I feel like nobody is really happy with the game

[Vintage Viola]

While I have criticisms about the game, I absolutely love it! Make no mistake that there was criticism about New Leaf at launch too, it’s not anything to concern yourself with. Plenty of players are happy enough.

 

[Mello]

There are some QoL changes that I would've liked to see, like being able to select an amount when I choose to craft if I have enough materials, being able to break a stack into a number I specify, instead of splitting up my cherries, say, 1 at a time, and some other stuff like that. But overall, this game has overflowing charm, and it makes me happy, so yes, I do enjoy this game quite a bit.

 

[Brumbo]

So upset with this game, I bought it thinking it was an upgrade of HH and NL but instead I bought an unfinished game. I don't know what to do, I get it people say "Oh well you're supposed to play like X" but when are you told that? When was I told that I was getting an unfinished game? I feel scammed. I'm already so bored with this. I didn't like new leaf but I have a new found appreciation for it.

- - - Post Merge - - -

Many are unhappy with New Horizons because we expect it to be better than, if not at least on par with New Leaf. Better meaning more cool features, more choices, more fun.

Yes, many new stuff are added in New Horizons BUT at the same time they removed many of the things that made New Leaf so addictive and popular. Nintendo should have improved on what people like in New Leaf and bring them over to New Horizons. Many npcs and their houses are gone in NH. Even for our own home, those themed external structures like modern, fairy tale, asian, etc. all gone. We used to be able to build up to 4 character houses, each with a different theme. And I supposed we can't swim in New Horizons? We are living on an island surrounded by water and we can't swim?

And, I personally feel that there is too much crafting in New Horizons. It is fun when you do it for the first few days or even weeks. But if you have to craft almost every single item, including those special event items, it becomes a chore. This game already has so much things to do if you know what you want, but having to find recipes and hunt for materials to craft 90% of the cool stuff you want is really tedious and bored in the long run.

I read many said those features missing could be added in future updates. But how often do the updates come? So while waiting for the updates, we can continue to do the tedious chores and play the waiting game the way Nintendo wanted us to play. And besides, they are just speculations, nothing official. With all these grunts, yes I am unhappy and disappointed with New Horizons. But this doesn't mean i don't like this game. I will wait a little while longer before I decide if it's worthy to spent around $300 (Switch Lite + Game + Subscription) for a game I might find it a chore to keep up and stop playing in 3 months' time.

But that's just me.

Couldn't have said it better than myself! I 100% agree with you.

 

[Violet~]

I LOVE the game! I've been playing AC since Wild World, and NH is the best game yet in my opinion.

There are several things that make it so good for me:
The crafting, I love feeling like I'm building my island myself, without the need to just buy things with bells all the time, and finding the resources gives me more things to do everyday. In NL I found myself getting into a daily routine of - finding the fossils, watering flowers, talking to villagers, finding the money and gem rocks, and checking the shops. That's it, and I would run out of things to do after a maximum of an hour of play.

The graphics and visual details are amazing and super satisfying.

The villagers feel more alive, and there are more ways to interact with them.

And, I actually really like the slow progression. It feels like I'm really building up my island from a deserted place to a community. I like not being able to just buy a ton of things straight from the start and having to slowly craft and acquire new things. And despite the slow progression of shops and such, I still have enough to do everyday that gives me hours of fun gameplay. I even find it a bit too fast, I'm getting my RS updated after just one week of playing, and I'd have liked the island to feel more "new" and in development for a bit longer.

The only thing I don't like about the game is that it's missing small things that were very iconic to AC, like gyroids. But I still have hope that they'll add them in somewhen.

 

[CatGifs]

I would post positively to help improve the vibes but I can’t put the game down feeling the game slowly open up as the museum is finished and stores start opening and res services upgrades is magical. The designs and pixel smoothing on your own art is beautiful. PWP can be changed easily and there are so many design options. The townsfolk are so interesting and diverse. You can move their houses if they interrupt the flow of town. You can place furniture outside. The inventory is so big! Blathers once again blathers. The town levels make the town feel so expansive!

 

[Chachamaru]

No I like it a lot, I just think it has room for improvement.

Game is gorgeous. And I haven't put it down since it came out. I think there are some extremely odd choices that need to be addressed (every person only being able to unlock 3 flowers unless they trade with people and even then they don't unlock in store or on islands, not being able to edit nook miles furniture and other furniture even though color variations do exist, lack of furniture sets, unable to edit appearance of structures and your house to the degree of which you could in new leaf, The lack of a dream suite/way to remotely visit other peoples towns...)

Those are my main gripes, but all in all it's a solid game that I think will get even better. I guess I expected it to be like new leaf on steroids, with some of the decorating and housing options (hallway doors, windows, etc from happy home designer, but they left those out..) I was hoping for all of that plus the addition of terraforming and being able to place and move buildings and villager houses yourself.. Really I thought it would be an entirely custom game experience, but it feels limited right now.

