There are a few design choices that make it comparably more tedious than the other games. Grass deterioration is particularly miserable and annoying, for example, even though that mechanic was later refined in later games. But even if you're able to look past that, the main problem is that it just isn't substantially different enough from the previous games. Of all of the games, City Folk does the least to expand on the formula established in previous titles. The problem with City Folk is less that it's bad so much as there's simply no reason to buy it if you have any of the previous games, and no reason to go back to it if you have any of the games that came after it. It's not a bad game, so much as a very stale one.