Designer 2, I stand by that statement completely. With that said, I think the reason New Leaf has a bigger impact is because it follows the traditional AC theme of building your community and relationships, whereas New Horizons is literally building your world, and has community and relationships taking a backseat. In my opinion, even if all the features from New Leaf were to return, it wouldn't make much of a difference, if those two features don't come along with it. If you need proof, see the New Horizons versions of Brewster, Kapp'n, and the shallow cameos of the other returning NPC's. A lot of the little things that New Leaf(and the older games) did to remind the player of how far they'd come is absent in New Horizons, as this game doesn't really focus on relationship and community progress. New Horizons seems weaker than New Leaf because IMO, it follows the Happy Home theme line of decorating.

Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing, since I love decorating and I spend more time on the Paradise island than my own island. But for people who love making connections with other players and the villagers in their towns, it can be understandably shallow and frustrating to know that the bonds they were trying to form won't be there. The games at Tortimer island for example, were great ice breakers for meeting new players, and seeing your villagers warm up to you over time in New Leaf was a great experience that New Horizons players won't have. And with Nintendo basically confirming that this is just it for the game, I can understand the disappointment.

Personally, in the next iteration of the game, I would love to see the relationship and community aspect, both for PvP and in-game, come back to the forefront. I'm not saying that I want the decorating part of Animal Crossing to disappear, but I'd love for this particular theme to be dialed back a bit so that more of the spotlight and autonomy can be returned to the villagers in the game.

I still think you’re wrong that it’s HHD 2, mainly because the gameplay’s ultimately much different between the two (and HHP only makes the difference all the more pronounced to me): it’s a closer relative to Pocket Camp than it is to HHD, to the point I went “urgh, this is Pocket Camp” when NH was first announced.

Which makes more sense, Pocket Camp’s the more successful game out of the two. HHD sold well enough to get a sequel, but not enough to get a standalone sequel.

The very concept of crafting itself, the NPCs having little market stalls with menus to show you what’s on offer, getting a rarer form of currency for doing tasks (the director specifically mentioned this being there for people who’ve played Pocket Camp in an interview), the fact that you live in a large stretch of land that you can ultimately do what you want to with a house of your own also plonked in there just screams Pocket Camp to me, over HHD (Photopia and HHP itself, sure. They’re ultimately designed for very quick designing, over the more core Animal Crossing-themed “take it easy, work on it slowly” approach of the main part of NH)

However, can’t fault the other stuff you’re saying there, carry on.

 

[kemdi]

I still think you’re wrong that it’s HHD 2, mainly because the gameplay’s ultimately much different between the two (and HHP only makes the difference all the more pronounced to me): it’s a closer relative to Pocket Camp than it is to HHD, to the point I went “urgh, this is Pocket Camp” when NH was first announced.

Which makes more sense, Pocket Camp’s the more successful game out of the two. HHD sold well enough to get a sequel, but not enough to get a standalone sequel.

The very concept of crafting itself, the NPCs having little market stalls with menus to show you what’s on offer, getting a rarer form of currency for doing tasks (the director specifically mentioned this being there for people who’ve played Pocket Camp in an interview), the fact that you live in a large stretch of land that you can ultimately do what you want to with a house of your own also plonked in there just screams Pocket Camp to me, over HHD (Photopia and HHP itself, sure. They’re ultimately designed for very quick designing, over the more core Animal Crossing-themed “take it easy, work on it slowly” approach of the main part of NH)

However, can’t fault the other stuff you’re saying there, carry on.

You're right about Pocket Camp, actually. The thing is, in my opinion, Pocket Camp is a mobile spin off of Happy Home Designer too:
1. Pocket Camp, like HHD has no other theme, other than collecting villagers, furniture, and decorate. The only difference between Pocket Camp and HHD is that now you have to actually pay real money for new furniture.

2. Like HHD, almost none of the core elements that are associated with Animal Crossing are found in Pocket Camp. You can do shallow activities like fish, bug hunt, etc. but like crafting in New Horizons, these alone don't add much to the game.

3. HHP, HHD, and PC all lack one of the more defining features of AC, which is real-time progression. You can see this somewhat in New Horizons too, where unlike with New Leaf and older, there aren't any real consequences for abandoning your island. Its also like this in HHP, HHD, and PC, with no consequences for abandonment.

So for me, while Pocket Camp is a spin off of Happy Home Designer, New Horizons is a sequel to Happy Home designer, that has features carried over from Pocket Camp. Thematically speaking though, imo both of these games follow the HHD decor and decorating line.

 

[Ganucci]

For me NH already has waaaay more longevity than NL. NL I found to get boring quickly whereas NH is a game I'm tempted to play everyday. I think a small part of that is simply the visuals. NH is such a beautiful game whereas NL just can't compete.

