I just can't grow to like this game .
Long time AC fan here , been playing since WW , bought and messed with City Folk and New Leaf extensively when they came out...I was very hyped for New Horizons and I did buy the Animal Crossing themed Switch for it when it was announced .
One of the first things I disliked about it was the fact multiplayer , friends letters and patterns were now locked behind a monthly subscription service whereas they used to be free before...and for a good couple of decades . But that's Nintendo for you and there's not much you can do about it .
The game itself , even more than its predecessors , also happened to feel pushy towards said multiplayer due to fruit , DIYs , flowers , furniture & variants , villagers and whatnot feeling somewhat harder to obtain by playing on your own compared to New Leaf .
The island itself felt small , especially when having to share it with another player ( which , if you have siblings or your special someone playing with you slowly grows to become a problem ) which then leads to another issue...the fact you can still not have separate save files for different players and thus have each person play on their own island , despite all the years and feedback that was provided over time in regard to this feature .
Nobody had asked for breakable tools , even less people had asked for breakable golden tools .
Getting the same DIYs over and over again every day instead of new ones isn't really nice either .
Villagers feel almost like cosmetic items ; they have no personality or depth to their dialogue anymore , there's no lore to discover behind the recurring main npcs anymore such as the Able sisters or Nook . People trade them as if they were furniture .
The patterns limit is still rather small and searching for the ones you want kind of sucks unless you are ready to spend hours browsing Twitter blogs and the likes .
Even after buying Happy Home Paradise I feel there's so little furniture variety to mess with ; I miss the old games sets .
The Cranny needed some more upgrades , getting furniture at such a slow pace is just a pain , especially when you see the same few items show up over and over day after day and you can now decorate the island's exterior too...this only slows the game's pacing down to a halt unless you are , again , trading with other players .
Terraforming is such an amazing feature but it's implemented in such an annoying way . Forcing the player to pay every time to move a house / bridge / ramp and having them wait , having them manually remove every tree and flower and piece of furniture....it's kind of discouraging compared to the way the dlc lets you deal with such things and honestly it's one of the reasons as to why I don't want to start reworking my island...the amount of bells , the time-gates...it feels daunting .
I also kind of dislike Nook Miles . I don't like having to do daily quests in my games and the rewards I get in ACNH by annoying myself up to the point of farming them feel completely underwhelming . NMTs often lead you to islands you have already visited before and where there simply isn't anything you need , getting a villager you want is like playing a gacha . It's just a pain .
Kapp'n's island tours suffer from the same issue ; monotonous procedurally generated islands where you often can't find anything you need .
Flowers not withering grows to be another problem over time . Sure , you can place invisible patterns down but they will still find a way or your younger siblings will erase the patterns and not tell you anything , causing flowers to expand where they shouldn't .
DLCs and free updates felt more like stuff that should have been in the base game already...and the fact Nintendo already dropped support for this game is kind of sad . It would have deserved more .
I do miss previous titles hourly music . A lot . Not a huge fan of the new tracks and I wish we just got the option to pick what we want to listen to out of all of the franchise's tracks , maybe mix and match ( idk , play City Folk's 5 am and New Leaf's 6 am ) .
I do wish the game had expanded in a different direction .
I would have liked to explore a larger island , meet new and unique key npcs , maybe have a different camera system as an option to make the game feel a bit more immersive and experience it from different perspectives ( but they only modeled the FRONT of the houses and trees , they are not even meant to be seen from the back or from the side...it's so sad... ) , I would have liked for more activities and cool mini-events to be available , get to build actual bonds with the villagers , have more of a progression system ( different optional shops and upgrades for them , an improvement over WW's housing... ) , more variety when it comes to furniture styles and to islands themselves ( while nowadays everyone has their lil' japanese area , their kids tent one...makes lots of 5* islands feel as if they lack an original vibe to them ) . More of an evolution in general , even in an experimental direction , with new fun mechanics and stuff to try out .
Idk . Just felt the need to rant . Feeling overwhelmed at the thought of re-designing my island so it doesn't look like poop and even then Idk how much fun I could squeeze out of the game since villagers just don't add much to the whole thing anymore . I honestly can't get back into NH . I don't even think I will buy another AC title as things stand .
