The Dissonance Between Old and New Animal Crossing 

To me New Horizons feels like that one episode of Spongebob where Squirdward moves to his perfect community and live a perfect life every single day, only to quickly grow tired of it because nothing interesting ever happens anymore to shake things up, as he puts it, it's perhaps "too much paradise"

Honestly, the biggest thing that struck me about New Leaf vs New Horizons was the tree. Remember? When you start your town in New Leaf, you plant a ceramonial tree in the town plaza that you get to watch grow. And when your town is a year old, you get a statue of that tree in celebration for you achievement of building and cultivating this community. Watching that tree grow was more rewarding than earning Nook Miles will ever be.

It’s a great dollhouse. A bad Animal Crossing game. You’ve articulated how I feel so well

my first AC game was Wild World. I would constantly speak to my villagers and they would always say new stuff, it was amazing. One day i noticed a repeated line of dialogue and i distinctly remember saying “ah-ha! so they’re not infinite!!”. Now enter New Horizons, where god forbid you have 2 villagers with the same personality type. They’re just mindless puppets strolling around. The whole focus of the game is just decorating, and villagers are yet another piece of furniture to make your place look superficially pretty.

the hype i felt for NH was indescribable... i have never been more disappointed in a game. I need the animals to call me a stupid broke bitch

Everything is so overly "realistic" in New Horizons and I miss all the quirky stuff in the old games. Like for example, now there's a chessboard item which is neat but it removed all the giant chess items. Having a giant king piece pretty much double the height of the player character was so silly. Or how the Gyroids now. They're all ~aesthetic~ & unintrusive now. But in the old games they used to be big & strange. I just miss that kind of energy the game had.

man you reminded my how much i miss just swearing in youtube videos. no stupid sound effects. or baby words. just a normal person swearing and saying whats on their mind

New Horizons was too focused on single player and decorating. The villagers had never been more repetitive and one dimensional. I felt like there was more to see and do in the GameCube version. It took months to get features new leaf had at launch, and many features it just never got. It finally gave us a outside only vendor area somewhat similar to main street. But it was off island, behind a longer loading screen and you could only go there by yourself

describing the villagers as decorations and not actual neighbors living with you in a community is SUCH a good way of explaining it. and it makes me so sad, as someone who has played since i was a child (gamecube ac was one of my favorite games as a kid) i have a LOT of hours in acnh (mainly from 2020) but much of my time has been spent trying to design it, rather than enjoying it/my villagers. i hope that the next animal crossing game will return the focus to the villagers and community. actually having to build a relationship with your neighbors is so much more rewarding, and keeps you coming back. like with the gamecube one, i would run upstairs after school and spend hours talking to my villagers, sending them letters, and running around town doing activities. i want that feeling back!

I remember on the gamecube my villager got mad at me and was hostile at me at first and i was sad by it, but then the villager got nicer and i really felt like i had a connection with that villager. Starting them off worshiping the ground you walk on and never being mad at you made them feel lobomized. It feels so worthless to build a bond when you're already at the top.

I used to play the OG game on gamecube with my mum. She passed away a few years ago, and sometimes I feel like going back to our town and meeting up with her character again. But it feels.... really hard.

Hear me out... Imagine in new horizons you could start out as just a regular resident and then later down the line had the OPTION to become the resident representative and depending on if you chose to take that opportunity some players would have more or less limitations. As for the villagers there could be a system in which when your friendship level is low/average the villagers could move on their own while if it was high they'd ask for your advice, which would give you a reason to come back to the game and talk to your villagers in order to keep them on the island. I feel like that would both satisfy older players who are there for the life sim experience and the players who are looking for creative freedom to turn their island into whatever they want it to be.

15:15 there’s something about an evening stroll through an abandoned new leaf town that gives the game its soul. That poignant reminder that life moves on without you. It’s completely absent in NH.

I think point 3 is spot on. I have some friends who *really liked* New Horizons and I don't hold that against them, but when I explain "what I liked about older Animal Crossing games was that I was just another member of the town rather than a god building my dream town," they just don't get it. "Why wouldn't you want total control over how everything looks and is laid out and make it perfect." Well, because that's just a different experience. When a friend visits from out of town, its fun to show them everything you've learned about where you live - the best restaurants, recreational spots, etc. *That* is what I liked about the first 3 AC games, but now (and even with New Leaf to an extent) I feel like I'm less checking little towns other people are a part of and more like I'm having a theme park aggressively explained to me like a Funko Pop collector who's a little too proud of how much time or money they've put into their hobby.

the furniture sets being missing ruins it the most for me. i hate having "normal" furniture. i dont want a realistic looking house, i want my animal crossing furniture sets! the ones i love! and cant wait to collect from nooks! nooks in new horizons is useless, everyday its boring furniture that i dont want

Funny enough, the only true personality the villagers have, is when they talk to each other

"they have absolutely NOTHING of worth to say" 😭🤣god the ruthless rundown is so accurate

That's a general thing with Japanese entertainment I noticed. Everyone is so damn nice in kids media now. The og Pokemon is the most popular example of this shift.