On the topic above, I agree with @kemdi that AC has strayed from the "be a part of a community" focus. I mean the original game was inspired by Katsuya Eguchi feeling heartache after leaving family and friends to move closer to Nintendo HQ. He wanted AC to feel like a second home and on top of that, the original tagline used in US commercials for the first game was "Welcome to Animal Crossing. The life game that's happening every minute of every day. Whether you're playing or not". This is just not the case anymore because villagers appear to not exist when you're not playing. The only sign they might is that if you're gone too long they'll say "where have you been?" but otherwise nobody has moved, your island isn't overrun with weeds, and essentially everything is the same as you left it. So I agree that NL does do a better job of this "alive game even when you're not playing" than NH, but it's also not enough to make me keep going back to NL. That being said, I hope future installments go back to this community feeling, but I feel like they won't because people in general prefer the convenience of quick menus and less dialogue over getting to know your villagers and NPCs with long conversations.

 

[RollingAntony]

It's amazing how New Leaf gets so many free passes by some people. It does many things "worse", so many characters got done so dirty, it got rid of so many features, yet it's always fine. I really hope this annoying discourse disappears if/when a new mainline game is announced.


And if by any case the above is considered off-topic even tho other people are posting that kind of things, the upcoming Bunny Day reminded of how much people let social media and the internet as a whole hurt their NH gameplay and longevity. While it was amazing to see NH everywhere on the internet, at the same time, many people took it on the worst way possible (wanting to be the first to do x, wanting to get everything day 1, comparing your island to others, eating up everything posted by content creators downplaying the game/posting their "opinions" (but treating them as facts) and changing the discourse around the game forever, etc.

Tons of people hating BD because eggs were appearing everywhere and couldn't find iron nuggets because of course, you had to upgrade the Cranny as soon as possible to not lag behind- everyone was posting about how to upgrade and guides of the fastest way to do it. Tons of people crafting hundreds of fish bait because the first Fishing Tourney could be hindered by the eggs and of course, everyone needed to get all the fishing prizes on the first tourney because I saw a tweet about the gold trophy and how come I don't have it (which of course didn't contribute to people burning out on the crafting system). Tons of people popping hundreds of ballons to grind on 10 days the Cherry Blossom DIY because you had to complete everything year 1, and you would never get the DIY that people were bragging about having their island decorated with so much pink and with season coming to an end and I also need to decorate with them because those DIY are useless after the season (which in turn also meant people were breaking tools constantly and getting tired of this too). Tons of people abusing external-turnip sources to get millions of bells the first week.

And rushing and grinding on such a short span, made many things look way cumbersome than they are- don't get me wrong, I do think something like the breaking tools could have been more refined, but I also think people exaggerate its flaws and overlook that the other QoL cover some of them.

All that was burnout, and I really don't think it was the game's fault. The game never forced anyone to grind everything to oblivion; not on release date, nor on the various updates. But many people did, and then got the weird (and false) idea the game had no content and no longevity.

 

[McRibbie]

You're right about Pocket Camp, actually. The thing is, in my opinion, Pocket Camp is a mobile spin off of Happy Home Designer too:
1. Pocket Camp, like HHD has no other theme, other than collecting villagers, furniture, and decorate. The only difference between Pocket Camp and HHD is that now you have to actually pay real money for new furniture.

2. Like HHD, almost none of the core elements that are associated with Animal Crossing are found in Pocket Camp. You can do shallow activities like fish, bug hunt, etc. but like crafting in New Horizons, these alone don't add much to the game.

3. HHP, HHD, and PC all lack one of the more defining features of AC, which is real-time progression. You can see this somewhat in New Horizons too, where unlike with New Leaf and older, there aren't any real consequences for abandoning your island. Its also like this in HHP, HHD, and PC, with no consequences for abandonment.

So for me, while Pocket Camp is a spin off of Happy Home Designer, New Horizons is a sequel to Happy Home designer, that has features carried over from Pocket Camp. Thematically speaking though, imo both of these games follow the HHD decor and decorating line.

No, I’m saying Pocket Camp is it’s own thing, closer to actual AC than HHD, and that I think calling NH a sequel to HHD both undermines its status as a mainline AC game, and is largely based around the ability to put furniture anywhere more than how it plays.

HHD is entirely design-orientated. No fishing, no bug-catching, no fossil hunting. No day and night cycle, no need to buy anything (you unlock infinite amounts of anything you need), no doing errands for villagers, no shops you can actually buy stuff from, and not even the vaguest semblance of developing friendships… but all this stuff is present in Pocket Camp, and in NH.

