The latest Animal Crossing game has now been out for three weeks. As far as we know this is going to be another Splatoon situation where this game will be completely different in a few years so trying to give the game a review score at this point isn’t worth it, aside from advising people on whether they should buy it now (which everyone seems to be doing anyway). The record breaking sales suggest people don’t need to know what people think about it so this article is a discussion of the game as it is now and as it might eventually be compared to the Animal Crossing games we have so far.
Before Animal Crossing: New Horizons released the two best (or at least most worth playing) Animal Crossing games were the original and New Leaf. The original on GameCube (in North America at least) is still unique enough to provide a worthwhile experience over other Animal Crossing games. New Leaf essentially does everything Wild World and City Folk did better, so it is hard to justify playing Animal Crossing games in that style besides New Leaf. New Horizons, on the other hand, seems to have made the biggest split yet in the Animal Crossing series, putting it solidly in its own new category that we will presumably (and hopefully) see more of on the Switch 2 and beyond.
Unlike earlier entries, New Horizons doesn’t rely at all on the amount of content it contains as previous entries in the series did (with New Leaf doing it the best). Instead it is another one of Nintendo’s recent changes to adapt some Western game design ideas into their big series, like they undoubtedly did with Zelda. This of course comes in the form of all of the survival and sandbox features that New Horizons introduces. Instead of the game slowly unlocking over time by just playing it as was true in many previous entries, players now have to take unlocking stuff into their own hands. This also means that they get a lot more choice than ever before. Your island in New Horizons is not too unlike any given piece of space in survival Minecraft.
Right now this seems to have held over a lot of people despite the obvious lack of unique side things to do that was present in previous games. Presumably the promised free DLC will solve this “problem” of lack of content as it did in the Splatoon series. Gamers who would call themselves principled would probably consider this completely unacceptable. However, it seems like Nintendo knows what they are doing here. The promise of stuff coming in the future and the relative lack of things to do initially make people much more likely to play this game over time than just time travel through it quickly (since there isn’t much to do if you do). Nintendo of course mostly wants this for the side effect of this making the game relevant longer and as a result selling longer at full price.
Overall New Horizons is definitely a good game, just probably not for the same reasons now as it will be later. It might even become a game in the style of New Leaf eventually and become the only Animal Crossing game worth playing aside from the original like New Leaf is now. Hopefully it will get a new physical version with its last update did so we have the completed game in a physical form once it is done.
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