As a person who played new horizons as their first animal crossing game, it was like night and day when I first picked up New Leaf for my 3DS. It felt like a genuine simulation experience, whereas New Horizons feels like a design contest where you can manipulate the game, island, and villagers to do as you please. The game no longer fits the narrative of a life sim if you’re given too much independence with it. Playing New Leaf was like a cultural reset. It felt like a living breathing town that moves and grows even when you aren’t present. You can leave New Horizons and come back years later to have it still be exactly the same, like you’re jumping into a photograph each time you play. I do find myself enjoying certain aspects of New Horizons, such as the DLC which builds off of Happy Home Designer. I love the ideas Nintendo had with the customization aspects of New Horizons, but I truly hadn’t played an animal crossing game until I played New Leaf. While I love decorating and designing spaces in New Horizons, I’ll be visiting New Leaf or Wild World for the genuine life sim experience.

OG Animal Crossing OST hits a special place frfr.

The problem with the newer AC games is that all their different mechanics are at odds with each other whereas the early pre-CF games' mechanics mostly complemented one another. We shouldn't be able to manage so much of the infrastructure in New Leaf if it can be easily ruined by villagers randomly moving wherever they want and devastating the aesthetics you worked so hard to create. When you can't control anything at all then it doesn't really matter where the villagers plop their house. The focus should really be put into fleshing out villager personalities, adding more variety to the dialogues and continuous improvement of customization options without making cuts of older features but also keeping it reasonable and not allowing us to become literally God. The overall tone used to be so good when we couldn't overdevelop or urbanize our towns, just a cozy and slightly melancholic FOREST community. Yes, forest. The game's Japanese title, Animal Forest, which it's anything but at this point and the series really forgot its roots now despite this title still serving as a reminder of what they used to be.

"I hope the plane crashes" that shit has me in fucking tears

I haven't had the desire to play NH since I dropped it 4-5 months after it released, even though I really wanted to turn my island into a Japanese suburb. Late last year though I booted up NL for shits and giggles and nearly cried just walking around. I don't even think I talked to anyone. Maybe it was just nostalgia from when I was a kid, but even though I didn't really use the ordinance feature to customize the town, I had made that place my home. I'm scared to think how I'd feel going back to WW. My memories of that game are even vaguer, playing in the wee hours of the morning before school when everyone was asleep and all the shops were closed. I played both WW and NH at points in my life when I had all the time in the world, but I know I only enjoyed one enough to still think back on it so fondly.

Thank you John sex, creator of sex. This is another great creation (behind sex of course)

Great video. I came in ready to be a NH defender, but actually agree with all your points. I have ONLY played the original gamecube version before NH, a childhood experience I treasure dearly. I've put 2000 hours into NH with a perfectly customized terraformed desert castle botanical garden crumbling temple theme. It took so long. So tedious. So frustrating. Its a poorly optimized and clunky experience, even though I'm obsessed with it. The villagers are just set pieces, even if I love their designs, and relationships between them are largely my imagination. I hate how much the villagers love me... I hate how sanitized the experience is.

"where is the Feed&Seed?" ... CHUCK'S HOUSE

19:16 Shoutouts to this specific bit of B-roll footage. In New Leaf if you did that they would've reacted. But there it's like the locust never existed to her. Completely out of sight out of mind.

The real problem is that Nintendo released it with several features from older games not present at launch, and only added them back in a few updates before dropping the game entirely, while a lot of those features are still missing or very poorly integrated. The thing that baffled me most was that this game was centered around being ON AN ISLAND and at launch they didn’t have diving or swimming… ON AN ISLAND. But New Leaf had that feature day one. But the fact they only thought to include it after launch in an update says it all. I know launching RIGHT at the start of the Pandemic also didn’t help things, it certainly boosted the sales numbers, but also led to Nintendo caring less because New Horizons was becoming a ‘fad’ during the pandemic. Then after 1-2 years Nintendo just dropped it entirely. While New Leaf was alive for basically the 3DS whole life span, continuously updating it and even making a HUGE update with the Amiibo content that added so much to an already great game. TLDR; New Horizons is mid, New Leaf has a lot more going for it

things i enjoyed in nh: - placing furniture outside - being able to change your skin colour - more pocket space thats it

Next animal crossing, have it take place in a village/town, not a deserted island. Completely rewrite all the characters. Remove crafting, speed up terraforming and pathing. Remove some control. Done easy, that’s all they really need

i really resonated with this video as someone who spent a lot of time playing every game in the series during my childhood and it really makes me miss the old vibes, i hope we get a new game that's more of a life sim and less a creative tool, though i do like a lot of the creative ideas and understand why people may like NH

They need to add back punishments for abandoning your town, make it so the people in your island feel like actual people, add back the old NPCs through things you can build just like Nook Shop, and not just slap them on like an afterthought. Make an actual proper Animal Crossing game the more customization is great we just need the actual substance and not just a sandbox.

