What's New Horizons actually like?

[corvus516]

I've seen NH get somewhat of a bad rep from "critics" who only seem to play the game for the sake of "criticising" it. For casual players, what's the game really like?
From a unbiased view of the game as a whole, what are some of the good and bad parts of it?

Edit: I have played the games before and know the series well, I'm just asking about the newer aspects in NH and its pros and cons.

 

[JKDOS]

Have you played?

It's much like any main Animal Crossing game. You pick a name for your player, you move to a randomly generated town, which you get to name, and you have animal characters who live in the town with you. You get a house from Tom Nook with 0% interest loans, and you spend your time

• paying off your loans
• upgrading the size of your home
• decorating each room of the home with furniture you collect.
• fill a museum with bugs, fish, fossils, and art you come across
• decorate your town the way you want
• visit other player's towns or let them visit yours
• make friends with your villagers (the animal neighbors)
• experience your town in real-time with sync'd calendar date and time

I'd recommend trying it if you're looking to buy.

 

[corvus516]

Have you played?

It's much like any main Animal Crossing game. You pick a name for your player, you move to a randomly generated town, which you get to name, and you have animal characters who live in the town with you. You get a house from Tom Nook with 0% interest loans, and you spend your time

• paying off your loans
• upgrading the size of your home
• decorating each room of the home with furniture you collect.
• fill a museum with bugs, fish, fossils, and art you come accross
• decorate your town the way you want
• visit other player's towns or let them visit yours
• make friends with your villager players
• experience your town in realtime with sync'd calendar date and time

Yes, I've played Pocket Camp and currently play New Leaf.
It's just that I've seen more complaints about NH than praise, and I'm curious why as it seems no different than any other game. Maybe it's because updates are coming while the game is out rather than being fully completed when it was released so people are getting bored or something like that.

 

[meggiewes]

Unbiased might not be the easiest thing to get here. But, I'll try!

Basically, Animal Crossing is:

• A "slice of life" community simulator
• Catch bugs, fish, and befriend your animal neighbors
• Go shopping in your community shops to decorate your home and dress yourself up in fun and unique fashions
• Help curate your museum for the ultimate collect-a-thon
• Celebrate holidays with your Animal villagers
• Experience a game in real time where the seasons match up with your real world surroundings

New to New Horizons:

• Have the ultimate control in developing your very own deserted island including deciding where your animal villagers live and being able to put any item outside to decorate with
• Go beyond ultimate control by unlocking a brand new built in path tool and terraforming.
• Take matters into your own hands and craft various items and furniture out of materials you gather yourself
• Take easy screenshots with a built in camera app complete with built in filter

That is about as unbiased as I can get. I hope it helps explain the game a bit more.

Edit: well, it seems that I type too slow. It is like the other games. Only they dont have a built in progression like New Leaf. Instead they are updating with real time patches. Some people hate crafting because tools break. And Nintendo Online is required for online play. If you dont have that it locks you out of getting patterns from others and the dream suite. People miss Brewster.

 

[Wickel]

I love it. Have about 200 hours in it since launch. But it does get a bit boring. There's not really anything to do except for checking the daily visitor.
UNLESS you really love decorating. The whole game is basically about that. It's really well executed, a lot more stuff to do than in previous games. But gameplay wise.. it's kinda lacking and gets boring quick. I usually try to check in once a day and run around the island but there's not much to do so I just log off again. Checking the shops isn't very interesting because there's only two and Nook's really doesn't sell a lot of stuff - it's basically the same items rotating and it gets pretty lame quick. If you want some other items you'll HAVE to trade with other people which is quite time-consuming and a bit of pain because the process of going to another island is so slowly.
Ables sell a lot of fun clothing but since you can buy a ton of stuff at once there's not really a need to check in everyday because you can quickly gather the things you like. Obviously the main gameplay things are here like fishing/catching bugs/sea creatures but once you've played for a few months and got most of them it's not as fulfilling anymore.

BUT when I feel like I've got a lot of time to spare and want to do a ton of terraforming or decorating, I can play for hours on end.
NL had a lot more stuff going on though that wasn't centered around decorating the island.

 

[Your Local Wild Child]

Pros:

There’s a lot more customizability than in previous games
There’s a lot more streamlining than in previous games
Getting the villagers you want is easier
There’s a non-time traveling way to get most out of season items (with hemisphere differences)
Villagers won’t move out without your permission

Cons:

Online is kind of bare
There’s not a lot of modern furniture
Villager dialogue is boring unless you bore them to death in turn
Villager requests are harder to get
Not a lot of buildings
No mini games (a la tortimer island)

neutral points (Stuff I’ve heard as negatives but I can see either good or bad):

crafting is a huge emphasis
Villagers are nicer than in previous games
Things in previous games are slowly being added in via updates
The music is vastly different from previous games


Overall, I’ve been loving the game but I know that a lot of people are missing certain aspects of previous games. If you’re going without huge nostalgia for New Leaf it’s a good game but if you have nostalgia for NL it might be a bit of a shock

 

[JKDOS]

Yes, I've played Pocket Camp and currently play New Leaf.
It's just that I've seen more complaints about NH than praise, and I'm curious why as it seems no different than any other game. Maybe it's because updates are coming while the game is out rather than being fully completed when it was released so people are getting bored or something like that.