The fact that they’ve taken away a lot of the consequences for abandoning your town for long periods of time strikes me more as a response to criticisms of NL that you couldn’t control where the house plots were, and that the villagers you’d paid millions of bells for moved out if you didn’t play for ages, (admittedly, criticisms that completely ignore that’s what AC is that I feel the AC devs have been too obliging towards) and an evolution of the control we had over our environment in NL, the same way the decorating is the evolution of PWPs and terraforming is derived from resetting for layouts.

 

[kemdi]

No, I’m saying Pocket Camp is it’s own thing, closer to actual AC than HHD, and that I think calling NH a sequel to HHD both undermines its status as a mainline AC game, and is largely based around the ability to put furniture anywhere more than how it plays.

HHD is entirely design-orientated. No fishing, no bug-catching, no fossil hunting. No day and night cycle, no need to buy anything (you unlock infinite amounts of anything you need), no doing errands for villagers, no shops you can actually buy stuff from, and not even the vaguest semblance of developing friendships… but all this stuff is present in Pocket Camp, and in NH.

The fact that they’ve taken away a lot of the consequences for abandoning your town for long periods of time strikes me more as a response to criticisms of NL that you couldn’t control where the house plots were, and that the villagers you’d paid millions of bells for moved out if you didn’t play for ages, (admittedly, criticisms that completely ignore that’s what AC is that I feel the AC devs have been too obliging towards) and an evolution of the control we had over our environment in NL, the same way the decorating is the evolution of PWPs and terraforming is derived from resetting for layouts.

You're right about this, but this isn't what I'm talking about. When I say 'sequel' I'm not so much talking about just features, elements or structure. I'm mostly talking about the theme. Thematically speaking, New Horizons doesn't follow the the AC games of the past the way New Leaf did. NH is a mainline game, it does have most features and elements all the mainline game have, but theme-wise it leans more heavily on design than community. NL don't do that. To give an example: up until NL, the design element of the game was strictly focused on your personal house. HHD changed that, and NH took what HHD did and went further, to not just your house, but your whole island. AC has always had it where you could place limited types of items outside, with the highest limit of this in NL with PWPs. But even with this, you still needed to be a part of your community in order to get these items to decorate. In NL you still had to have your villagers come up to you and "suggest" for you to build a pwp. In other words, you had to talk to them on a regular basis in order to see progress in your village.

In ACgc, WW, and CF, progress was defined by talking to and making friends with your villagers. If you wanted to see more rare or new items, you had to be friends with them. When they told you they wanted to hear from you by mail, you had to send a letter. When they told you to plant flowers in order to make the village pretty you had to do it, if you wanted to see progress. And only when you reached 'perfect' town status, could you get a new bridge, or fountain, windmill or lighthouse. This does not happen in New Horizons, at all, to a point where in NH there are limits to getting new villagers, but there are NO limits to getting new outside furniture. Outside of the tutorial phase, you don't really need to talk to your villagers. You can stay perfect strangers and still do everything you want to do in the game, whereas in the past, this definitely wasn't the case. Now, of course you can if you want to, but you don't NEED to, and that's what I mean when I say that community and relationships in NH have taken a back seat. They're not absent, but just not the focus.

In NH, one of the first things you're told to do is pick a spot for your neighbors' homes. Then you have to set up more spots for other villagers and put down their furniture. Then later on, you have to set up more spots for more buildings namely the museum, tailors, and item shop. You're told early on that fruit lets you move trees and bust rocks at will. Later after that, you're told to beautify your island for KK to visit aka progress. Nowhere in this tutorial phase are you made to focus on building relationships with your villagers. You're told to talk to your two neighbors, but only briefly. They're not the center focus, which is building up and decorating your island.

Contrast, with NL: you can't progress forward without consistently talking to all five of your starting villagers. You have to talk to them repeatedly at the start of the game, getting them to sign the petitions. They're the focus and you have to get to know them, because later on you can't build pwp's without their suggestion, aka their 'permission'. Contrast again with ACgc, WW, and CF: The first thing Nook has you do in those games is to employ you to work for the villagers. Again, they are the focus. From ACgc through NL, the overall theme is the community and relationships you build and grow with your villagers. NH's theme doesn't focus on this.

NH's theme from the tutorial phase and well after focuses on decorating and building, and I'm saying that this started with HHD. The criticisms that started in NL was addressed in HHD, and I'm saying that particular theme of building and decorating has since grown and continued with NH and PC.

Sorry in hindsight for the very long post it wasn't my intention. Also, sorry if I came off as saying that NH was a shallow sequel of HHD, that's not what I meant at all. Tbh, I love NH, more than NL! For me, NH may not be about community, but I looove building, terraforming, decorating, and the character customizations are just perfect! I love NL too but being a lighter toned character all the time when it comes to customizing...yea, I'll stick with NH.