Someone made an entire, genuinely quality, hour-plus long animation that actually expands upon some of your complaints about how much controll you have in New Horizons, making the player character out to be essentially a god that controlls everything. So this is definitely not an uncommon sentiment.

This is a feeling I've had for a while, and while I am seeing more people share it, I don't see a lot of them go back to the first game, usually just New Leaf. The most desire I feel to play any AC game is for the original. My life has become busy and the games I want to play that actually end keep growing, so the prospect of putting time back into it is daunting, but there's no other game I'd choose if I ever finally said 'I need to add a life sim game to my schedule.' I still occasionally listen to the original's soundtrack at the appropriate hours of day from time to time, and I only recently stopped almost obsessively listening to it's special rain music whenever it rained.

This video is another example of smaller creators making higher quality videos than their larger counterparts. I remember the acute disappointment I felt in NH when my villagers started saying the same things over and over again when I haven't even played for a significant time, where on GameCube even after 8 whole damn months, they still found new ways to call me a dumb bitch.

I really missed having conflict among the neighbors and having to pick sides - was definitely why I played City Folk for half a year or so. The feud between Becky the chicken and Wendy the sheep was legendary, as it caused my original bestie Melba to move & every new villager who came in was subsequently sucked into orbit. Will never forget how disappointing it was to get Becky in New Horizons and see her just be a complete suck-up whose snootiness just comes down to being interested in fashion.

the fact that the first installment of the series is still looked upon so fondly and is touted as having features that the sequels didn’t live up to is kind of cool, though. I’ve been playing games in this franchise since ACGC and I can definitely say that the older games have a charm to them that i don’t think can ever be replicated

Ohhh my gosh I agree with you so much. I also was incredibly excited for New Horizons, preordered it digitally because "I've loved every other AC game !", now really regretting that because if I bought it physically at least I could resell it or hell even give it away for free honestly. Because of NH I never let myself get excited for or preorder games again, lol. It feels soulless. What used to be a game about living with animals that could help with loneliness is now just a soulless doll house. You're absolutely right that they're just decorations now. Making your island look good is all New Horizons is good for, but that's not what AC should be about imo. Tho for me I'm like "why would I care about making my island look good when I don't care about anyone living on it?" It's a really shallow game to me. I don't know why the devs decided the animals and their personalities weren't important anymore but it makes me sad. I agree with what you said you like about the game, but I think it's telling that all of those things are just decorating AND THEY DON'T EVEN DO IT WELL! The old Animal Crossings genuinely helped me through lonely times and also helped me learn English - I could never say that about New Horizons. If anything NH makes me feel lonely lmao.

In New Leaf, years and years ago, as a child, I walked in on my at the time favorite Villager, Frank, and Curt talking. I hadn't known this could happen, but Frank was planning on moving out and a little cutscene played where he was asking Curt (I was very attached to the two, so I guess I got them to like me a bunch) to take care of my character when he was gone. It was so incredibly sweet and this kind of thing is missing from New Horizons. I wish there were more of that!

The karl pilkington reference has boosted Joey onto my wanted villagers list lmao

13:56 You think that's bad? I've had that happen three times in a row within the same MINUTE. Dude spouted the same dialogue he's said countless times before, so in search of something new or even just something different I spoke to him again immediately after the conversation ended, to which he simply repeated the exact same dialogue he JUST said word for word. I rolled my eyes and spoke to him again right after that, and he.. Repeated it. Again. I felt a sudden sting of utter disappointment, defeated. I walked away that time and came to the saddening conclusion that there's no reason to bother talking to villagers anymore, so days went by where I simply ignored them. It felt wrong feeling this way about them, I mean the villagers are THE reason for playing an Animal Crossing game. Yet everytime I played it I felt more resentment towards them knowing that there's no point talking with them at all, just a bunch of empty husks repeating themselves ad nauseam. No thoughts, no meaningful interactions. I should not have felt this way about ANIMAL CROSSING I mean c'mon. So it didn't take long before I stopped playing altogether.

it's so strange to me that they automated what used to be interactions with the villagers.... only to make you painstakingly remove and add each wall by hand

Johnathan Intercourse casually doing a Perfect impression of the cow's Animalese for no reason.