Some of the complaints come from us players, mainly over things we think Nintendo could improve on, or things we think they could have done better. It also doesn't help that the game seems "unfinished" and lacking in content compared to previous titles. I'm sure all these will be fixed though as Nintendo continues to release updates. As for reviewers/critics, well I guess they just don't get the point of the game, or it's just not their cup of tea. They'd probably rather play something like Doom or some fancy next generation game compared to a life sim.

I've played pocket camp for maybe a combined total of 45 minutes at the most, and all I can say is it can't and shouldn't be compared to the main games, because it's not only a spin off, but a mobile game that incentivizes micro transactions.

I started playing Animal Crossing in 2006 after an online friend referred me to the series through Wild World. I'll fell in love with the series ever since. Having my own town and house to do with what I wanted and make unique to me was appealing, especially since I got to show it off to other players.

 

[Stil]

Its a lot like new leaf but with a lot of quality of life changes.
Its good.

 

[Chris]

I consider it the best game in the franchise. Older entries (including ACNL) haven't aged well in my opinion and are so limited in comparison. The introduction of crafting and terraforming massively changed the game for the better.

 

[Miss Misty]

A lot of the complaints are because this is far and away the most popular game in the franchise (and one of the most popular games on the Switch period), so a lot of outlets want to write about the game. And outrage generates more clicks than uwu positivity. There's also the fact that, like @JKDOS said, NH is so far outside the norm of what game reviewers normally write about that they're more prone to getting bored with the game a lot quicker than people who are in AC's "target audience".

@Myrthella and @Your Local Wild Child hit on a lot of the valid criticisms of the game, because hey the game isn't perfect. The furniture selection sucks, despite that there's not a lot to do outside of decorating once you have your dream villagers and fill your museum, villager dialogue is annoying (you need to talk to them a lot to get past the 'surface level' convos but if you dare talk to them more than once they get super passive aggressive "Let's see how many MORE times we can talk to each other today!" "You again? Am I being pranked or something?")

That being said, the game is still a step up from where NL was which was a step up from CF, etc... And they're getting better about the furniture, as a lot of the items from the Harvest/Toy Day update aren't super theme-y. I agree that I think it's the best installment in the franchise, and hopefully it'll get even better as more and more updates come out for it.

 

[ekcomyth]

pros:
-a blissful escape from a stressful reality given the pandemic and all
-a way to connect with other people
-it provides a lot more option than its predecessors

Pros:
-less furniture than its predecessors
-there's this pressure of creating a social medial account for your town (since everyone is doing it to showcase their island)
-unless you create a social media, your island won't really be noticed at all.

 

[annex]

I think there are pros and cons to every ac game. There are definitely some things about New Horizons that kind of annoy me. Like certain things that were loved in New Leaf have not been brought into Horizons. Fruit baskets, lemons, froggy chair and Lily pad table are just to a few to mention.

However, I'm loving that we can decorate outside. The graphics are beautiful. They got rid of so many ugly furniture sets and wallpapers and replaced them with much better looking ones. Etc, etc.

I think if you like pocket camp and New Leaf, you will like Horizons as well.

 

[Noel_in_Sunrise]

A step up if you play the games for:
- Terraforming
- Choosing the location of everything (except town hall)
- Decorating you town
- Graphics
- Ease of flower breeding
- Crafting
- Design of individual items
- Having a say in who moves in
- Updates
- Trading
- Custom clothing and other patterns

A step down if you play the games for:
- Decorating your house (smaller rooms, less furniture)
- Robust HHA
- Item sets (amount of sets, number of items in each set)
- Nook's store
- Mini-games with friends
- Luck having a tangible role and being easily checkable, feng shui
- Avoiding tedious tasks like crafting and recipe collecting
- Unbreakable tools
- Having a complete game at launch
- Collecting without island-locked colors
- Loading times

Edit- I like the game, don't get me wrong. I think that it just depends on what you play the series for.

 

[iamjohnporter67]

Well after playing the game for like 8 months its a good game but it has a lot of issues. I will give the pros and cons:

Pros
-You can hold 40 items in your Pockets by expanding from the Nook Mile Shop
-You can customize your home freely with a new moving tool
-You can move any building you want around your island (except for Resident Services and Airport)
-The Graphics are very cool for a Switch Game
-Terraforming your island the way you want gives more freedom.

Cons
-Villager Dialogue is Repetitive
-Crafting is new but there is no way to bulk craft
-Most NPCs from past AC games are missing
-The Online is lackluster since you can only visit other players islands
-Having to wait through load times for someone to fly in or when someone is leaving on the island
-There is a lack of any sort of rewards and all you get is just Nook Miles for doing Tasks
-All your tools break and Gold ones too. There is no indication when your tool is about to break
-Nookphone is not really useful with the lack of variety of apps

So I'm just going to say this if you've been playing Animal Crossing for so long and you expect New Horizons to blow you away you're not going to find it here. There is a lot of stuff missing and the online is just unbearable. I would say skip until there is new stuff added and all the issues I mentioned in the cons would be addressed.