Animal Crossing New Horizons Review: A Look into Island Life

Animal Crossing New Horizons is a bundle of joy that keeps on giving. In the few weeks that this game has been out, it has blown up to be one of Nintendo’s most popular titles on the Switch right alongside Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. For those of you not familiar with the Animal Crossing series, the idea behind the game is to build a vibrant community and friendships with animal villagers. The series has been a fan favorite for years, starting you off as a villager, mayor, and now Resident Representative of an

uncharted island.

The Deserted Island Getaway Package

You begin your new life by participating in the Deserted Island Getaway Package, where you move to an uncharted island of your choosing. The game starts off pretty basic easing you into the uncharted island lifestyle. Those first couple days you’re just living in a tent with a couple of other villagers trying to get a lay of the land and get used to crafting DIY recipes, a brand new mechanic introduced to Animal Crossing. However, things start to change at a rapid pace as you buy your first house, learn how to craft tools that allow you to access different areas of your island, and establish buildings such as a Museum and Resident Center for your island. All of a sudden, you’re no longer an island visitor but an active resident representative working hard for hours and hours earning Bells and crafting recipes to form a modest island community.

Creating your Perfect Island Paradise

This newest entry in the Animal Crossing series, pushes the amount of freedom and creative expression more than ever before. You can decorate your dream home through an endless supply of DIY projects, build houses and buildings, and even change the layout of the landscape by adding bridges, ramps, ponds and more! After the first week or so playing New Horizons, I started to get a little overwhelmed at how much freedom the game started to give me. My collection of DIY recipes and building power start to grow and so do my choices. I can make parks, recreational areas, gardens, money trees and more. When I was just starting out, I would create whatever I felt like and just earned some bells to pay off my insane debts from the dreaded tanooki slumlord, Tom Nook. However, the more freedom I unlocked the more carefully I thought about how I want to develop my ever growing island community. I feel like an island architect, trying to figure out the best places to put future homes, buildings, and recreational areas to really bring my island to life. It’s a nice change of pace of realistic graphics and insane violent combos in other AAA titles out there. It’s deceivingly simple coming across as a game where you just farm resources. However, there’s layers of depth hidden within where you can truly make Animal Crossing your own. New Horizons gets you so invested in your quaint little island that you just can’t help but to pour all your time into creating your perfect island getaway.

A Return to a Simpler Time

New Horizons is really refreshing, not only because of it’s simple and calming playstyle, but also because it works around real time. If I want to grow a tree or set up a space for a new building to be constructed that doesn’t happen immediately. It takes days for my island developments to take shape. Since the last major Animal Crossing title was released, microtransaction culture has really taken over how games are shaped and developed. Free to play games make a fortune by prompting players to use real money to get immediate results. Even AAA games offer microtransactions to give players more in-game money, XP, and gear right out of the gate. New Horizons, however, returns you to a time when you have to work hard to gather materials and wait to see the fruits of your labor. No microtransactions or convoluted in-game currencies to worry about. The game doesn’t try to throw shortcuts or extra content in your face to get to all the endgame content at once. The success of your village is solely dependent on how much you put into the game, which really makes the New Horizons experience much more meaningful and personal. Sure you can time travel by adjusting your Switch’s clock to skip the days of waiting, but excessive time travelling would cheapen the Animal Crossing experience. Seeing how you’ve transformed a once uncharted island into a bustling community in weeks, months, or even years is a reward you can be proud of and is worth waiting for.

Island Life Isn't Always Glamorous

There are a few hiccups in New Horizons that can make the game slightly annoying to play for hours at a time. For instance, when you're crafting DIY projects you can’t craft several items of the same object at once, so if you have a lot of manila clams you have to keep mashing the a button to craft all the fish bait you want, which can lead to some needless repetitive motions. Speaking of repetitive motions, after spending weeks mining for materials, the constant resource gathering can get a little old. One disappointment that I find with the game is that it doesn’t really diverge or expand on the formula seen in past titles. Sure, New Horizons gives you more freedom than ever before, but accessing that freedom hasn’t really changed. For the most part, you need bells to create buildings and bridges to untie and expand different areas of your island. However, earning bells is the same as ever. You deplete your island of it’s natural resources, sell them, and rinse and repeat. While there are alternate ways to earn bells such as planting money trees and trying your hand at the stalk market, the majority of your income is spent doing the same thing over and over again. It would have been nice to see more variety in earning bells in New Horizons through working odd jobs or playing your hand in different minigames, for example. Unless Nintendo continues to roll out constant updates and in-game events, I worry that some people are going to be burnt out in the long run with the repetitive farming process that Animal Crossing is known for causing them to cast the game to the side half way through making their island paradise. While these issues can be frustrating, luckily, these aren’t deal breaking issues and can be fixed with a quick update or two in the future.

Final Thoughts

All in all, New Horizons is a great switch entry for new and veteran Animal Crossing players alike. It’s a fun, creative, and fulfilling experience to make your dream island. It’s especially a great game to play in quarantine by yourself or with friends online as it bridges the dreaded gap of isolation that social distancing has caused during these hard times. I would highly recommend this game and, despite it’s minor problems and frustrations, I got to give this one a solid 8/10. What do you guys think about Animal Crossing: New Horizons? How many hours have you poured into this title? Comment below, stay safe, and I’ll look forward to talking to you again next time! Dean Willms Gamer. Designer. Friend.