Honestly, the only things that I feel were really wrong with NH is that A.) If you have a villager of a certain personality type, you basically have ALL villagers of that personality type. They all use the same lines, just with different character models saying them, and B.) For all the leaps and bounds in what you can do to customize your town/island/whatever itself, there's very little customization for your house. Instead of three floors with five rooms each (center room and a room in each direction), you get one floor with five rooms, a single room basement, and a single room upper floor. So instead of 15 rooms to customize for your house, you only have 7 in NH, around only HALF of what you could have before. Though, I can see where some of the smaller, finer details might also bother people. For example, the fact that aside from the Mario themed items, there are none of the Nintendo IP items like we saw in NL. I feel as if NH took two steps forward with all the advancements in island customization, the crafting system, adding cooking as a thing, being able to move entire trees around, and the mystery islands you could fly and sail to... but then took one and a half steps backwards with villager individuality, home customization and fun little details.

animal crossing games have always built on the previous, its such a bummer that so much stuff is missing. so much flavour was lost in a game thats all about vibes lol. the multiplayer island and barista job deserved to become series mainstays, the shopping street/city couldve easily been implemented (we eventually got that campsite area but cmon), having to engage with your neighbours to convince them to stay, all the town events they couldve brought back (wild world had some minor ones that i loved, like the garden competition and la-di-day), hell i was praying we would get pocket camp items including flowers and bugs. they couldve made the ultimate animal crossing and instead they stripped it back way too much. instead of bringing it back to basics they stripped everything except what those tumblr girlies with hacked copies of acnl wouldve wanted to make their ~aesthetic~ towns. i really really hope the next game in the series perfects what was added in new horizons while bringing back what previous games also perfected

I was so excited for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. After Seven long years since the release of the last game, I was hyped on launch day. But I also didn’t play it for long, for many of the reasons you listed. What I find especially sad is that ACNH has had a bit of a ‚Botw Syndrome‘ issue, where a game explodes in popularity, and suddenly every game in the genre uses similar game mechanics and ideas without actually improving on them. For example: Fantasy life was a great life sim/rpg experience for the 3Ds, with charming music, great art and area design, and tons of things to do. The recently(ish) announced sequel, Fantasy Life i: the girl who steals time, focuses less on the unique contrasting area design, and instead has you *on* *an* *island* *that* *you* *can* *decorate* *to* *your* *liking.* The parts of the first game I loved are now so unimportant that they were barely even shown in advertising. The plastic-like artstyle has the same issues ACNHs has for me: it looks corporate and soulless, and doesn’t have any of the charm the previous game had. I hope that the game was just poorly advertised and the island builder is actually only a small part of it, but it kinda looks like they went „Animal crossing new horizons sold well!!! Let’s just do that again!!!“ even though the original Fantasy Life had so much going for it. So yeah, not only was ACNH a disappointment for me, it also might’ve been bad for the industry (to me, specifically) as many games I would’ve like instead copy a successful game that *I* don’t enjoy.

Being a heavy Sims-esque control freak like I am, I can see the appeal of a lot of things about NH. However there is something neat about just letting everything happen around what you set up with little control over it. But . . . while I dont mind not being able to choose villagers, or even being able to keep them around by doing stuff for them, could we have *_at the very least_* been allowed to map out where houses can be? That doesn't sound too far outside of Mayoral jurisdictions.

Honestly I think the fact that nothing happens while you're gone is one of the biggest things for me. The only reason I'll revisit an animal crossing game is to see how things have changed while I was gone, to see what I've missed. In new horizons, the answer is absolutely fuck all. And my dumb ass heard they were gonna do updates for a whole year and genuinely believed they would add everything by the end. It was only after the last update that I realised how... lacking it felt. Also none of the updates coaxed me back to the game, I am very much in the "played it for less than 6 months" camp. I'm also still annoyed that you need to pay for an online subscription in order to share patterns. Sadly I don't have an earlier game to go back to since I was never huge into animal crossing as a kid, I mostly just watched my mum lmao. The only one I even still own is New Leaf, mainly because it's downloaded, which I only played a bit of. I'm pretty sure I even inherited the mayorship from my mum, so it's barely even *my* town. Maybe I should try the original again as well...

A lot of animal crossing players share this same sentiment, but my ideal animal crossing game would be somewhere between population growing, new leaf, and new horizons. the small-town charm and unique dialogue from population growing, the wealth of activities and interesting NPCs in new leaf, and the endless customization of new horizons. I don't think anyone wants this series to regress, but almost everyone, myself included, would love an animal crossing game that feels like a true expansion on those classic animal crossing experiences

you put my exact thoughts into words!! i wish there was a way to toggle the moving out feature for certain villagers so you could still have that level of surprise if you wanted it but keep your besties- although in new leaf the game just seemed to know who i was invested in any way and they always stayed. i also hate how the last villager to move in in new horizons can’t stay… it makes it so you feel like you have to villager hunt and can’t let randomization do its thing which takes the fun of it. i also really miss the feeling of building relationships over time. ofc you want some friendly characters, but those relationships should deepen over time. my favorite relationships in new leaf were with the snootys and crankys who were rude to me at first, but over the course of a few years truly seemed to enjoy my presence. it felt so much more realistic and rewarding, and i wish they would bring it back!!