The NPC's missing im not too mad about because I do absolutely think they will be brought back somehow in updates. Theres a lot that could happen and im super optimistic.

If certain things change this could easily become my favorite in the series, save for the way the gamecube version feels to me, which is just super special and nostalgic in it's own right.

 

[Mars Adept]

I’ll be honest. I’m not happy with this game. You could give me all the star nets, upgrades to graphics and sound effects, and quality of life changes and I still wouldn’t be happy because it lost a lot of the core values of Animal Crossing. Things being removed are to be expected, but big things featured since the early days are gone without a trace. Of course, like every other Switch game, Nintendo is doing the “release the game unfinished and patch the rest in over the next few months” trick. I’d understand this if the game released just three or four years after New Leaf, but it didn’t. It took seven. And that was after all those unwanted cash grab spin-offs. And a delay. Also, we don’t even know if things are being patched in other than holidays. It will most likely happen, but right now it’s all just speculation based on data in the game and not “confirmed”.

Also, I have gotten sick and tired of crafting. It was ok at first, but then they constantly force it on you to make progress in the game’s “story” that also required me to have a “pretty” island in order to unlock something important that didn’t need to be unlocked in older games. And then once I finally somehow accomplished that, I got the island designer app and there’s not really anything else to do anymore. It wasn’t fun. At all. I was looking forward to holidays despite them being patched in later on, but seeing Bunny Day now revolve around crafting is frustrating.

They’re probably expecting all of us to be distracted and not realize flaws through all the nostalgia pandering they put in the game. The notes in bottles. Glowing spots. Gulliver’s and Wisp’s roles in this game. K.K. Slider’s performance. I hate it because they do this as if it’s an excuse for a heavily flawed game and I’ve seen the same song and dance pulled off with Kirby Star Allies and Pokémon Sword and Shield.

There’s a lot of little things that bug me too. The overused minimalistic design used for all the interfaces that clash with the detailed graphics. C.J. and Flick make me uncomfortable due to their personalities that scream “we want to be relevant and have a “””relatable””” character” to me. The loading times are worse than ever, particularly for online.

There’s something else I want to admit. I haven’t been happy with the Switch in general. I’ve had the system since launch in hopes that Nintendo would make their series have great classics on the system. Unfortunately, what has arrived since are either ports(I respect the Mario Kart community for being forced to wait this long for a new proper game. At least I liked the DKC Tropical Freeze port, as I never got the game on the Wii U when it was new.), unfinished games as I mentioned prior, or games that appear to have been released only to make a quick buck(Super Mario Maker 2, Splatoon 2, 1-2-Switch especially). The only two first/second party games I have genuinely enjoyed are Super Mario Odyssey and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. And that’s not mentioning the problems with the system itself. Boring interface with no themes aside from basic light/dark. Online subscription that didn’t even really improve upon what the Wii U did. Joy-Con drift. I could go on.

In fact, the Switch is a representation of the problems I had with the late 2010s as a whole. Minimalistic design everywhere even when unnecessary and the previous design was fine. The most basic of nostalgia pandering corporations do to try to distract you from the real flaws and take your money. A lack of heart and soul due to trying to be relevant with the times and being overly politically correct. (Seriously, the “men’s toilet” is now called the “standing toilet” in New Horizons. Why?)

I haven’t played New Horizons in days. I lost interest after the “newness” faded off. I still plan on playing online, but otherwise I don’t really care anymore.

I don’t know. I guess I was hoping New Horizons would break the trend of “Switch game that tries to boast about being the best game in the series yet in the advertising with all these shiny new things but in reality lost the core of what made the previous games so special”, especially since this is already a tough time for me and many other people, but I suppose it was silly of me to think that would happen.

With that said, I hope someone can enjoy this game where I can not. I’m not a very optimistic person because whenever I try to be so things end up getting worse, but perhaps it’s different for someone else.

I was planning beforehand to make New Horizons my last AC game anyway, so I’ll likely be moving on from Animal Crossing in the near future, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Of course the year I was planning to be more social and learn to do new activities is the one where I can’t do anything but the same old garbage, so it’ll probably be a few more years before I stop playing AC for good.

 

[bcmii]

Know this is going to make some people mad, but y'all realize that people can complain/be disappointed about things without completely hating the game...right? Also, I absolutely hate how some of you guys are getting upset with others for seeing the game less than perfect. It's their opinion, and I didn't realize that we were only allowed to have positive opinions about the game. I absolutely love the game, but it is quite grating how some of you guys are discouraging people for expressing perfectly normal feelings about this title.

