This week I’m going to be covering an older game I used to play when I was younger, Animal Crossing New Leaf. It has since been overshadowed by its successor with better graphics but less content, Animal Crossing New Horizons, but I’ve come back to the game after over 1200 hours played since that game’s release in 2020. I’m burnt out from that game, so I’m getting my Animal Crossing fix this way. It’s a little more nerve-wracking to me, because some of the quality of life mechanics aren’t there, but I’ve been enjoying it so far. There’s definitely charm to 3DS games. In Animal Crossing New Leaf, you play as the mayor of a town (you become the mayor by mistake, coming off the train on your way here and the secretary, the famous dog Isabelle, simply will not take no for an answer) and you bring it up into a spot on the map. You add to the town museum through catching fish and bugs, unearthing fossils, and testing your luck against finding fake vs real art, you can start public works projects to decorate the town and expand or establish buildings, and grow your relationships with different animals who are “villagers” in your town.
FUN RATING: 3/5. This game is more about vaguely repetitive daily tasks than it is about anything else, but that’s okay. It can still be interesting even with that! You have the option to go to Tortimer Island and do different minigames like catching a specific amount of bugs, matching up furniture in houses, etc. You can go online with Club Tortimer and play with other people, but that’s not really advised unless it’s late at night, as you can run into little kids and hackers in equal measure (the 3DS games are not as heavily policed now that the Switch is out). You can also pay 500 of the in-game currency, bells- the cost of a couple shells off your town beach, to go explore other people’s towns in dreams.
EASE RATING: 4/5. This game is pretty easy. It’s not supposed to be a challenge. The only problems you’ll have are villagers moving in on top of your flowerbeds and getting enough money to pay off the public works projects all on your own, as the villagers are very unlikely to help you pay off much of the goal of hundreds of bells. If you’re comfortable with just spending a couple hours on Tortimer island catching rare beetles, and laying down paths where you don’t want villagers to move, you should be fine in this game. Animal Crossing is not intended to be hard, although there have been some frustrating moments.
REPLAYABILITY RATING: 1/5. Some people might not like me for this, but I think this game is not very replayable. You can make a couple of towns, but you have to erase your data. In-game progress is based on real time, so it takes a long time to make real progress unless you want to hack your game, which can potentially ruin your cartridge if done extremely poorly. You can keep going in this game for ages, but if you want to restart it’ll sure be awhile before you get anywhere.
OVERALL: Despite my poor review of some of this game, I’ve actually really been enjoying it. In order to stay on top of the daily stuff in this game, I play for approximately 15 minutes when I have time, and that’s been about the extent of it recently. I’m only about three weeks into this save file, so my Dream Address is incredibly boring, so I won’t be providing it here, but ask me again in a month and I could probably give you something decent to look at. There’s not much of a community left for this game anymore, with many people having migrated to New Horizons, but I’m using this as a way to deal with New Horizons burnout and still get the Animal Crossing content I enjoy. It’s been interesting coming back after so long with new Animal Crossing knowledge and seeing what’s different. I never ended up getting further than a couple of months in this game as a kid because me staying on task for a particular game is very difficult if I’m not hooked on it, but I understand the complaints some players have about the lack of the same furniture from New Leaf- that’s actually one of the reasons I came back to New Leaf. I’ve been enjoying it so far, but I’m not sure how long I’ll keep playing it. I might look into manipulating my town save file to move some stuff around, as Nintendo isn’t super bothered by that anymore, and that might keep my interest for longer.
I haven’t ever actually played Animal Crossing, but this really makes me want to! It sounds pretty relaxing as far as video games go.
I have never played Animal Crossing but my little brother is obsessed and form this blog I can see why.