I agree about the control thing. Like, in New Leaf, once when I was a kid I didn't play for a few days. I don't remember why, maybe I wanted to play something else, or more likely my toxic mother didn't let me play at all. And when I finally came back, I recieved a letter. Flip left. The thing is, I liked Flip a lot. He was one of my favorite neighbours. And since I was a kid, it made me cry that he left Something my video game-hating mother couldn't understand. I know you can prevent your villagers from leaving in New Leaf but since I wasn't playing for a few days as I said, I couldn't prevent it. But this experience is the entire reason I still remember the guy to this day. Apparently villagers can't move out without your permission in New Horizons. Well to be fair, it is a good thing in several aspects, but also I wouldn't remember Flip as much if he didn't leave back then. The emotional impact wouldn't be as strong.

Finally someone who said it, Animal Crossing has been my favorite franchise since I was a child, New Horizons never clicked for me and I have it abandoned for several months, you stated all of the reasons I've been telling my friends of why I do not like it. It's a widely loved game and I'm sad I can't be part of that crowd, because I do not enjoy it.

I grew up with the GameCube Animal Crossing, so honestly my number one wish is that they’ll release some sort of remaster or remake of it in the future. I’m not holding my breath, but it’s also true that it’s over 20 years old and it’s never seen an official rerelease of any capacity, so they could potentially market it as being a blast from the past while people wait for the next mainline entry.

it’s a great decorating game. but that’s all. personally i never put it down for more than a couple weeks, i have over 4000 hours in acnh & still play it regularly 😭 & mind u no one has visited my island except my ex boyfriend, & that was like 3 years ago. so i obviously love the game, but only for what is it. i love to decorate. but as someone who has poured so much time into it, i’d do anything for the villagers to be more engaging, have more personality, tasks for u to do, SOMETHING. ur right they have basically just fallen under another category of decoration and the game really suffers bc of it. always makes me sad to hear about ppl who only played for a couple months & didn’t touch it again but i understand

Back at I don't know what year I managed to homebrew my wii and started to get Japanese games into it so I could experience those exclusive games including gamecube games. I got them and went at it. After I got bored and confused cuz I couldn't read Japanese I decided to boot AC once more and... the save was gone. It got deleted. The reason: Whenever you play another region game the GC card must be formated and I did just that without realizing it. I was shocked and destroyed. It wasn't just my town. Some of my family had their house there. All of our combined experiences GONE. I was shocked and extremelly sad. I tried to look for a backup save. Something. Nothing came up. We lost everything... but... Nowadays... I realized. It wasn't so bad. We didn't lose something: Our memories. We would remember what we did and it turned into a precious memory. We kinda considered creating a new town but... it wouldn't be the same. We weren't the same people anymore. With the same free time and what not. and you know what? That's life. Sure, it's a videogame but life is like that. You lose things out of nowhere. You visit places and meet people that you will never see again. Make new friends and even forget old ones. It's not evil. It's just life. In a weird way I'm kinda glad it happened cuz it's now such a special memory altough I admit that I'd love tho visit that place again. It would definetively unlock memories that are resting within my brain. Unfortunately I can't say that for new horizons. I've done it and it will happen again. If I go back it will be as if nothing ever happened and that's... that's rough. You don't feel happy to be there again, you don't miss anything or anyone and yes the flat characters mean that I have no special funny memories or stories about them. I guess not a lot of people got this experience btw. Playing the same town with friends or familly and I can tell you. It really sucks now. You could interact and mess with others. You can't really mess with others now besides moving their stuff that's outside but a lot of things are limited to the first player that stepped on the island. They can only do things like moving houses and build bridges. You can't even transfer money or something to other players. We had to bury bell bags. On GC and Wii it was very primitive and limited but man it was so fun being able to put things up for sale. Even overpricing them cuz you knew somebody else wanted them. The gyroid trafficking was REAL. Our favorite joke was adding traps around the exit of the house cuz most of the times you'd fall on them. Maybe you forgot your shovel or didn't see it. It was so good. They are way easier to avoid on New horizons. So yeah. New horizons is amazing but man it doesn't have the same spark and I think is not my nostalgia. It's really not the same. Not a bad game... it's just not the same...

The funniest thing about the self-made mini games in NH it's that it feels like we've regressed back to Wild World and City Folk times, where (due to hardware limitations in the case of the ds ig) we had to improvise games to have something to do to pass the time with friends. But the fact the mini games were absent in new horizons when they were present in new leaf was weird and one of the things I truly dislike about this game

I am in a constant state of wanting to play ACGC and WW. They are still so special to me after all these years

I could not agree more! In fact, about a month ago I felt the pull of New Horizons as well. I started it up, feeling like there was some catching up to do. There were some villagers that I wanted, and I hadn’t decorated all that much in the past.. 3 or 4 years I’d spent not playing it For two weeks.. stuff was pretty good, I hadn’t checked out the free update content. I got the Roost, I paid for all Harv’s campsite shops (and didn’t get a thank you for it), I grew some Gold Roses, made a couple landmarks and raised my island to 5 stars! Even redid some of the rooms in my house and paid off all the debts with my saved up Bells In doing so, it very quickly stagnated. My daily Animal Crossing routine had… water flowers, hand out gifts, sell fossils… now what? Once a week, I guess I could check Harv’s NPCs for unique furniture. Maybe grind for some Nook Milestones. But I’d also adopted habits that other players had, like now I understand why people buy shovels in bulk instead of craft them. I could never find the DIY recipes I wanted, so I traded with others and went to treasure islands. With such a slow, slow passing of time each day, and nothing to do in them, I wanted to expedite every process I had, because I was so… bored with myself ‘S been about another month now, since I felt the pull again. It took two weeks to experience everything, and I’m desperately grasping for more to do in that game. But… I’ve done everything, and I don’t want to log in every day for one more piece of something I could *maybe* do It eventually just stagnated to the point where all I wanted was to play New Leaf. Buuuuut my 3DS is broken, so,

