Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review (Game, 2020)
Nintendo knows how to make an immersive world. Their games always have a beautiful, distinct style with wonderful music and memorable character design. They take surprisingly big risks as a gaming company, producing low concept games with high concept gameplay elements. The worlds and intentions are so distinct, yet anyone can pick up and play the games.
Animal Crossing is one of the newer Nintendo franchises (followed by Pikmin and Splatoon), first appearing in the transition period between the N64 and the GameCube. You play as a villager, who moves into a new town and is quickly put in charge. You catch fish and insects, gather fruit, dig for fossils, and collect supplies to build new things for your town. You interact with your neighbors, all human-size talking animals, building relationships that strengthen your community and open up more opportunities.
The series has a lot to explore, but is intentionally very relaxed in its pace. Animal Crossing: New Horizions plays out in real time based on your own location. For me, as of publishing, it is 23 March 2020. It is raining in game and in real life. I’ve already accomplished what I can do in the morning, and will shift to afternoon, evening, and night time tasks as the day progresses. Different fish and insects only come out at certain times of the day, in certain locations, under certain weather conditions, and all based on the season. If I miss something on one rainy day, I have to wait for the next one in real time.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the best Animal Crossing game yet. You choose from four procedurally-generated islands to live on with two random villagers and one variety of fruit. I was assigned Rowan, a tiger, and Tammy, a yellow bear cub, as my initial neighbors. I also had abundant peach trees and a large home island to grow on.
Tom Nook, the iconic business raccoon of the series, declares you owe him 5000 miles (a new currency in the game) to pay for your trip and initial tent. You earn miles by completing tasks, visible on your Nook Phone. These include catching fish, gather sticks, selling weeds, and talking to your neighbors (among many others). You eventually meet Blathers, the museum curator owl, who wants you to collect unique samples of fossils, insects, and fish so he can get the permit to build a museum. The itinerary only grows from there.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is an exploration, collection, and creative game that you can play at your own pace. I know from previous games that I love filling the museum, so I prioritized finding the 15 specimens so the museum could be constructed. That’s my preference. You can also immediately start designing your own patterns for t-shirts/canvases/face paint to customize your character and eventually your house. You can dive right in to paying back Tom Nook or discover new DIY recipes to build new tools, clothes, and decorations for the island. There is no wrong way to play.
The game controls easily, though some of the specific button placements aren’t what I would expect. The left d-stick controls movement, letting you go anywhere from tiptoe to job based on how fast you push. B lets you run. Y (not A) lets you gather and A is your general action button for tools.
Each type of tool has its own quirks. The shovel and axes work by standing right next to the object you’re trying to hit and pressing A. Stand too far away and you whiff. To fish, you have to cast the line in front of the fish or it won’t notice it. To catch insects, well, I’m still trying to master what, exactly, the game wants there. Same with watering plants, actually.
There are three areas of the game that lead to a little bit of frustration: camera angles, tool use, and online play.
The more intricate tools are hindered by the perspective of the game. The beautiful 3D world is a dream to explore but can be tricky to interact with. The game does not tell you directly that you can use the right stick to shift to an overhead or level view (rather than the default 3/4 angle). The overhead view gives you a bit more precision when it comes to catching insects, casting the fishing line just right, or lining up to water the plants.
Missing wouldn’t be that frustrating if your tools didn’t break after a certain amount of uses; they do. I usually go through 2-3 of the beginner watering cans or most of an intermediate watering can before I finish the daily watering of my beautiful Autumnal-colored garden next to my spooky house on the island of Halloween. When your tool is done, you have to make another one, which means gathering the supplies to build it, going to a workbench, building a new tool, and returning to the task you were doing.
Watering is one of the easier ones to pick back up—you’ll see water droplets on the flowers you watered. Other tasks like chopping trees for wood or hitting stones for iron ore have no way of showing you your progress. I understand the need for replacing tools to add more gameplay variety, but I wouldn’t have to replace the tools so often if the camera angle/character proximity to interaction wasn’t so precise. For once in my life, I’d like to see a 3D world exploration game like this that doesn’t make accurately lining up a watering can harder than a boss fight in an action game.
The online play is wonderful once you get into it. You can invite people on your friend list to join you on your island. You can explore together and trade items. You can also visit your friends on their islands. It’s a lot of fun exploring someone else’s world, getting supplies you wouldn’t normally see, and just goofing off with your friends. The in-game chat is slow—you’re using a controller to type and that’s always slow—but it pops up directionally based on where you are compared to everyone else. It’s a nice wayfinding feature I didn’t expect. There’s also a really cute animation sequence to fly in and out of the island, where you see everyone waving to greet you or say goodbye as your pilot tells you the time of day and weather conditions at your destination.
Nintendo struggles with the transition into and out of online play in most of their console games. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the transition is laughably bad. You have to unlock your island either with a specific code or to anyone on your friend list to let someone in. If your friend has not unlocked their island, you can’t visit at all. Then, when you fly out, you can’t do anything until everyone on your friend’s island is out of any action or Nook Phone window. They can hold you hostage indefinitely by leaving their Nook Phone on.
Once the interactions are cleared out, everyone’s game is halted for your arrival. You get a wonderful cutscene with villagers waving at you, while they get a PowerPoint-looking slide of a cartoon plane and flashing green dots. Up to eight people can visit an island at once, which is fun when everyone is there. Imagine your game stopping for 20 seconds at a time as Nintendo drops different players onto your island. Only one person can travel at a time, so if you’re trying to fly out with someone else, you’ll keep getting bounced back to try again at the airport desk. Flying back takes the same amount of time and, again, is conditional on no one trying to fish or talk or check their phone or sell things or gather or swing an ax or any other intended gameplay feature. Otherwise, you’re stuck in a hold with no way out until everyone stops what they’re doing so you can leave.
Nintendo needs to reconsider how the online connection works. Even though it’s only about 20 seconds (at most), it can take a lot longer because Nintendo wants everyone to know someone is traveling and halts gameplay for everyone until the online connection is complete. It’s bad. It’s Pokemon Sword/Shield handing out temporary online activity bans for their servers dropping connections at launch bad (and yes, I’m still bitter about that).
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a wonderful game in spite of these flaws. We’re all only a few days in and Nintendo will have surprises in store. Seasons, holidays, and special events add in more gameplay options throughout the year. They can sneak in more and more elements as they patch the game to maintain it, so there are always new surprises to find. I mean, I ran into a ghost last night when I couldn’t sleep and spent 10 minutes finding all its missing parts after I scared it. I’ve never seen a ghost in the game before and was absolutely delighted. Anyone who thinks they might be interested in this game should get it, as you can find a way through the wide variety of gameplay to make your own fun on your island.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for the Nintendo Switch.