 

[Maerle]

I really love the game so far! I think it looks beautiful and every day I’m excited again to see how my island has changed, what buildings look like and what the villager who has moved in is like. I don’t time travel and try not to look at too many spoilers. I’m playing with a couple of irl friends and feel like it’s the perfect game to play in the current situation. Takes my mind of things easily. I can play hours without getting bored. To me it does feel like coming home.

I don’t mind that the game is different from New Leaf. I actually quite like the fact it’s different and I don’t think I would have liked to play a “New Leaf but with better graphics.” I’m just gonna see what time will bring and enjoy the process!

 

[Chris]

Does nobody actually enjoy the game for what it is?

I absolutely love it.

I didn't follow the hype (didn't even watch the direct until a couple days before the game's release) so I had zero expectations.

 

[bcmii]

It wasn’t fun. At all. I was looking forward to holidays despite them being patched in later on, but seeing Bunny Day now revolve around crafting is frustrating.

Disappointing to hear that they are ruining the holidays, as well, by making them revolve around the clunky crafting mechanic. Also everyone is way too optimistic about them adding super basic features, like having more than 5 basic furniture sets, which they couldn't be bothered to include on release, in these updates. They only promised us holidays, but I believe that everyone is displacing any potential disappointment into unrealistic optimism with these updates. Heck, I was browsing a thread where people were talking about how disappointed they were with the music, and people were seriously saying that they thought Nintendo would release better hourly tracks in the updates...get realistic, people!

 

[Foxxie]

Hi o/ I'm loving the game so far... we are out there, I think we are just more busy enjoying the game than posting about it? It's always easier to complain, than it is to compliment

 

[Reginald Fairfield]

Oh, trust me, there was complaining about New Leaf as well. I was only a lurker back then, but don't let that fool you.

Anyway, I love the game! A few criticisms here and there aside, it's great.

Would you remember what the complaints about new leaf were?

 

[Rosch]

I am disappointed with the missing features but I don't let it bother me.

It does feel different than what we were all used to, but for what it currently is, I like it and I am totally enjoying it. It's also still too early to make final judgments when it's been only a week in the game. I've yet to experience terraforming, tourneys and holidays. I don't even have a full village yet.

So, for what I have right now, I am happy.

 

[moon_child]

Everybody’s entitled to their own opinions and I think each of the games in the series suit different play styles better. What I’m saying is that NH is getting so much bad rap but I think it’s premature to compare a new game with features we have yet to unlock to an old fully unlocked game. We’re a week in for NH and if we already unlocked the RS building, every available inclines and bridges as well as a lot of PWP type projects are already available. In NL, we had to wait for villagers to request them. Some took years before they request them within normal play style without resorting to PWP farming or time travel. Same goes for Gracie. For some, it took years for her to set up shop without time travel. So really, when it comes down to it, both games didn’t have much at the start. Bring also into consideration the concept of the games are different. In NL, you’re just taking over an already established town bustling with residents. In NH, you literally started with weeds and nothing else.

 

[Zanreo]

Mostly happy with the game myself, my main issues are breakable tools (including golden apparently?) and that it's too slow to start and unlock things in general (Heck, breakable tools could have been somewhat less annoying if they lasted way longer so I didn't have to go back to recraft several times a day, and also being able to repair broken tools instead of them just disappearing so you could get back the one you had instead of having to start with a flimsy tool and then make it into a regular one (and then optionally customize again) every time). Also, assuming they're purposefully keeping content behind later updates to prevent people from TTing/datamining everything... it's just not a good way to go about it since it's just gonna make people feel the game is incomplete

Otherwise, though, I'm enjoying it so far! Looking forwards to what it will have to offer later on! The thing about the game is it seems very... experimental in many ways, both good and bad... but in my opinion more good than bad

 

[Hsn97]

I’m really happy with the game. I think the biggest thing that gets people is that NHs is pretty different from previous instalments. Crafting, tools breaking, having to unlock shops and utilities is all something none of us have had to do before or are use to. It’s not what we except when we boot up an AC game. I feel like as people become more comfortable and used to the new game mechanics they’ll start to like the game more. Personally I love it, and it one of my favourite in the AC series.

 

[Solio]

People are usually more inclined to voice complaints rather than praise because they want to vent. It's the same for critics on sites like yelp.
Which is why internet opinions aren't exactly representative. Always keep that in mind.

 

[spacedog]

personally i actually really enjoy that crafting has been added to the game! (it would be nice if there were improvements like bulk crafting however, or a storage box for crafting supplies). there's a lot more to do every day now that resources need to be gathered and i feel accomplished once i have everything i need to make an item. i also just think it fits in well with the whole idea that ur building from the ground up on a desolate island!

 

[Lisha]

I'm very happy with the game and am enjoying it more than New Leaf. I like that they've taken things from older games (like Wisp and catching his 5 spirit pieces) and put them in NH.