Literally. After ACNH dropped i played it for 3 days, admittedly I time traveled, and then finished the game in record time. At the time or release it was very boring. The content trickled in slowly and by that time I was already on to other games. I came back and then had a good time with the last few free updates, but when I learned it wouldn't be getting any more updates, I literally abandoned it. I made my island pretty and now it's an app on my switch home screen, lol. I feel like its borderline abandonware.

I like the og AC because I like being yelled at

the combination of serious documentary thoughts and hilarious yelling gameplay is everything i needed xD thank you for an amazing video. i have been waiting for someone to make something like this for forever, thank you for putting into a video what we've all experienced

Mr. Sex is expanding ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) his (New) Horizons by covering AC! Jokes aside, interested to see what yu have to say

I have a really cool idea that I think could fix a ton with the Villagers. They should add an affinity chart system. Similar to Xenoblade Chronicles 1, the villagers will interact with each other. When you talk to then they might tell you about something that happened, which is then followed up by a notification saying affinity has changed. This system would allow your villagers to have spice again and also add a mechanic where you can be a mediator. Sometimes you'll have to do tasks or talk to people in order to mediate. Sometimes both villagers could give you bias sides to the story and you have to ask around with other villagers to get the full story. This system can effect not just the villagers but even yourself, as sometimes the villager will be mad at a villagers who you're best friends with and make you an enemy as well.

Good old Fart Kart. A true Nintendo classic! 🤣

Sharing my opinion on NH being my first AC game. I honestly get it. I have seen countless gameplays of wild world, new leaf, and the original and they all seem to have so much more flavor than current AC. I honestly think what happened was that the Devs tried to fix everything that players felt were wrong in previous games. “I wanna change this…””I wish I could do this…”Man this would make the game so much more fun.” But what ended up happening was that the game got changed too much. The game has evolved from a life simulator to a decoration game because those are the features that players liked best. I also agree that some of the updates did try their best to fix features that players missed such as, more furniture, more npcs, etc. HOWEVER, having more restrictions and keeping the game similar to past entries would have caused way more problems in the long run. Look at Wild world and city folk, its a simple port and many players don’t see the point in buying the other because they are too similar. ACNH needed to be big and much more unique because it had been 7(?) years since new leaf. This is why we have DIYS and Terraforming. I’m not going to say NH is perfect because no game is but it does but I feel it has improved from previous entries on different levels. Obviously NH is my favorite because its my 1st AC so this opinion might not even matter in the long run but the main point i’m trying to get a across is that there will never be a “perfect” animal crossing. People will always find something to complain about.

You just put into words exactly how I feel about this game since it lauched in 2020... Despite splatoon being my favourite game franchise ever, I still got more hours on ACNH than I do on both splatoon 2 and 3 combined on my switch, yet I still didn't enjoy it as much as I would've liked. I don't know if it was the flavorless npc's, the lack of activities in the game besides customising, the ost that I didn't find as catchy and memorable as the older entries, or the loss of some key mechanics/npcs/shops from the older games, but nowadays, although I have spent almost an entire year playing the game everyday, constantly grinding on nookazon and on discord servers, now I can't seem to bring myself to play more than a week before feeling bored and burned out and wanting to play something else... It's awful really, I even made my own amiibo cards to bring all of my favourite villagers to my island, made my island's plan, and even managed to get the legendary Raymond before his amiibo card was released ! I have so many stories and anecdotes on this game, yet today I just can't manage to look back on it in a positive light. Hopefully in the next entry of the series (on the next nintendo console probably ?) they'll try to go back to animal crossing's roots, that's all I'm hoping for honestly. (or at the very least give npcs more than 3 lines of dialogue please)

the direction of animal crossing games makes me feel conflicted. because on one hand, i love new horizons and the customisation and freedom it offers, but it is missing the charm of the older games. it doesnt feel like a little virtual world i can escape to with villagers that actually feel like people, when wild world and new leaf have always been that for me. and i feel like that small town charm will never come back because now theyve given us all this freedom they cant really take it back (i do hope villager dialogue is improved at least). idk its bittersweet, new leaf is truly a perfect balance i wish theyd go back to that

Man when you switched to Animal Crossing for the GCN and I heard that music, it felt like a warm blanket was delicately placed on my shoulders. What an era.

The fucking watering can bit lmao. This is a really excellent video, subbed.

The new acnh just doesn't feel the same...but somehow, I still enjoy playing it regardless of its missing features.

I *really* hope the next game focuses on breaching the gap between old and new. A lot of the new ideas in NH are great, but I still want to feel like I'm playing an AC game. Everything from the music, art direction, gameplay and the characters feels too different. NH is the only AC I've played that doesn't get me excited to boot the game up every morning, because I know there's nothing new. I mean I'm still hyped to talk to my WW villagers every day even when I have nothing left to do in the game, and to see what the NL villagers try to rope me into doing.

You can expand upon clunky implementation of the new features. The devs did not go all in on the new system. You remember how you used need resources to build the first bridge and houses? Another issue is fact that when a villager leaves, another starts moving in a day or two after.

"A peppy villager knows nothing but being a chronically online girl failure" ...feeling pretty attacked here, man

i pray that if they make a new game they keep the good stuff from new leaf but bring back the customization of acnh, and make the villagers not just immediatly nice to you 1sec after meeting them.

as a lifelong animal crossing fan starting from the gamecube and onwards- this is 100% valid and most of us feel the exact same way. it was the feeling of being lost in a new, unforgiving yet heartwarming world

i died when you screamed at Joey XD he was my FAV character in wild world. the scream meant everything to me cos i was also screaming inside seeing him appear out the house haha

This is a great breakdown of the series! I really enjoyed New Horizon, but I 100% agree that I cannot see myself returning to it. My favorite has always been Wild World and that feeling I had grinding that game has never been emulated. I've had back and forth's with people about New Horizons quite a bit. On one hand; I think people are quick to dismiss what makes that connect with so many people. But on the other hand; people are so quick to think an Animal Crossing veteran is being "pretentious and gatekeepy" for being so critical of the direction it took. I sit in middle for sure. I love New Horizons for what it is and the experience I had playing it. But I'd absolutely love a new AC game to really double down on that original philosophy the series had. Sadly with how ginormous New Horizons was, I can't see that happening.

For me, New Horizons has what I want from an Animal Crossing game for sandbox feel that the other games don't have but it also lacks the drive of daily tasks, socialable animal interactions, and things that would bring me back. The Gamecube game had it all to distract a 12 year old me for a whole year, where WW/CF had good things in them, it was Gamecube-esque and not enough daily things to keep me hooked. New Leaf is that bridging game, the cusp of sandbox elements with daily tasks, socialable animal interactions, & things AND multiplayer mechanics that is the best in the series. So when NH was revealed, my mind raced for what a HD New Leaf game could be & the mechanics of crafting and sandbox elements growing, solidified the idea of a game that would reach that 1 year distraction... unfortunately it didn't. NH is fun but at its core, it's not enough to revisit, unless I really want to reset islands but I have no interest in NG+ mentality for NH.

It's kind of odd how I've felt that, before NH even came out. Summer 2018: i finally managed to crack my 3ds. I could finally get all that I wanted! I was in a frenzy for what, a few days? Then, I just dropped everything. I quit liking the game altogether. It was HEARTBREAKING. I think the major component that reeled me in Animal Crossing is the fact that you can't be perfect and have everything. You need to work, not hard and mind numbingly like in NH, but for long enough for things to pay off, and that ends up creating a more intense rewarding feeling than you'd get not sleeping for two weeks and terraforming a whole NH island. It's the long term that made it, because that long term inevitably creates attachment. Hacking my town just disfigured it. I didn't recognize it, and just being able to change everything suddenly made everything worthless, and it deleted my whole attachment to my town, just like that.

Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of the pictures you see from NH are about island/house showcases, whereas with the older games there's a whole plethora of things people like to show off; conversations with villagers especially!

4:48 NH was designed to be cute and softer and welcoming These are some of the reasons why it sold so well

I feel the exact fucking same. New Horizons just felt so lifeless with the dialogue, material farming, and level of control you have. You've nailed it right on the head. I actually returned to AC1, mostly because it's easy to emulate, but also it's way more accessible to my kid compared to New Horizons. Sure there are less items and customizations, but what there is is personality. Edit: Honestly, New Horizons should've been called... Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer 2 - The Building Material Farming Chore - The Game

one thing that I find remarkably different from the first animal crossing games (original - city folk) and the new ones (new leaf - new horizons) is the base aesthetic of it. I don't know how to describe it, but the original games gave a mountain/forest/cozy/camping feeling while the new ones feel way too tropical and vibrant

I used to play Wild World as a kid, and coming from that to New Horizons was a bit jarring, to say the least. I love New Horizons, and I still play a little bit of it every day, but I'm still salty about what Nintendo did with Celeste. I loved making my own constellations at her observatory.

The irony is that the more free updates New Horizons got, the less complete it felt. "We're adding in the upcoming holiday in the next update." Awesome! ...Wait, it didn't have holidays?🤨

Im glad more and more people are talking about it. I loved New Horizons at first, but its just a bad, ANIMAL CROSSING game Decent sandbox decoration game, but it isn't Animal Crossing...

My first AC game was NL. My mother got it for me with my 3DS that I got for Christmas one year as a kid and I absolutely fell in love with that game. I would play it for hours and hours on end. And recently around two months ago I went back to try NL again after a 10 year hiatus and it was almost magical in a way even tho that sounds silly. I got on at around 2AM and as soon as I heard the title screen music and saw my villagers walking around I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. I even had tears in my eyes because this game just meant so much to me as a kid and got me through a lot of hard times and the music and seeing my village again brought back a lot of memories. NL for me is just so much more magical and charming than NH, and I realize I may be blinded by nostalgia and that’s why I feel the way I do about the game but idk. NH doesn’t give me that same magical feeling or the charming feeling either. At least not as much. Like you said in the video, the older games had so much more charm and personality and in NH it was sacrificed in order to have total control and freedom. I love NH for what it is and have played hundreds of hours of it but it has a lot of glaring issues and missing content that is hard to ignore. I will always love the AC franchise to death and will love every game that releases, but like I’ve seen other commenters say, NH is a good video game, but not a good AC game and I couldn’t agree more.

When I played New Leaf for the first time, I was working on a nice flower bed for my front lawn. A few days later, A villager moved right on top of it. I was so mad and told my friends I was gonna go to her house and bully her to get her to leave out of spite. But it ended up being Felicity and i ended up loving her. She became my BFF and It was hard to be mad about her Memories like that come from rolling with the punches that comes from dealing with being uncomfortable and roughness, and this s something that I notice is being phased out in gaming and even life in general. NH is probably just the most blatant example of it distilled into its essence. I don't get upset about villagers being upset with be because they don't. I don't have to discover what my place is gonna be like. I just make it whatever I wanted. I don't worry about upkeep or making sure I know what my buddies are up to. Things don't feel like they matter as much when there aren't consequences or risk.

It's so interesting that this video came up for me because I had the exact same process of going back to New Horizons after years and then never touching it again just recently. I've also always been made fun of for liking and only having played New Leaf, so it's validating to hear and see someone explain exactly what I've been feeling this whole time

One of the only things that kept me playing NH was collecting one of each type of flower. In hindsight, it was one of the few things that players can't have total control over. You have to learn these super obscure breeding mechanics, water your flowers each day, and hope that the flower you want shows up. Slowly I collected them over the course of months (I think) until finally I got the last flower, a blue rose. It felt awesome. I don't know how to explain it, but this optional, somewhat hidden, and surpisingly deep gameplay mechanic made me happy and I wish the game had more elements like that. Hopefully the next game is more like the old ones.

There is one thing I'm glad that didn't return, and that's the villagers randomly moving. I like the idea of villagers having _friendship decay._ The longer you're away, the less friendly, or maybe even more resentful they could get because you've been gone for so long. Or not even gone, but just on the game, not interacting with them or anything at all. Weeks going by, and not even a word gets uttered to Merengue or Audie, yet plenty of time has been spent talking to the other villagers. All of this relies heavily on unique dialogue though, something ACNH severely lacks. I do _not_ like the idea of them randomly moving just because my life got a little too hectic to keep up with the game itself, however. Especially if it was someone I legitimately put the effort into finding specifically. ~~cough Coco cough~~.

the fact it took me a good 2 seconds to realize who you meant by blanca made me laugh, good edit

I have been thinking about New Leaf a lot recently. I should go back and start a new town. Great video.

I always thought the island was too small. It still blows my mind that you could have fifteen villagers in the Gamecube game, plus the shops and museum and service buildings, and they've never equaled that since. I think they could make a game that serves both the "life sim" and "sandbox" audiences, and I think it wouldn't have taken that much extra work for this to have been that game. (Also the outro music made me smile, KK Love Song was the first KK Slider song I ever got and I always make sure to get it first in every new game)

Another point is how the mobile game still recieves new content after NH stopped getting updates

My issue with NH Is there's nothing to do after you decorate your island. I hope the next game had better (and more) villager interactions and well as the ability to have multiple islands.

Whatever they do for the sequel they had better not implement the same horrendous online experience. An entire minute and a half for ONE person to enter into your town is unacceptable when indie games like Terraria handle seamless drop-in drop-out multiplayer perfectly fine (and I bring up terraria specifically because, just like Animal Crossing, it transfers your single player character data to the multiplayer host). It takes, I shit you not, TEN MINUTES to get a full group of buddies in your town, and may the good lord have mercy on your soul if one of them drops connection.

I think you'll find Tangy to be the the Karl Pilkington stand in thank you very much.

the shear fact Gyroids weren't base game at launch... I waited far too long to dig up graves for my Jiggy wiggy droids

I want an Animal Crossing game with the villagers' personality from GameCube/Population Growing, the city from City Folk, the island getaways and fruit from New Leaf, and the customization from New Horizons.